8 Month Old Nap Trouble

[LB1983]

Hi everyone! First post here so hopefully I am doing this correctly.

I have an 8 month old and I've been having sleep troubles ever since he was born... haha.  I even hired a sleep trainer but am still having nap problems.  Through the night is fine and I am fine with our super early bed time, but would go later if it solved morning.

We have a solid consistent routine, dark room, white noise, crib sleep only.  His sleep times are something like this

Wake: 4:30-5:30am... I leave him until 6:30am
E: BF @ 6:30am
E: Solids @ 7:45-8am
S: 9:00am
A: 10:30am (I cap this morning nap as instructed by trainer to preserve second nap... it's been suggested I should cap even earlier @ 10... should I?).
E: BF @ 10:30
E: solids @ 12:00
S: 1:00pm This nap is a mess... he usually refuses for anywhere from 30-60 mins.
A: 1:30-2:30pm He usually only gets a 30 min nap for this nap and it's been like this for a few weeks now.
E: BF after nap 2
E: Solids @ 4-5pm depending on WU from nap 2
E: BF before bed
S: 5:45-6pm depending on WU from nap 2.

So my problems are early morning wake ups and nap #2.  He goes down to sleep for nap 1 and bed time no problem at all...  it's so hard to tell if he's undertired or overtired for nap 2... it's driving me crazy! Any suggestions?

[lily_layne]

To get a later wake up, I think you're going to have to push that bedtime later. I would stretch it by 15 minutes every few days until you get to a time that results in a WU time you're happy with.

Do you have to wake him from the morning nap every day? I am thinking he'd likely have a pretty big nap at that time if you let him since he wakes so early. You could leave him be for that nap and then do a CN later in the day but it may tough to figure out the best time for a CN. I think you might have more success continuing to cap the am nap at 10:30 and pushing the pm nap a bit later - maybe try 1:30 for a few days and see what happens.

It looks like he's getting about 13hrs sleep overall (is that right?) which isn't terrible. I think it's just a matter of pushing that pm nap and BT a bit later.

[LB1983]

Hey there - I actually have the same post over in general sleep issues.  I can delete this one... anyway here's what happened today:

No luck letting him sleep as long as he wanted with morning nap.  He slept 9-10:30 and woke naturally at 10:30.  I put him down at 1:30 and he refused to take the nap.  We didn't get a second nap at all and had one very unhappy baby all day.   I put him to bed pretty early because he was shattered (5:30PM).

I'm expecting an early morning, but I'm going to try capping the morning nap at 1 hour and see what happens.

[lily_layne]

Capping the morning nap sounds like a good idea. I know a few moms on here that had success with a 45m-1h am nap at that age. Come and poke me if you'd like me to pop onto your general sleep thread.