Author Topic: 5 month old and short naps, routine?  (Read 1069 times)

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Offline Gully

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5 month old and short naps, routine?
« on: February 28, 2016, 12:38:34 pm »
Hi,
Our 5 month old was always between a textbook and angel baby. She is on a 4 hour EASY. We could lay her down in the cot and 80% of the time she would settle and go off by herself. At about 4 months she started fussing a little, so we did shush pat and it really helped. She had hip dysplasia so she had to lie on her back due to the harness. She also has reflux but it is medicated. Now when we try the shush pat she grabs our hands, or tries to roll away. She sleeps in a grobag. It can take up to an hour to get her to nap and then she wakes after 30 mins. We do think she is teething, but thats been the case for about 3 weeks now. We started solids last week and it's been going fine, though she is a little gassy. Basically there is a lot going on, but we are so tired of the nap battles. She still goes off well at 7pm but I'm scared that is going to be affected next!

Our days go like this:
6:30 am wakes happy
7 am   Eat (usually 7 oz)
8: 30 nap (usually 30-45 mins, can be up 30 minutes of fussing)
9: 30 Awake again, happy
11:00 bottle (usually 6/7oz) Here we have a problem because we should put her to bed around 11:15 but she is eating)
11:30 nap (usual fussing, but this nap often lasts 90 mins)
12:45/1pm awake happy.
1:15 Solid food (vegetable, 5 teaspoons)
3pm Bottle (6 oz)
3:30/3:50 fussing and 30 min nap (too much awake time here again?) Upset when she wakes but can't go back to sleep.
6pm Bath, bottle
7pm bed.
11pm dream feed 4-5 oz usually

I feel she is overtired but the first crap nap of the day really throws everything else off. I know the teething and starting solids are affecting her, but our routine isn't right either and this problem though worse now, was there before they started.

Any advice appreciated.



« Last Edit: February 28, 2016, 12:57:38 pm by Gully »

Offline Gully

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2016, 12:41:20 pm »
I should have said also that she has a soother, which she loves normally but  can't take at the moment because of the teeth. We've been giving her the teething granules which really help with this. I don't want to take away the soother because she loves it, but we keep having to give it to her while doing shush pat!
« Last Edit: February 28, 2016, 12:43:57 pm by Gully »

Offline Martini~

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2016, 19:46:23 pm »
Hi Honey! She seems to be slightly UT for the first nap of the day was results in a short nap. At 5mo you could definitely aim for more A time than 2h. Good nap of her is after 2:15 A and after short not fully generating nap! At 5mo some kiddos would be ready to start nap transition to 2 naps a day and these are usually first signs. You should be slowly going through 2:15/2:30
A time to 3:00 which gives you an option for 2 nap day.

Other suggestion from me would be to continue on what you have now for next weeks. At this age one nap per day which is longer can be enough, it's great it's a midday nap and it's IMO the best way to go through transitions. The case is that with short-long-short nap routine you have less day sleep but more A time than on two longer naps routine (when you count the whole 12h). For the transition period it's very good as too much of a day sleep may also be a problem at that age (and that can result in broken night!!!).

Decision is yours but I would probably increase A times slightly, but still stay on 3 naps with midday one longer. It's a 1.5h nap right now which could be a tad longer but to achieve it, you have to push A times!
~Marta

Offline Gully

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2016, 23:27:05 pm »
Hi Martini,

Thank you so much for your reply. It has been such a bad week and I was totally feeling like I was making a mess of things. I will def try to push the awake times and see where we are. Though the teething is really messing with naps too so it might be a bit hard to judge I guess. There is always something going on!

Thanks again.

Offline Gully

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2016, 14:36:24 pm »
Back again!

We have been pushing awake times for the past few weeks and she is now almost 6 months. We have pushed A time to 2:30 minutes but she kept taking short naps so now we are trying 2 hr 40 mins since yesterday. The third nap of the day is still a huge battle. We have kept slowly pushing A times because she is still waking up at the 30 min mark. I can resettle her usually and it might go to 1 hr 15 mins, sometimes 1hr 30. Never more than that. But usually once a day she wakes at 30 minutes and is very happy, and won't resettle. 

She has a cold today so I don't mind resettling her, but this has been going on awhile and I have to go back to work in a couple of weeks and want to have her naps someway settled by then if I can.

What does it mean when she wakes happy at 30 minutes?

Offline Martini~

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2016, 22:58:26 pm »
2:30 at 6mo and happy wakings would still mean UT for me honey and I would try to push a bit more.
~Marta

Offline Gully

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Re: 5 month old and short naps, routine?
« Reply #6 on: March 20, 2016, 19:57:18 pm »
Okay thanks, I'll keep pushing so...just wanted to make sure we weren't going too far!