I'm having a bit of a problem now that my son has turned 5 months old (he's 22 weeks on Wednesday). He's now fighting me going down for naps! Last night, he even fought me going to bed which has NEVER happened! I mean, he'll do a little fuss-fuss as we swaddle, but by the time he's swaddled, he calms down. (We're still swaddling because my son was very slow with arm control, and every time we try to leave one arm out, he just hits himself in the head a billion times! He still sleeps great when swaddled, so I don't think it's the swaddle he's fighting).
Usually, fighting me means either not enough awake time or too much. In previous months, I just increased our awake time a bit and that solved the problem. But this time I'm just more confused! Things are complicated by teething (although that seems to be over now - he cut his first 2 teeth last week), the fact that now he's older, he doesn't want to stop playing, and his sleep cues are harder to read - before, when he started fussing it meant he was tired. Now, sometimes it just means he's bored!
So, could you please give me some guidance on how much A time a 5 month old typically gets? And I'd like to know what we'll be shooting for once we reach 6 months. I've found if I slowly increase A time over the month, it makes the monthly transitions a little less rough, and I can usually skip the 45 minute nap monster-battle that way! (it worked last month like a charm!- this month I'm at a loss, though we haven't gotten so bad that we're having 45 minute naps yet. But I feel like we're revving up to that with the fights going down for naps).
Our typical routine:
Awake at 7
E 7:15
A 7:45-8:45
S 9-11
E 11:15
A 11:45-12:45
S 13:00-15:00
E 15:15
A 15:45-16:30
S 16:45-17:15 (catnap)
Bedtime routine starts
A (light activity, like swing while mom & dad finish dinner)
E 17:45 (start bottle, but usually doesn't finish)
Bath 18:00
18:15 finish bottle, start wind down routine for bed
18:45/19:00 bed time. He almost never goes to bed past 7 pm. Lately, I've found 6:45 is the sweet spot, but hitting it really depends on how the rest of our day has gone in terms of what time we got up, when we napped, etc.
His naps are really good. He almost always gets those 2 naps in at 2 hours each. If either nap is light, it tends to be the morning one, and it will be closer to 1.5 hours. Even though he's fighting me going down for naps, once he's down he stays down (with a light jolt at the 45 minute mark which he can either put himself back to sleep for, or I just give him a paci and he goes right back to sleep). However, this morning he jolted wide awake and it took me 20 minutes to get him back to sleep. I'm wondering if that means not enough Awake time this morning, so he wasn't tired enough for his nap? We've been doing 2 hours of awake time for the past month, so it may be time to increase?
However this morning, he woke at 7:10 and I didn't start putting him down for his nap until 9:20 (due to poopy diaper) and he still fought me. After 5 minutes of struggling, he finally calmed down. Once he calmed down he went straight to sleep! Do you think just another 5-10 minutes of awake time would do the trick? That would have made it about 2 hours 20 minutes. Is that about right for this age? Complicating factors is that in the morning, he wakes without crying and just plays quietly in his crib (while swaddled - don't ask me how he does that!), so I often don't hear him, so am not sure when he wakes up! Our hardest nap IS the morning one.
Please help! I'm mostly just needing to know what the parameters are on awake time at this age. 2hr20 seems like a lot, but maybe that's what he's ready for! I remember when we hit 3 months, and I didn't think he was ready for 1hr45, and he really surprised me. So maybe I just need to realize my little boy is growing up! He does have 2 teeth now after all!
