Dropping catnap at 5 1/2 months?

[babymunkey]

Just wanted to run this past a few other BW brians to see if we're not heading down a slippery slope?

My ds is about 5 1/2 months. More and more days we are getting to a consistent rough routine of (assuming we don't have the 45 minute nap monster back, which does still happen every now and then for a few days)

07.00      A
07.30      E
09.00      S
11.00      A
11.30      E
12.30      S
2.30 - 3   A
5.30        E
6.00        Top-up E
6.30        S
22.00       DF
05 - 06.00 am E

He then seems happy to go through til bedtime without a catnap. Most days he has the opportunity to sleep in the car or buggy, but rarely sleeps, or if he does only dozes for 10 minutes or so. If we're at home, I keep a sharp eye out for tiredeness, but he seems to be able to go 3 hrs easily. As we do a "cluster feed" about 5/5.30, then bath and bed routine then last feed of a bottle, and he is mostly in bed asleep by 6.30.

So, we seem to have ditched the catnap. Am I kidding myself that he is doing OK without it, or are we building up an OT that is going to catch us out? He sleeps through most nights til 5 ish, sometimes 6, then will go back to sleep til 7.

Just thought I'd ask for your experiences/wisdom in case we get caught out down the line?

H

[brenda2]

5 1/2 mo is a bit soon to drop it...really keep an eye on him.  he may skip it some days and have it on others.  even just 10 min is great to make it to bedtime.  if you are going to go without it thoug h i would push the first 2 naps later in the day so you don't have a 4 hour stretch before bed, this is when he'll get OT.  aim for 2.5 to 2 hours 45 min for each A time and put to bed slightly earlier if you need to.

[musicgal03]

Happened to me also. I would always offer it but there in the end he would never take it and he was fine without really. Still went down for the night easily with no night wakings. So since he was about that exact age he hasn't had any catnaps except for a few odd times when I managed to get him down.

[Colin Macs Mom]

Colin dropped his catnap at 5.5 months. He was absolutely not ready, but let me tell you he wasn't going to have anything to do with it. We did a very early bedtime for a month or so until he could handle the longer A time at the end of the day.

[babymunkey]

thanks Ladies....will take all of that on board. There have been probably about 5 days of his life so far when I've managed to get a catnap in his cot, all others have been engineered in the car or buggy, but lately he seems to not to want to sleep in either of those....too much going on in the world to look at I guess.

So will stick with the "some days if we can" approach and early bedtime. In the past I have put him to bed as early as 5.30 if his other naps have been rubbish and no catnap, and it's never caused EWs so will stick with that and see how we go. (Having said that he's just gone to bed now after a disastrous afternoon involving being delayed by a business appointment and then a flat tyre on the way home......ho hum, lets see how tonight goes )

H

[*Natasha*]

Colin dropped his catnap at 5.5 months. He was absolutely not ready, but let me tell you he wasn't going to have anything to do with it. We did a very early bedtime for a month or so until he could handle the longer A time at the end of the day.

Ditto to this for both my girls 

[*Nicola*]

Same here.  Callie hated the catnap from day 1.  We just muddled through and went for a 630 bedtime (in bed and asleep by then) until she could stretch out a bit.

[babymunkey]

Its good to know its quite common and actually is a good problem to have IMO as it means I dont have to 'engineer' dropping it at a later stage. Also, tbh 6.30 bedtime is great for me too, and even after a perfect day, we still aim for that so I can flake early!         

[*Nicola*]

I agree!!  Callie is 8 months and we are just now beginning to move bedtime later Enjoy xx