5 month birthday = super short naps?

[Elisabethpate]

My daughter turned 5 months old yesterday and has decided that she is all grown up. She has shortened her naps to 30-50 minutes every time except her last "catnap" which you would love to extend if I would let her. I have increased her A time recently, because I am trying to firm up her schedule. She doesn't start acting tired until 2 hours of wake time, and then sometimes way longer. I am trying to get her on a 4 hour schedule and she was doing great with it for a few days. She is getting over a cold so that might have something to do with it. I am just shocked at how hyper she has become almost overnight. She just doesn't seem tired hardly ever. She is so wiggly and into EVERYTHING. Yesterday she rolled from her back to stomach for the first time (before she only rolled from stomach to back), and sat up by herself for a whole minute (also the first time). She doesn't seem unhappy or overtired at all. In fact, if I try to put her down for a nap, she plays and laughs and does happy yells for 30 minutes! Why has she suddenly become so hyper?!?!

Her schedule yesterday:
5:30 wake (zantac and prevacid)
7:00 eat (6 oz)
8-8:30 nap
10:15 eat (only 4 oz cause of cold)
11:15 eat (3 more oz)
12-12:45 nap (shh pat back to sleep)
1-1:50 nap
2:15 eat (5 oz)
4-4:30 nap
5:45 eat (6 oz)
6:30-7 nap (only because she was tired but I didn't want her to go to bed at 6:30 cause she would wake in the night then)
7-8 Bath and bedtime routine (ate 2 more oz)
8:15 bed

So far today she seems slightly better

6:30 wake and meds
7:00 eat (almost 10 oz but threw up half way through, so maybe 8?)
8:40 - 9:30 nap

So I guess to sum up, my major questions/concerns are:
1. why is she so hyper all of a sudden?
2. Why are her naps suddenly so short?
3. How can I get her on more of a 4 hr. schedule?

[Elisabethpate]

My other thought is that she could be teething. 

[MomOfKaylee]

Hi there! I am going through the EXACT SAME THING with our 5 month old. But I want to share something extremely important first... Gabby also has severe reflux which it sounds like your LO does, too. She was on Prevacid 7.5mg twice a day PLUS the max dose of Zantac twice a day and she was still throwing up and crying when she ate/burped/refluxed. She was constantly growing out of her Zantac dose and we got to the point where she had maxed out on both drugs.

We ended up taking her to Duke.

I, too, was giving her Prevacid and Zantac together first thing in the morning then again right before bed. But guess what? You cannot give Zantac and Prevacid TOGETHER. In layman's terms, Prevacid needs the proton pumps (which makes the acid) to be turned on in order for it to effectively turn them off. If you give her Zantac (an H2 blocker) at the same time, Zantac prevents the Proton Pumps from being turned on (using a different mechanism of action) and therefore, Prevacid can't turn off the pumps and be effective.

The pediatric GI at Duke said, in theory, she should not need BOTH Zantac and Prevacid if she has enough Prevacid and if you're dosing it properly. He said if you are going to continue giving her Prevacid AND Zantac, then they need to be dosed 4 hours apart. The GI increased her dose from 15mg (total) to 22.5mg (total) and we changed her dosing schedule. We started giving Gabby Prevacid when she first wakes up and then we try to hold her off at least 30 min before eating (Prevacid needs an acidic environment to work... milk makes the stomach more alkaline). Then we were giving her Zantac at noon-ish, Prevacid again at 6ish and her last dose of Zantac at the dreamfeed. We did not change her dose of anything... Just the timing and she's a completely different baby. No reflux! No crying when burping! No vomiting!

And it gets better! For the last week, we have been giving her NO Zantac! We split her dose of Prevacid into 3 doses (7am, 12pm-ish, 6pm-ish) and she is FABULOUS! I seriously can't believe it. I am a total believer in a higher dose of Prevacid and no Zantac to interfere with Prevacid!

I hope this helps!

Just an FYI - I am in the medical  field and have read all the supporting studies in the literature to support the theory. There's a lot of pharmacologic studies that demonstrate the necessity to space PPIs (Prevacid) and H2 blockers (Zantac) at least 4 hours apart.

Poor Gabby has suffered with several reflux since the very beginning (and confirmed food allergies)... I only wish we had known this all along!

I hope this helps you and your LO!!!

Looking forward to hearing the responses about our non-sleeping babies. Mine is happy, too. But she needs to sleep!

[Elisabethpate]

Why don't doctors tell you these things! I will definitely try that tomorrow! Ava has a severe dairy allergy which they thought was reflux for the first couple months of her life (it kept getting worse and then miraculously disappeared overnight once I gave up dairy). They recently put her back on the meds because they thought she still had reflux. In actuality it was a bad stomach bug that caused projectile vomiting and diarrhea, but they wouldn't listen to me when I said it wasn't reflux. I kept her on the meds even though she is feeling better because she still spits up a lot and seems to be in pain when she burps. Hopefully switching the timing of the meds will help with that!

[MomOfKaylee]

Doctors don't tell you these things because they don't know! We have one of the best pediatricians in the WORLD (I firmly believe!) but she didn't know and really wasn't a believer until I tried it myself and demonstrated to her how much of a difference it made!

Gabby also has a confirmed CORN and EGG allergy! (She hasn't had anything with eggs in it, of course, but the allergy testing showed it) We, too, thought she had a milk and soy allergy but it turns out it's all corn! Corn is in EVERYTHING! Including her medicines!!! And in all commercial baby formula except Alimentum LIQUID (the powder contains corn maltodextrin).

Anyway - my point... WE are our children's advocates. Trust your gut and figure out what's wrong!!!

Good luck! And I sure hope somebody helps us with our non-sleeping happy babies!

[Aishi]

Hi

I just want to add that before changing any medication I would speak to your doctor first and get it okayed...

[MomOfKaylee]

I DEFINITELY agree that you should not take the advice of a stranger on a forum to change medication without your doctor's approval! But my suggestion is to just change the timing of the same doses of the same medications. happy New Year!

[Aishi]

Thanks for clarifying that momofkaylee just to clarify I wasn't having a go at u xx

[Aishi]

To answer your question your lo is hyper cos shes ot and shes giving short naps because shes ot. The first thing that jumps out is that her day is too long from 5.30-8. Los do best with a 12hr day so with a 5.30 wu I would do 6 pm BT latest. Night sleep is more restorative so it will also give her time to cu...

Looking at your easy that first nap is OT. at this age average a times are 2-2.25 h and at 2.5 first at I think it's too high. Is your lo at the lower end of 5mo? I would reduce that first a time to 2h if she's on the younger side of 5mo and see if nap improves. Hold that at for a few days to give your lo time to adjust to it. If you're still getting OT naps give it a few more days as lo may need longer to get over accumulated OT.  If you get short 45 min nap (classic UT length) then increase at by 5-10 min until you get a restorative nap of 1.5h...once your first nap is good you can increase second at to get a better nap there too and a shorter CN. At this age you're also close to dropping the CN so you really need to gt those a times sorted... The reason we work on one a time at a time is to prevent it accumulating but that's usually when increasing a times. As your a times are so high already. I would keep all ats at 2 h to start with and see how u get on...wdyt?

Also if developmental stuff can affect sleep too which may also be causing nap disruption.

Have yu tried meds for teething? Ibuprofen works better than paracetamol- both available OTC.

Re easy once you've got better naps you're easy will start to fall into place....

Hth! x

[MomOfKaylee]

Thanks for the short nap info, Aisha! I'm going to post in a separate topic about short naps, OT, and not crying! I don't know what to do with my happy baby who doesn't sleep.

[Canwi]

Urm, I'm just going to clarify this statement.

Prevacid needs the proton pumps (which makes the acid) to be turned on in order for it to effectively turn them off. If you give her Zantac (an H2 blocker) at the same time, Zantac prevents the Proton Pumps from being turned on (using a different mechanism of action) and therefore, Prevacid can't turn off the pumps and be effective.

Proton pumps and histamine receptors are both located in the Parietal cells of the stomach. 
When histamine locks into it's receptors, acid production by the proton pumps is started.  So an H2-blocker (such as Zantac) will indeed stop the action of the pumps.  However, those are not the ONLY receptors on the parietal cells.  This is why Zantac is sometimes ineffective for people to use. 

Proton pump inhibitors (such as Prevacid) shut the proton pumps off completely. The medication needs an acidic environment to be activiated.  So taking them at the same time as Zantac could slow down the speed with which they work due to the speedy action time of the H2-Blocker (Zantac).  But the PPI will have some action due to the parietal cells having more than just H2-receptors, and the parietal cell still having the ability to work albeit to a lesser degree. 
PPIs will work much better when spaced further away from the H2-Blocker medications

So in theory a person shouldn't need to take both a PPI and an H2-blocker.  There is though, a number of people in the world who need to take both to get some relief from their acid reflux/heartburn.