Help please! 6.5 month old wakes up happy in middle of the night

[Kierlove]

Hi, my 6.5 month old angel baby has been waking up in the middle of the night multiple times talking to himself...  It's driving me crazy, his sleeps worse now than as a newborn.  Sometimes if I go in and give him his soother he goes right back to sleep, if I wait he could be up for hours, I think he thinks it's morning (which is why I go in so he knows to go back)...  I was worried he was overtired so I've been putting him to bed by 6:30, but in wondering if he's actually undertired??  He's always super happy during the day, and goes down easily for naps and bed on his own. His afternoon nap is usually short, 45 mins, unless his morning nap has been really short in which case he'll sleep longer.  I have two other kids that I have to pick up and drop off at school, preschool so I don't have too much flexibility with his schedule...  I have to leave by 3:15 for pick up, but he's often up before that anyway which leaves a long time before bed - is that ok if he seems happy and settles fine?  He's been able to go long stretches 12-13 hours at night without feeding since he was quite young but I've gone back to night feeding on a few occasions because of other reasons (wanting to keep him quiet when at other people's houses etc), I've got him off them again, but if his last feed was at 6:15 pm I will sometimes feed at 6:00 am then let him go back (he won't nurse in the morning if he feeds at night).  Sometimes I have to wake him at 7:30 or 8:00...  Should I let him sleep or maybe wke him at 7 so he can start his first nap a bit earlier and have longer a time in between?  His morning nap is usually 1.5 hrs.  I was only giving him 2 hours a time before morning and before afternoon but have recently tried extending that to see if that is the problem.  He can easily go 3. Hours.  But again needs to go longer before bed or go down by 6-6:30 but then he,s getting 13 hours of broken night time sleep...  Help please!!


Thanks!

[Charjanemom]

We were just going through something similar. My daughter would wake in the night and party for an hour then go back to sleep. We had similar day with a good am nap and short pm nap. You should post your routine and someone more experienced can help you but what worked for us was increasing awake time which we are finally getting good afternoon naps. Pretty sure happy in the night is under tired. Seems like there are a few of us on here with the same issue so it might be developmental too. The last 2 nights we have had no wake ups!!

[Kierlove]

Thanks!  Glad things are improving for you.  I'm trying to adjust routine...
Was:
Wake 7:30 nurse
E solids 8:00
A
S9:30-11
E 11:45-12 nurse then solids
S 1:30 ish - 2:15 (was almost always short)
A
E 3:00 nurse
A
E5:30 solids
6:15 nurse
6:30 bedtime (I had moved this unthinking that he may have been overtired from the long wake time before bed... 
Nw usually around 3 am, then again on and off until morning (I get very little sleep from that waking on).  If I feed him, he'll often go back to sleep right away, but then he's not hungry in the morning and his schedule goes off, so I don't think he's really hungry... 

I've tried moving the morning nap and the afternoon nap, extending awake time.

Today I nursed him at 6 am, went back to sleep until 7:15. 
Morning nap 10-11:15
I tried waiting until 2:15, but may have been too long, because he didn't go down easily, was talking (not crying) and kicking around, at 2:30 I decided to feed him and he nursed and went straight to sleep...  We'll see how long he goes...

I'm thinking of starting to wake him at 7:00 to start the day earlier and see if that helps...  Thoughts??  Or, if he's been up in the night should I just let him sleep?  If he gets too off schedule we run into problems with pickup and drop off of the other kids....  Today my mother is coming if he sleeps past 3:15 so I can let him go and see if it helps.  I'm going to try to keep him up until 7:00 pm or 7:15 pm.  He never appears overtired, he's always s,idling, never demanding and very happy...  But maybe that's just him, I still want to ensure he's getting enough sleep...


Any advice anyone has is much appreciated!

Thanks

[Charjanemom]

I would say he needs more a time before first nap but u might want to leave it for a few days then increase again. We are still tinkering with our routine too. But the a between the short pm nap and bed is really long. I have read on here that overtired normally shows wakes in the first part of the night. But you don't get one until 3? Hopefully Erin or Bec can jump on and help you out. What happened with the aftenoon nap? I have also found that my daughter has a harder time transitioning during the afternoon nap so I let her be for a bit and she is putting herself back to sleep. Yesterday afternoon she fussed for 10 mins but went back down. It was fussing not a i need you cry.

[Kierlove]

He woke up after half an hour!!  I wanted to cry :-(   I tried, unsuccessfully to get him to go back...  He was happy for the rest of the day and I kept him up until 7.  We'll see how tonight goes...  The last couple of nights I've been rushing in when I hear him to give him his soother in the hopes that he wont fully wake up and he ( and then I) will get back to sleep faster but I'm worried I'm creating another problem... I'm just so desperate for some sleep (I have trouble falling back asleep or the other kids wake me...) so I'm trying to minimize the wake time.  Because even if he doesn't need me, he still keeps me up.  My plan is to wake him at 7 tomorrow...  Unless someone has a different suggestion...

[Charjanemom]

I know. I myself have spent a lot of time crying this week. I thought we finally got our A times in order but she is now short napping again too
Hang in there. Sounds like he woke happy from the pm nap? I would guess under tired then. My daughter did the same this afternoon I even tried rocking her back to sleep and she thought it was funny. We had to add the catnap to our day today as she can't last till bedtime. Hope your night goes well.

[Erin M]

I would definitely agree that he need more A time and a shorter night.  13 hours is a long night -- though I understand that you were pulling BT forward to compensate for the long A time until bed.  I'd try to bump your A time out towards 3 hours (slowly, in 10-15 minute increments every few days), which would shorten your A time until BT. 

What times are you working around in terms of picking up other kids?  Ultimately, that's going to determine a large part of what your EASY looks like (I've got 3 as well, 2 in school and my littlest at home and I can so sympathize with needing to juggle school runs and naps)! 

[Kierlove]

Thanks!  We get home from drop off at 9:15 earliest but usually closer to 9:30, then have to leave by 11:20 on m,w,f, to pick up three year old and by 3:15 to get 51/2 year old.  Once winter hits and they're not biking and are walking in snow pants and boots we'll have to leave much earlier...  Unless I put oldest on bus...which I may have to for the sake of James' naps!  Hope this helps.  Will try what you guys have suggested.  Thanks so muchM

K

[Erin M]

Ugh, that's not so easy (no pun intended) to work around!

What I think you're going to have to do is something that looks like this:
WU - 7:30
Nap 1 - 10:30 - 11:20 (MWF)
            10:30 - 12:30 (other days)

On the days when you have to wake him up from his first nap, you're going to have to play around and figure out what kind of A time he's going to need to take a good nap after a short one.  I'd try 2.5 hours and see where it gets you -- hopefully you'll get a decent nap from about 1:45 - 3:15 -- then hopefully he'll be able to make it until 6:15 or so -- which still leaves you with a long night on those days, but hopefully it will be ok.  Alternately, I would think you could start waking him up at about 6:30 and have a nap from 9:30-11:20 (of course, that would put your second nap smack in the middle of your afternoon pick up time). 

On the days when you don't have to do the 11:20 pickup, you should get a 10:30-12:30 nap (more or less) and then be ready for a second nap at around 3:30 -- or whenever you get back from picking up the other one -- you're going to have to try to keep him awake as well when you do that -- then, you would get your later bed time because you'd need the longer A time.  Or, you could just let him sleep in the car/stroller (if he'll do that) and still go with the EBT (or put your oldest on the bus LOL).

Listen, I know this sounds like a bit of a disaster, but having been through it last year with my ds, you just have to muddle through the best you can and it will click into place eventually.  I pushed mine to one nap before a year and it was the best thing that could have happened to our schedule.  We had a 3PM pick up last year about 20 minutes away and James would fall asleep in the car every day and that was his second nap -- it was rarely ever longer than a half hour and once he hit the 6 month mark or so, there was no time to do another nap before BT.  So, we'd do EBT and we did have a bunch of OT wakings, which he eventually seemed to just grow out of as he got used to it. 

[Kierlove]

Thanks so much everyone, I really appreciate your thoughts and advice.  So, yesterday went like this:
Am nap: 9:45-11:15
Pm nap: 2:10-2:40 I had him in bed at 1:55 but it took him time to settle (unusual)
Bt: 7:10 ( didn't intend him to be so late but we had dinner guests and we lost track of time, he was still happy, but fell asleep nursing)
Nw: 10 this is very unusual but he was in a new sleep sack and was really warm, so i changed him and decided to nurse him since he didn't finish at bedtime and i wanted to be comfortable he wasnt hungry if he woke in the night
Nw:3:30,
nw: 5:15 for both night wakings he was moaning and went back to sleep once I gave him soother.  I waited for a while but then he'd start to sound like he was going into crib party mode so I went in after 15 minutes on the second.  If I go in fast he goes back fast ;-) but I know that's setting us up for other problems...
W:  6:45

S overall it's getting better but his afternoon nap is worse...  I'm thinking since its the weekend and I'm free from pickups I'll extend morning a time, and just go with 2.5 in the pm and see where that leaves us...  He's woken on his own at 6:45 the last two mornings which is more reasonable so maybe I don't need to be as afraid of that early bedtime.  This is new to me, I've always attributed sleep problems to over tiredness not under tiredness!  My other two slept more, we'll certainly my first did!  I'm also thinking that bus home is looking like it may make everyone's life easier especially as winter sets in!

Does my weekend plan sound reasonable?  How much a time would you say is ideal before bedtime if he has a short nap and how much if its a decent nap?

Thanks again!!

[Kierlove]

Oh, and Erin, when did you drop the second nap?

[Erin M]

We started pushing towards it not too long before a year, maybe 11 months or so -- what was happening was that we were getting the most annoying short afternoon naps -- he'd just sleep the 20 minutes or so that it would take to get to school and then be up for the rest of the day, so I kept extending A times to get him there and treated the PM as more of cat nap (since he insisted on doing the same).  Once the summer started (he was 13 months, we were totally on one nap and it's been great this year since school started).  I've heard of others pushing towards 10 months, but it's hard for them to do the long A times before then. 

I think your weekend plan sounds good - at least you'll know what kind of A time to shoot for. 

[Kierlove]

Ok, so naps went better yesterday but the night was not great:
Am Nap9:45-11:15
Pm nap 1:55- 3:00
Bed 6:35
Nw 3:40, I gave him tylenol at 4:00 because i was worried hisnteeth were bugginh him (not sure that was it).  Finally decided to nurse at 4:50 because he was really crying but he was not overly hungry, just needed to be soothed, discovered in the morning that he had pooed so maybe that was the problem??.  Heard him briefly at 6:30, but fell back to sleep and was very hard to wake at 7:10
Am nap 9:50-11:05
Pm nap 2:00-2:35 (hard to settle for it too)...

So what do I do now??  Put him to bed at 6?  Even that is a long a when he has hardly napped and I'm worried the crib party will come back.... Help please!

Thanks,
K

[Charjanemom]

Hey. We are dealing with this stuff too. I have had to offer the cat nap some days when they don't get as planned as we are still wavering here too. I would say give a CN. 230-bed is a long time even if u bring bedtime forward. You don't want him getting over tired.

[Erin M]

Pm nap 2:00-2:35 (hard to settle for it too)...

Did you put him down at 2 or did he fall asleep at 2?  How did he wake from the nap?  I'm thinking you still need to increase your A time to get some longer naps in.