9month old baby won't sleep at nap time and screams and cries nonstop

[pprin]

From 7.5month old my baby boy started managing to sleep through the night from 7pm to 6am-7am each time. He would sometimes wake up at night, cry for a couple of minutes to resettle himself back to sleep, and fall back asleep during this period.

However, during the day, if he wakes up from his lunch time nap (he wakes around 7am, then naps for 30min at 9am, then nap for 1.5-2hr again at around 12pm, and then quick nap at 4pm), he would scream at the top of his lungs for as long as you could stand it determined not to go back to sleep. Once we take him out of his crib he would be all happy and no more crying... It pains us to hear him screaming like this but we are not sure what we could do...

Also does he need a 4pm nap? He would cry for 20min nonstop for the 4pm nap determined not to go to sleep even though I could see he is tired (esp when he napped for only 1hr during lunch)...  should we just drop it now?

[Layla]

Hi there,

I think your LO is screaming before going down because he isn't tired enough. Most babies don't need the 3rd nap at this age, which is probably why he's screaming for 20mins. I would probably work on extending his A time closer to 10am as by 9 months most can handle 3hrs (and probably more than that) but I would start with 3-3.5hrs A time and that should hopefully help. So aim for something like this:

7am - wake
10-10.45 - morning nap
2-3.30/4 - afternoon nap
7/7.30pm - bed

At this age, he probably doesn't need 2 long naps and leading up to the 2-1 nap transition (which can start as early as 9 months, even earlier for others), you can go down the path of short morning/longer afternoon nap. He's probably only sleeping 30mins at the moment because he isn't tired enough to sleep longer but once you stretch him to 3-3.5hrs in the morning and you see him sleeping longer than 30mins, you could still control the length of this nap by waking him 45mins into the nap so that he takes a decent afternoon nap. If you just eliminate the 3rd nap without spreading the morning and afternoon nap, then he will be awake for too long before bedtime, which could lead to night wakings too

Good luck and let me know how you go.

[Mandy.kamal]

I agree with Layla! This exact thing happened to us as well and my DS needed an A push and to drop that catnap. Layla helped me do it; she's wonderful

Just wanted to let you know that I was right there as well and you will get out of this mess once that catnap goes away!

[pprin]

Thanks I will try Layla's suggestion. This morning after napping for 15min from 9am he screamed for so long not willing to sleep (this was before I read your suggestions), so maybe he is suggesting to us he wasn't sleepy enough!

[Layla]

I would say so!