6 month old...bedtime not really working, do i drop the CN?

[mylittlelovelies]

Hi everyone,
I've had so much lovely help from sherry and liz on another post but since i started that when my DD was 4 months old and she's now 6 months, i thought i'd better start a new one.

I'm wondering if its time to drop the CN as i'm at that point where the day feels like its 'not working' and she's tired overall at the end of the day (OT and hyped up actually), but isn't actually sleepy and wanting to go to bed.

Here's a typical day...

7am wake
9am in bed (asleep 9:15ish)
10:45 awake (1.5 hrs sleep)
1:15 in bed (asleep soon after)
2:45 awake (1.5 hrs sleep)
5:00 in bed (getting harder this CN now as she sometimes wants to chat etc, but if she doesn't fall asleep quickly the nap is getting way too late so starting to APOP to get her to hurry up and go to sleep for this nap.
5:45 awake (40 min CN)
7:45 grizzling but also very OS and hyped up as its been a long day. In bed but takes ages to settle, often need to rock in my arms for a while to calm her down. Then she's happy to be put in her cot and fall asleep there (with shh pat often), but if i put her straight in her cot (like i do for her naps) she is just so hyper and she kicks and wriggles (she's still swaddled) and gets all cross and protests and spits the paci out.
8:15ish asleep. So bedtime is taking quite a while even with my help, if i didn't help her i think i'd be doing a million dummy runs and she'd be kicking herself out of the swaddle with how razzed up she is.

It seems like because her night time is now less than 11 hours (10.5 to 11 hours is whats happening at the moment), she is less refreshed for the day and so even the A times above (2.25 then 2.5 then 2.25 then 2) are a bit of a stretch. If i put her to bed sooner though she has short naps, so i know she needs those A times at least, if not longer to give good naps.

Any ideas??

I don't want to cut the CN too soon and overwhelm her with A times that are too long for her, but every day i feel like the CN and bedtime she is not in the right 'zone' to settle quietly and nod off, so i am helping her more and more.

Thanks in advance!
Jessie


i forgot to add, she's 6 months 8 days old.

[Tweakster]

Hi there Jessie, we went through this exact same thing and the advice I got was that the day has to be pushed forward a bit.  I started by increasing the morning A to 2.5 hrs and then to 3 by 7 mths - we were finally able to dump the CN at 7.5 mths.  It's pretty much tapered off at 3 to 3.5 hrs A now but there was a really big increase between 5 to 7 mths.  It doesn't steam ahead because they are in and out of teething and also motor skills milestones.   

I think she's definitely OT, particularly with shorter nights and later bedtimes.  We did have a bad spell of OT with this pushing the day out but it was really the only way to get to where we needed to be, we just had to be a bit firmer with our nap times, I used set nap times for a while.  And then things got infinitely better.  We did a lot of early bedtimes at the 5-6 month period but it compounded our EW so in hindsight, I would have fought harder for that CN. 

So on the days when her nap ends early and you are left with a long A to bedtime, you need to do your best to get the CN in - drive, walk in the stroller, rocking, whatever it takes to get 20 -30 mins out of her and get you to bedtime without major OT.  APOP is perfectly legit for a CN since the CN is going to go anyway.  Then when she has a well rested night, you can push on the front end a bit again.

Does this make sense? 

[~*Nicole*~]

Have you tried putting her to bed closer to 7/7:15 ish. After a 40 min. nap her A times should be shorter I would think. If she is not tired yet, you could wake her after only 30 mins for the CN and do earlier bedtime so her day is closer to 7-7 and she may be less OT by the end of it.

[mylittlelovelies]

hi,
thanks for your replies.

I have tried organising things so bedtime is more like 7pm, but she seems to have reduced her night to 11hrs max at the moment no matter what i do, so if she's in bed at 7pm she's up at 6 or even a bit before...chatting and singing so no way she'd go back to sleep. This morning she woke at 6:30 squealing away and singing to herself, which is only 10hr night sleep (only two super quick feeds in the night so no sleep lost with NWs).

what is the normal A time after a cat nap? i've always found it hard to work out. Naps are usually easy for her to settle, but bedtime is tricky.

[Tweakster]

Hi there, for Finn it wasn't strictly based on his CN but his sleep phase and all his cumulative A's.  So for example if his middle A was long and he had a normal afternoon nap of 1.5 hrs, he would do a short CN and then still be tired around 1.5 to 2 hrs after.  It's like if you have the same bedtime every night, you are going to naturally get tired at or around a certain time...and that is what happened to him.  So come 6 p.m. every night he's naturally tired regardless of his A time.  Some LO's are different and can work strictly on A time.  But I found that if I put him to bed any later than 7 we get OT and NW and EW again.  He starts shaving his nights when he goes to bed later.  I had to find that sweet spot bedtime and for us that is currently 6:30. I always err on the side of caution and go with an earlier bedtime because if they do 11 hours they may wake early, but be well rested and put you in a better position to start pushing out your day.  If they shave their nights and get into an OT spell, it's almost like an endless loop.

It's quite common for them to shave their nights a bit when they are transitioning naps, once when the CN is dropped and again during the 2 - 1.

Just my 2 cents :-)

[marilyn73]

When dd was 6 month, just before she dropped the CN, the CN was 5:00-5:30, and bedtime was at 6:45/7:00.  wake-up at 7:00am, so quite a short A at the end of the day.
Once the CN was dropped, I worked really hard at extending the am and pm naps because that was the only way she could make it to bedtime at 6:45/7:00 - otherwise she just wanted to go to bed earlier and earlier.
A textbook day for us was:
7:00 wakeup, 9:30-11:30 nap, 2-4 nap, 6:45 last feed and to bed. 
Rarely did we get this though - usually one nap was shorter, or interupted by a 30min pat/shh session, only to have her fall asleep for another hour.  But the longer naps really helped when the happened.