6 mo FIGHTING sleep - spirited and low sleep needs?

[~Jen~]

Hi, I hope someone might be able to help me sort this out.  I'm fairly certain DD is low sleep needs unless she just handles her OT well.  It took me a LONG time to come to terms with it. I spent the first 4 months fighting her for naps at average A times and pulling my hair out when she constantly woke at 35mins happy as could be.  Then I started pushing A times, and kept pushing and finally naps started extending.  She was and *mostly* now is inde sleeper.  Lately she is back to fighting all her naps and BT again though so I've been holding her to sleep more than I would like to.  She has long A time especially her 1st A in the AM.  She does well at night usually waking 1x for a feed (somtimes 2x) she is EBF.  We finally seemed to hit a nice routine when she was 5 months and as soon as she hit 6 months all downhill again. 

Typically day a few weeks ago was something like this:
WU 7:05
Nap 1 - 10:55 - 12:25
Nap 2 - 4:05-4:45 Uusally CN in Ergo
7:45 BT Asleep

She started fighting her morning nap again so I pushed A times but now she won't settle at all.  She is fighting all naps and BT in her cot.  (although will easily fall asleep in the carrier or her pushchair).  I've had to hold her to settle her and I feel like she is totally regressing. BTW, is there a 6 month sleep regression??  Yesterday was something like this:

WU 7:15
Nap 1 - 11:45 - 1:30pm (she fought from about 10:45; she did wake at 30mins crying but I managed to get her back to sleep for just over another hour )
Nap 2 - 4:50 - 5pm (woken up in pushchair by DD1)
BT 7:45
(Woke once at 1am for a feed and back to sleep until 7am)

What do you think is going on? Sleep regression? 2:1? Super OT baby (but nights are good so I don't think so?)

[LovelyLilyandJack]

Hi there, sorry your post has been missed.

I have a LSN LO and have had similar nap refusal issues from both OT  and UT, so it's not immediately obvious from her routine what's going on,  but I can suggest some things to try I always tended to rule out OT first at this age. Have you tried APing an early nap at all? Will she do a decent nap in the buggy, or only cat nap? I'd basically try a day of shortened A times  (perhaps half an hour earlier than usual) and see how that goes before increasing her A time any more.

Otherwise, there is a big growth spurt at 6 months - do you think she could be hungry before naps and then getting OT  by the end of the day from longer A times? I'd maybe try giving a top up feed before her first nap, just to rule it out.

Any chance she could be teething? That often starts around this age too.  Have you tried giving meds half an hour before her nap time?

Finally, I'd also go for breaking the hold-to-sleep thing too, as it could be that now she's a bit older she's more aware and protesting going to sleep without it now, whereas she didn't before.  You may find that no amount of tweaking her routine will help if that's the case - you'll just end up with an OT  baby. What do you think about stopping that at the same time?

[~Jen~]

Hello!  I'm so sorry it took me this long to reply and THANK YOU for your orginal reply.  Your advice was really helpful and things just turned really hectic for a few weeks so I haven't had time to log on very much.  To give you a quick update, I did start putting her down earlier and it was working.  At just over 6 months, she was back to averaging 3hr A time and giving me 1.5hr naps.  She wasn't fighting her sleeps and I got her back to a completely independent sleeper.      Her night sleep was still solid as well.  I think this was also the time she was going through her 6 months growth spurt.  Can these make LOs very tired?  This particular week was the most sleep she has had - I actually thought something was wrong with her!! 

Then after a week or so of great sleeps, the naps started shortening again and fast forward a few weeks and we are back at 35-40mins naps again.  The difference is now that she doesn't fight sleep at all.  She will happily go down independently in her cot.  She just short naps.  I started pushing her A times again 10-15mins at a time, and when I got to 4hrs she finally did a 1.5hr nap.  So I've stayed there for a few days but she is back to waking after 40mins.     Her nights are decent still.  She was waking between 3-4hrs after BT but as soon as I pushed out her morning A time closer to 4hrs - that NW has gone away.  When her days are too long, I also get an EW which is 50/50 whether I can settle her.   Anything over 12-12.5hr day and that EW creeps in again which makes sense after such little day sleep. 

I still suspect she is quite LSN, is it crazy to keep pushing her A? It is driving me mad that she has only been doing 2x 40mins naps (my other 2 would have been besides themselves on such little daysleep)- but as usual she is happy as can be.    My only other thought is maybe she is waking hungry? How close to the nap should I try a top up feed? If I do it too close, she will fall asleep on me.

[LovelyLilyandJack]

She sounds a lot like my son.  We were on 4hrs A at 7 months and had our first 1 nap day at 8 months.  He also used to be the same with nws if he was UT and we had the same after A time increases where he'd finally sleep longer after an A time push but it wouldn't last more than a few days before naps shortened again.  Looking back I think he was a bit OT from short naps, so when I pushed his A we hit the right point to make him tired enough when OT to take a decent nap, but it was still too low to be his normal A time once he'd caught up.  Does that make sense?! So basically I agree she probably needs another A time push.

I was quite cautious when J was that age, not really believing he was as LSN as he is,  and took a long time to increase his A time to what he needed. In retrospect though, all his sleep issues were all UT related. As soon as I accepted he was getting enough sleep, it all got lots better. At this stage he was 13 months, doing one 45-60 minute nap, and 13 - 13.5 hr days.

You asked about growth spurts - yes, it's common for LOs to sleep more through those.  It was about the only time my son did close to the average total sleep for his age!

And wrt feeding before naps, you could try a top up feed half an hour before? Would you get away with that do you think?

[~Jen~]

Thank you!  I don't feel so crazy anymore     After reading your post, I pushed her A again to 4.5hrs and we got a 1.5hr nap.  Today she was at a 4hr45min A time and she slept 1hr45mins. I've been in denial for months about the LSN and I think now that I am accepting it; it definitely makes things easier.  My other 2 were much higher sleep needs so this is all new to me.

I can also see now that most of our sleep issues must be UT.  The more A time she has during the day, her nights are always better.  I'm just not sure what to do about her feeding schedule.  I'm having trouble fitting in the 4 milk feeds.  Do you think I should count the pre-nap top-up as a feed? Today was a funny day because we were out with my older ones so I could only get in 3 feeds... but for a normal day where you would you do the 4th feed?

6:45 WU
7:45 BF
8:30 Breakfast
11:30 -1:10 Nap
1:15 BF
2 Lunch
4:40-5  C/N
5:30 Dinner
7 BF
7:30 Asleep

[LovelyLilyandJack]

Could you do the morning bf a bit earlier, then do another at around 11 as a snack?  Then swap lunch and the other bf around so you're doing lunch at 1/1.30ish and bf at 2 / 2.30?  I remember my son's A times not fitting a typical feeding schedule for his age cos his A times weren't typical for his age, but I didn't want to rush weaning.  I think my health visitor suggested swapping lunch and the milk feed around and that worked for us until he was ready to drop it.

Sleep wise your day looks really good! I wish I'd been getting nights like that at 7 months. I was too slow to adapt to how LSN my son was. Even now he doesn't nap and only does 10.5 -11 hrs sleep in 24 (which is about on par with my 5.5yr old), and I still question whether he's OT!  But he really isn't - for example, I can have him in the car 7-8 hrs after WU and he still won't fall asleep so I know he's fine. But I still struggle to accept it's all he needs!