7 months old has 10 hour nights overtired or is this normal?

[brenda2]

if he managed 3 hours A time and did a long nap with no intervention then i'd say it was fine.  3 hours is right for his age so if he can do it with just a little push and he continues to have long naps then it's great.  if he starts with 30 min naps then reduce it a bit.

[tracy28011984]

Hi wondered if you could help-last night he woke at 1.00p.m and would not settle.
My parnter checked his nappy, it was fine then finally gave in after 1hr30mins of whining/crying and gave him a bottle.  The problem is he has never had a bottle during the night since he was 3 months old and I dont want this to be a new regular thing.
The clocks are going forward tonight and I was hoping for that to help us get back on track.

Questions:
How would you deal with these night wakings?
Do you think he may be going through a growth spurt, teething? (He had medicine and teething gel when he went to bed.)

I am going to try and give himmore milk and food today since his appetite seems to be getting better.

[brenda2]

teething is hard.  if you gave him another dose of medicine at 1 am and it wasn't working i don't think it was a bad thing to give him a bottle.

my lo is teething now too and hardly eating anything and last night she woke up at 8:30 pm (after 8 oz bottle and bed at 7pm) and was screaming (not like her) and nothing i was doing could settle her so i gave her a bottle and she took another 5 oz and went back to sleep until morning.  so obviously she was hungry from not eating during the day.  she never gets a bottle at night either but teething is different.  if he's not eating enough during the day and his teeth are bothering him and givign a bottle will help and make him go back down then i think it's ok .  once in a while is not going to make a habit of it.  and if he gets a bit off track while teething it will be easy to get him back on track once teething is over because you have put in the hard work of sleep training before.

[tracy28011984]

Wondered if you could advise me on something.
My LO has an appointment in 5 weeks at the hospital, the problem is the only time they could give me was 10.00a.m by then he will be 9 months so will be working towards 3.5 A Time so I figured if he woke at 7.00a.m his next nap would be at 10.30a.m so I could give him his nap if he gets seen straight away. However if he wakes earlier say 6, 6.30 don't know what to do. He really needs to go to this appointment but I don't want his routine messed up. Any advice greatly received!

[brenda2]

hi
well it's 5 weeks away so don't worry about it yet, his routine will be different by then for sure.  i find i try to plan these things and even if you get a time that does work with their schedule they go and do a really ew or have a bad night and it all gets thrown anyway!  it never seems to go how i plan...

yes that time will be hard to work with ...but it's important to go to the appointment and it's only 1 day so ultimately it'll work out and he can get back on track after the appointment.  if you think it'll be a problem you can always wake him up early that day and try to have a little nap on the way there or let him sleep in and maybe it'll work out. 

i think i'd lean towards the nap before because more often than not they are late at these things...like if you woke him at 6 and then went early put him in the carrier and walked around so he had a nap on you then you could just wait in the waiting room with him asleep and wake him up when it was time for the appointment and even if they're late he could just keep sleeping until it was time.  kwim? 

[tracy28011984]

Hi I'm just wondering if you might be able to answer my question. I have been looking at sample 8 month schedules on here and quite alot of the schedules have a long A Time of up to 4 hours before bed for 8 months old. Do you think that's okay? I panick when my LO wakes before 3.30 because I think that he will get overtired, yet there seem to be lots of other lo's waking at around 3-3.30 and not going to sleep until 7pm.

[brenda2]

well at 8 mo i think my lo was doing about 3.5 hours A time first thing but we had short nap issues...

so at 8 mo she was doing this (usually):
7 awake
10:30-12 nap
3:30-4:15 nap
7 bed

i wouldn't push a 4 hour A time before bed if he's usually doing only 3.5 hours.  4 hours is a bit long for 8 mo.  also depends on the length of the nap.  my lo only did a short nap for her second one so her last A time was always the shortest.  sometimes though lo can do the last A time the longest.  my lo seems to do first and second A times about the same and then a lot shorter for the last one.

if his A time is only 3 hours then i wouldn't push it at all before bed and i would aim for bed to be about 3 hours after he wakes from the last nap.  so if he wakes up at 3 pm i would be having him in  bed by 6 ish.  if he wakes at 3:30, bedtime is 6:30.  i did this a lot and never had a set bedtime, just went by how long she was awake after her last nap.  this of course changes as they get older...you didn't say how long your lo is doing now for A time?  at 8 mo it should be between 3 and 3.5 hours.

that was a bit of rambling...

[tracy28011984]

He is doing first a time of 3 hrs then 2nd a time of 3-3.5 hrs then depending on last nap 3-3.5hrs a time, he has just turned 8 months.

[brenda2]

that sounds about right.  juts remember that it's a constant increase in A time slowly between now and when they go to 1 nap.  so if in a couple weeks it's not working you probably have to increase it again.  also if he does a short nap decrease the following A time a bit.

[tracy28011984]

Yesterday looked like this
6.00 Woke
9.00-11.00 Sleep
2.10-3.30 Sleep
7.00 bed

Then he woke at 5.30 (I think) this morning thats when I first heard him, cant understand why hes still waking early, no night wakings. He had dirtied his nappy so I changed him, gave him his bottle and he went back off from 6.15-7.00a.m
This morning I took him up to his nursery at 9.20a.m because he was showing tired signs and I wanted to give him enough time to settle (day 1 of no swaddling for naps/nighttime he has already got used to this) and he got very upset finally went off at 9.45 but I'm not expecting much.

What do you think about these early wakings still? I don't mind 6.00a.m so much although would prefer closer to 7, but cant understand why hes still having these early morning wake ups, when we have moved him onto two naps

[brenda2]

i'm not sure...has he always woken up early?  it may be that he needs a bit of time to get used to the new schedule and then when he settles in he will start sleepign longer at night.  your routine you posted looks fine, nothing really that needs a tweak.  ews can mean that he needs less day sleep or more (ot can cause ew) or that he's just wired to be an early waker.  what i have found is that they do go through phases of times on things.  so just because he is ew now doens't mean that he always will.  dd1 has had ews on and off but now she is consistently sleeping until 7 am, dd2 never had ews but had nws instead.

i would continue with what you're doing for now.  keep the A time at 3 hours, not less and see if it settles on it's own.

[tracy28011984]

The last three days have been a nightmare the day before he slept a total of 1 1/2 hrs in the day yesterday he slept 1hr 45 day sleep and today's routine has been like this. During the night he sleeps fine until 5.00a.m.
5.00 wake
6.45-7.15 sleep
9.30-9.55 sleep
11.45-12.30 sleep
14.50-
He's having diarrhoea up to 10 times a day, so that is disturbing his sleep. The doctor said yesterday I should either stop milk or try soya milk until his tummy is better. Don't know what to do, he will go mad if I take him off his milk.
He's figthing sleep all the time, he's very overtired and things are getting worse. He is going to sleep without his swaddle blanket but cannot stay asleep. How do I get out of this cycle I'm starting to get really down about everything.

[brenda2]

well it's really tough when they're sick.  i'm sure things will get back to normal when this bug passes.  when my dd has had diarrhea in the past the docs always say go off milk as it can make it worse.  so we always do soy milk which dd takes fine.  but he's pretty young.  could you try soy formula?  he's too young for milk isn't he?  they make soy formula and formula that doesn't have any milk protein in it for babies who are milk protein intolerant (MPI).  i would try that and see if it makes a difference.  diarrhea can last a really long time...dd1 had it for 3 weeks when she was 18 mo - i was up every night for 3 weeks changing sheets because she would have really bad diarrhea that would leak through.  ugh.  and the docs said yeah it's fine it';; pass as long as she's not dehydrated which is the worry.  so you should push the water and fluids too.  hugs.  tough to have a sick lo.

[tracy28011984]

Hi sorry I havent had time to talk for a while my lo has been very ill again very wheezy,still has diarrhoea and a constant nasty cough. His sleep is all over the place becuase as soon as I put him down he wakes 5 minutes later coughing and cant get back to sleep.
I've tried everything taking him out for long walks, letting him sleep in carseat/pushchair but he seems in lots of pain. The doctor gave him steriods yesterday but they dont seem to be helping yet. He only had about 1 1/2 hr sleep yesterday during the day and most of that he was coughing.
Today he woke at 5.00a.m after very restless night, lots of coughing. So we went to hospital and they gave us a new inhaler but he didnt end up going to sleep until 11.10a.m-12.40 and that was only because I went back to swaddling him, I put him down for his next nap at 3.25 what time do you think I should wake him?
Do you think I should keep swaddling him for his naps until he gets better because he seems to be able to sleep better with it?

[tracy28011984]

Sorry forgot to say I dont know what time to put him to bed with him having this late nap, any thougths?