3-2 transition at 6 months too early?

[Pualani8]

Help!!  Our DS is 6 months tomorrow - he was born a week late and I think he's always veered toward longer A times since birth.  (Not sure if being late matters??)

He's recently been sleeping horrendously.  He was never a great sleeper before - but we had him down to just 2 night wakes.  Now it's 4-6 wakes and the past 2 nights up for over an hour at 1 am!  And SCREAMING before naps.  He screamed over an hour earlier.  That was even with me holding him. =(  I don't know if he was UT or OT!

I'm trying to stretch to a 4 hour routine at the moment.  Is it too soon to drop the 3rd nap?

Schedule so far:

WU - 7 am

Nap - 9 am - 10:15 am

Tried for 2nd nap at 12:45.  Screamed forever.  Asleep at 1:30pm.  (<-- Did I try putting down too early = screaming?)

Wake up - 2:45 pm

Now here's where I struggle?  How do I get a 3rd nap in?  It would be 5:30 - 5:45 pm!  That's way too late.  Do I do a 6ish bedtime?  Aaaargh.  I'm lost.

[Layla]

Sounds like he needs extra A and I don't think he's too young. Some babies start as early as 5 months. Actually DD3 (who is also overdue by 2 weeks and seems to be a little ahead of the av A's) started the transition sometime around 4.5months (the odd missed CN here and there) and by 5-5.5months we were down to 2 naps .

So as you're adding the A's across the day, if you see that it is too late for the CN, you could do an earlier bedtime (6pm is reasonable and we did 5pm some nights to help overcome overtiredness). Or if he does fall asleep but its fairly late or it will push bedtime too late, you could try waking him about 20-30mins into the nap (assuming his catnap is around 45mins at the moment) to preserve bedtime.

See how you go... with us, cutting the catnap any less than 30mins did not help because she was just too cranky and I cut it out altogether and went for earlier bedtime most of the time.

Have a look at this link and let me know if you have any questions. All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months

HTH

[amayzie]

Definitely not too young!! Some babies depending on temperament and size (I believe) are ready earlier than others! My guy was on 2 naps at 6 months and it made all the difference! 2 naps is an awesome place to be- hang on as it can be a bit of a bumpy ride to get there- but it's a much more civilised way to behave!!

[Pualani8]

Oh my gosh thanks for the support ladies! I think that's where we're headed. His naps are definitely stretching longer. He never used to nap longer than 30-45 mins but now were consistently getting 1 hr 20 for both morning and afternoon nap. I think we're just going to have an early bed time for the next week or so until we can push his earlier wake times a little out.

My only concern is he will become overtired. 2.5 hours of naps a day doesn't seem like much? And in your experience does the early bed time cause really early wake ups in morning?

[weaver]

And in your experience does the early bed time cause really early wake ups in morning?

Definitely not!  In fact, the opposite, EWs are often caused by going to bed too late, so EBT can help resolve EWs.  Crazy but true!

Once you've dropped the CN, the other naps are likely to lengthen so he will get more than 2.5 hours during the day.