Set naps for 8 month old-anyone btdt?

[Mandy.kamal]

 I have been doing 3.5 A across the board and get random naps, never more than an hour. I kept thinking he needs an A increase but maybe I'm in the UT/OT loop again?

His naps are 30 minutes, resettle, and another 30 minutes.

The past two days, I did 3 hours A before bed and that has worked really well. Other than that, I honestly have no clue what his other As should be??

He woke at 6:20 this morning but seemed tired during the entire A so I pd at 3 hours A instead of  3.5 A and he did 34, resettled after 15 mins and another 33 minutes. I'm thinking this one was UT?

Any advice on how to get out if the UT/OT loop?  Is there a trick to knowing if a nap is UT or OT?? And if I just stick to 3.5 A for a week or two, will it be more clear if he's UT or OT, or only cause more problems?

[Mandy.kamal]

DS just had an OT nap...now it's clear again what the difference is...lots of uncontrollable crying!
I fed, rocked, and let him cry a bit and he fell back to sleep after 45 minutes of AP...

I guess today answered my question and it's obvious now that I need to push the first A tomorrow to 3 hr 45min and hope for a good first nap which won't lead to the second nap being OT.

I need to get better about dropping the second A time by 15-30 mins if he has a shorter first nap. I'll start again tomorrow and see!

[Layla]

Hi Mandy, I remember with the girls we actually pretty much stayed on the same nap start time until we were ready to transition to 1 nap. I always kept the morning A the shortest (approx 3-3.5hrs) and the morning nap was short, which allowed for a longer pm nap. I don't think they need 2 long naps at this age (from memory, he is around 8 months?) and 1x45min nap and 1x1.5hr nap was sufficient for the girls (with 12hrs at night) and that routine worked great right up to the time they went down to 1 nap. DD1 had a naturally short nap and longer pm nap and with dd2, I switched it around and would wake her 45mins into her morning nap so that she could nap in the afternoon around the same time as dd1 (allowing me some Y time ). This was when she was around 8 mo.

Oh an yes, if he's up from a nap and is crying/clearly not well rested, then it probably means he is a little overtired and could have had more sleep.

HTH

[Mandy.kamal]

Thank you sweet Layla!

Yes he's 8 months now and you're right about needing less sleep. Both of his naps have been an hour or less; is that okay at his age?

He slept less than 11 hours last night but woke happy so I'm going to push his first A time a bit to see if I can get a longer nap. He's done a 2 hour nap twice now in the past couple weeks and both were in the afternoon and after a shorter A time....maybe he needs his As to go from highest to lowest throughout the day? What do you think?

At this point I am just tweaking to suit his needs more and increase sleep only if he needs it. So let me know if it seems fine and I need to relax on his naps

[Mandy.kamal]

I'm confused on what to do with the pm nap...

I pushed the first A time to 3.40 and got an hour and 15 min nap with no wake up after 30 mins...so that's an improvement. I may try for 3.45 A tomorrow morning and see if he will sleep a bit longer but I don't want to push him too quickly.

The pm nap has been all over the place since the am nap has been UT for so long. I was doing 3hr 20-30 min for second A and was getting OT naps. Now today I did 3h 20m and got an UT nap...luckily he settled and went back to sleep though. He slept for another 30 minutes but woke up fussing and grumpy which usually is OT.....can an hour nap still be OT?

The A before BT is usually the shortest and around 3 hours....but that may be because of the OT second nap....

Any suggestions on how long his second A should be?
I'm very confused by his pm naps since he's sleeping an hour but waking very upset and it's obvious he's still tired...

[Layla]

Mandy, I didn't follow A times past 6 months with DD1 and 2 and rather offered set naps.... it was more or less in line with the age appropriate A times anyway but I found that with dd1 the morning nap was naturally a shorter one (because our A was only 3hrs) and the afternoon nap was a longer one and I was happy with this arrangement and didn't seek to push A's to get the perfect nap length because she was well rested overall.

I have read somewhere that the afternoon nap is of more importance in keeping the child better rested however could not for the life of me tell you where I read that (I've read many sleep books) and this may not be the true for all children however I did find this to be the case with my girls. It is possible that he's overtired from the pushing - are you pushing A's to get a longer 2nd nap? I think I may have mentioned earlier that at this age they do not always do and need 2 long naps and some babies start to show preference towards 1 long and 1 short nap. This pattern will follow until he's ready to be transitioned to 1 nap.

In your case, if he does a shorter pm nap, I would keep the A before bedtime short.

I found set naps helped me keep sane, not having to worry about A times so much. Of course if a nap was cut short significantly, I would offer the next sleep period (be it pm nap or bedtime) earlier rather than sticking to set times.

HTH

[Mandy.kamal]

Thank you Layla. I'd love to have set naps but I'm not even sure when to offer them. DS gets so OT so easily so I've been scared to try them. His wake up and BT varies by 2+ hours so it's hard to know when naps should be. This morning he had an EW of 5:00 am and I have no clue when to put him down...

I was pushing As because he seemed to need more restful naps. He does much better with a longer PM nap but I can't seem to get that to happen except on rare occasions when our routine has gone wacky.

I'm just exhausted from this. I hate not having a clue what to do.

[Layla]

When mine would wake early, I would try my best to not offer a nap earlier than 9am as it would throw the whole day off if I did.

You could try a morning nap around 9/9.30am and not let him sleep longer than 1 hr and then offer the pm nap around 3-3.5hrs A time?

[Mandy.kamal]

Thank you so much. I'll try that

[Mandy.kamal]

My ideal routine would be close to an 8-8 day, so my husband can see DS during the week.
If nothing I'm doing is helping with naps then I'd like to try the set nap. How can I go about getting the routine closer to 8-8 with 2 naps? Where should I start and what times should I 'set' the naps?

Any advice from anyone who's done this would be greatly appreciated!

*right now both am and pm nap are an hour and 10 mins. He wakes up happy from his am nap but fussy/crying and not fully rested after pm nap. The grumpy pm nap wakeup has made bedtime continuously early...not sure what is best and what can help fix the current situation

[Layla]

I would start with pushing his morning A first until your morning nap starts around 11-11.30am and then depending on whether you want to go down the path of short morning/long afternoon , you could wake him at 12/12.30pm and then aim for pm nap around 3.5hrs later. If you do a Google search for set nap and add baby whisperer you might get posts from others who've done it.

I've also changed the topic so that others can  chime in if they've done set nap

hth

[Mandy.kamal]

Perfect, thank you Layla! Ill do that now.

Anything you can suggest as to why he's so upset after pm nap? It's been for 3 days now. He wakes fussy which leads to crying, then screaming. It's not hunger because I feed him 'lunch' before the nap. I've tried everything up my sleeve to try and resettle him but nothing works. I end up just leaving him to self soothe because its obvious he doesn't need/want me and then he ends up giving up and playing.

This has made BT earlier and earlier and we've been having NW and EW again

[Mandy.kamal]

Another 5:00 am EW today too....

[Layla]

What did the last couple of days look like? Try and not offer a nap before 9am

[Mandy.kamal]

Past few days:

Up at 6:00
E 7:00
A 3 hr 35 min
S 9:38-10:42 (no wake up at 30 mins)

E 11:15
A 3 hr 20 ish
S 2:05- 3:23 (with short wake up and resettle at 30 mins. Woke up for good and was very grumpy and still tired but couldn't resettle)

E 3:30
A 3 hrs ish
S 6:30

Woke 6:00
E 7:00
A 3 hr 36 mins
S 9:36- 10:55

E 11:15
A 3 hr 20 mins
S 2:15-3:36 (woke at 3:00, quickly resettled, woke grumpy!)

E 4:00
A 3 hr 20 ish
S 7:02

Woke 5:00
E 6:45
A
S 9:36-10:50

E 7:00
A
S 2:15- 3:30 ( woke crying...again!)

BT 7:00

Today so far:
Woke at 5:00
E 6:40
A
S it's only 8:30 but I'm doing all I can to keep him awake until 9 or 9:30...