9 month old -no afternoon nap for two weeks

[EloysH]

Hi All,

My 9.5 month old does not want to nap in afternoon, for the last two weeks we give it a really good go for 30 mins each afternoon then abort till bedtime. He either plays happily or screams and yells, fighting it.

His routine:
5 am wake (eek!) bf (sometimes goes back to sleep for 45 mins)
7am breakfast bf
snack
8:30 - 9am nap 1.5- 2 hours (3.5 hours of activity time)
10:30 - 11am wake
12pm lunch
snack before nap
2-3pm nap (  no nap at moment) basicially 3.5 hours of activity time
4:30 dinner
5pm bath
6:15 - 6:30 bed

we have had to bring bed time forward to 6:15 since he is missing the nap it would usually be at 7pm. But by 6pm he is sooo tired that we have no choice but to call it a day. Hence the early wake up. He usually only sleeps 10 hours a night, but it's 11 hrs since the no nap.

I have read all the FAQ on 2 to 1 nap and 10 month old going wonky.  We have tried to increase activity times in hope of him becoming more tired.  He used to do 2 x 1.5 hour - 2 naps and 10 hours at night, and go to sleep peacefully ahh those were the good old days! (And that was whilst he was teething!)  He's not teething anymore, and now decided to not sleep in afternoon go figure!

Anyway, we have not tried cutting the morning nap short,  that seems like a drastic measure, although we are getting fairly desperate now. I am feeling very stressed in the afternoon and so is lo, when we even approach the bedroom he starts yelling wriggling and protesting!  He usuually is tired  after being awake for 3 hours, but in the last two weeks I have extended to 3.5 and 4 hours in the afternoon so see if he will go down later and it has not worked.   I have been giving him a snack before bed thinking that he may be hungry, that does not seem to work either.

I can add that he is very active has been crawling for 2.5 months and been cruising for  a month or so,  standing un aided (in the last few weeks) and pushes a pram or trolley along walking behind. In the last two weeks we haven't read books as part of his wind down, as he is too busy and won't sit still where as he used to enjoy it.

thanks in advance
Eloise

[~Karen~]

Sounds like my ds!  He's just coming up to 10 months and is an EW and I'm finding afternoon nap getting harder and harder.  Yesterday he finally fell asleep after an hour so then had to wake him up at 410pm in order to try and put him down for 7pm (bedtime is usually 6pm) and it took him until 745pm to go to sleep and he was still up at 5am.  It seems the later I put him to bed, the earlier he gets up.

He usually naps for about 1.25 hours in the morning but this morning it was only 45 mins so we're all messed up for the day.  We went out and he fell asleep in car on way home and as soon as we stopped he woke up.  I put him straight down in cot but it's now 30 mins later and he's still stirring and still not asleep!

Keep me updated on your progress.  I might try a short morning nap next week for a couple of days and see if we get a better afternoon nap.  I just hate waking him up when he's asleep after all the effort I've gone to to get him having longer naps.

Good luck!!

[brenda2]

hi
it's really common for them to fight the pm nap at this age.  but if they don't have it they'll definitely be OT by bedtime and this will contribute to your EW too.

does he go to sleep independently?  what do you do when he fights the nap?  how long do you try?  have you tried doing some AP in the pm just to get him to sleep at all (short term solution...) like a stroller or sling ride?

i would limit your am nap to no longer than 1.5 hours (this is not a huge change but even small changes may help and if not you can limit further), and then increase his A time slightly to 4 hours and try for the 2nd nap.  i would also give a snack/meal/bf shortly before nap#2 so he's not waking hungry.  the pm nap can be a short one too, so if it's later than usual that's ok and you can wake him from it to maintain your bedtime.

something like this:
5 awake and bf
7 breakfast (are you bfing here too?  this should only be solids)
8:30-10 sleep (limit to 1.5 hours) - don't let sleep past 10:30
10 snack
12 lunch
1:30 bf
2-3:30 sleep (4 hours A time before this nap)
4:30 dinner
6:15 bf
6:30 bed

i think you left out some bf.  at 9 mo most Los are having 3 bfs/bottles a day including the before bed bf.

if you can get him to take his pm nap and push bedtime a bit later this may help your EWs.

[EloysH]

Hi  Brenda (?)

Thanks for your input.
I will try for the limiting of the morning nap to 1.5 hours. I have tried 4 hour activity time in afternoon, only a few times, he stilll fought and fought.  But I will try for a 4 hour activity time for a good week or so to see if we can get a result. I think that is the plan of action to try for, as you said if it helps the EW then that would be fantastic. I agree he needs a later bedtime, the plan is to make the bedtime 7pm given that he gets a second nap!  it's just that he's not getting the nap, so a 6:30 bedtime at the moment  means he's been up for 7 hours straight!!

as for bf I am trying to keep it to three a day, morning lunch and after bath, but sometimes it ends up being 4 somehow.

He goes to sleep with a pacifier, other than that the rest is done by himself, ie we leave him in the cot  after a brief cuddle to wind down and go to sleep himself. About 30 mins for bedtime we give him low key acticity to start the wind down process. He doesn't wake for the pacifier at night, we have not found it a problem.
If he is fighting the nap, he will be screaming at the top of his voice, I will go in every few minutes and lay him down and stay with him until he is calm ( usually calms quickly), then leave the room. He will then play, then start protesting again, and then get to screaming until I come in. SO I go in a few minutes after his cry becomes the angry screaming type.  At other times he just plays and plays. I persist for about 30 mins, sometimes 40 minutes depending on how distressed he and I get. In the 10 days or so or him not napping in the afternoon I have tried for the car or pram after 30 mins, but this only worked once, he slept for 20 mins in the pram, but woke as soon as I stopped walking!  Since this has been going on for some time now, I find the whole ordeal takes so long that this week I have been giving up after 30 mins and just getting on with the afternoon.

I have to say that he has rarely slept away from his own cot so one of my hopes is that perhaps he could get used to falling asleep in the pram, it would be good to have it as reliable back up.  Do they need practice at falling asleep in the pram?

Having said all this  a great thing happened today!!   He had an activity time of 4 hours this morning by accident, because I was late getting home, and had a  45 minute nap  in the cot.  We then gave 3.5 hours of activity time before the afternoon nap, a snack just before, and he went down only after 2 minutes of screaming, after a brief cuddle he decided to relent to sleep!   So he had a 45 min nap  this afternoon!     He was still very tired after the nap so we had to put him to bed at 6:30pm.  I am thinking the short morning nap was the major contributor, what do you think?

Eloise

[brenda2]

sounds like your approach is good.  walk in walk out is the best way to deal with it if they are already indpendent sleepers which he is so that's great    i would try for 30 to 45 min for the afternoon nap as well, but if it doesn't work give 30 to 45 min of quiet A time and then try again.  pram/car ride is fine too if he'll fall asleep there. 

i think the short morning nap certainly was the reason he did a pm nap for you today.  and limiting the morning nap may help you continue to get a pm nap.  the amount of day sleep he got today though is still low.  i would start with limiting the am nap to 1.5 hours as we said and if he still fights the pm nap with that you can limit further (like to 1 hour 15 min or 1 hour, i think longer than 45 would be good).

if this doesn't work and he continues to not go down for the pm nap really what you'll have to do is push the am nap later so it's closer to noon.  if he's only going to have 1 nap it should be around noon-2 so it's not so long before bedtime.  and an early bedtime of course.

keep us posted

[EloysH]

thanks so much, we wil keep trying for the 30 - 40 mins quiet time in afternoon.
 
I haven't had any luck the past few days with the afternoon nap, although he took 2.5 hours for the morning naps starting 10:00am, and waking at 12:30, and seemed to cope ok with being up... so we gave a 6:15 - 6:30 bedtime both nights.

So now I have some not so good news to report. LO woke up 3 times in the night two nights ago ( since 8 months old he STTN, so NW is now classed as unusual (yay!) ) and I thought to myself "oh no, this feels like teething type crying" and then in the morning he wasn't his usual happy self, then the chewing on his hand started... we are in full blown teething again! He only had a two week break from a 6 week stint of 4 teeth popping up. It seems that he is getting the bottom 3rd and 4th teeth.  He has the top two front teeth too.  Do you remember which teeth were  more painful for your LO than others??   Did your LO get any teeth without much bother at all?  Our LO first 4 teeth seemed to be painful some days and ok on other days, but definantly made it hard for him to fall asleep at nap time.

The teething usually makes him very tired, as guaranteed 5:00am wakeup no matter what the bedtime...  so I am hoping that he will take the afternoon nap for his own sake or we will have a very very grumpy baby indeed!!    So today 5:00am wakeup and back to 8:00am nap... wish us luck!

thanks again

Eloise

[brenda2]

it's common to be more tired during teething, maybe he'll do 2 naps for you now!

my Lo only has 2 teeth (late teether) which did cause NWs and fever, and is getting another one on the bottom which doesn't seem to be bothering her at all.  i hear the top front are the worst.

[~Karen~]

Hi Eloise,

My ds has just teeth 5 and 6 and I'm hoping we're going to get a bit of a break but he was already chewing his hand again yesterday.  He's had a lot of trouble with teething but my dd teethed really quietly (although she was a late teether) so I guess they're all just different.

[EloysH]

ok thanks for the teething tips, they must be all different.

Only had one nap today... was soooo hopeful, ah well!

1st nap was 1.5 hours from 8:15 to 9:45, (5am wake-up) I thought there's no way he'd last without an afternoon nap. At 2:00pm he started showing tired signs ( 4 hours of activity time ) so I tried to put him down for 40 mins to no avail, lots of crying angry crying, I even relented to a breast feed (sillly me) but that didn't work. A 20min car drive didn't work either!

So we put him to bed at 6pm, he went down easily and surprisingly wasn't complaining through bath and dinner, just very tired.  Poor thing had 8 hours af activity time in the afternoon!


Eloise

[~Karen~]

We had a long morning nap too,I woke him after nearly 2 hours but he had only had about a 10 hour night sleep so knew he was tired.  Was actually suprised he went down so easily for pm nap but he only slept for about 20 mins so have put him to bed already and hopefully we'll get a good night sleep tonight.........

[EloysH]

at least you got the 20 mins..    hope you got a good night sleep.  We put LO down at 6pm.. sttn till 5:00am after a feed played in the cot for 40 mins then had 40 min catnap, not too bad.

tried everything for the afternoon nap yesterday..  to  no avail.

[EloysH]

Oh I just spoke to an organisation called Trescillian - they are a government funded organsation that help Mum's with their LO sleep issues, you can go and stay at their premises overnight for 5 nights and they teach independent sleep. 

Anyway, after explaining my whole story to them, they have suggested that LO is probably overtired and over stimulated in the afternoon, being such an active baby would be part of the reason (he is cruising the furniture and standing independently). They have suggested to act on the very FIRST tired sign in the afternoon and try not to let the activity time go over 3 hours. They have suggested that he is probably finding it hard to wind donw, hence the fighting of the naps and lots of crying.   

So I have a new tactic, watch like a hawk for tired signs and try to put him to bed earlier as opposed to later for afternoon nap. Also, keep persisting with getting him to sleep for 30 -40 mins if he is crying, or of he is playing happily, try to leave him as long as possible to do that.  SO I will try this for at lerast 5 days and see what happens.

They have also stressed the importance of two sleeps at his age, and at worst a rest time in the cot  without the sleep is still important.


Eloise