The last 3 nights my 23 week old LO is suddenly not going to sleep like he used to. Since 12 weeks old, bed time has been sometime between 6:45 and 7:15. He's had no problem going to sleep then, and sleeps marvelously from then until the dream feed, always.
For some reason the last 3 days, I can get him to sleep initially but he's waking up 5 minutes (Sat), 15 minutes (Sun) or 30 minutes (Mon) later. The first night we thought it was bad gas. He's also been teething (though seems to be mostly done - tooth 1 is all the way in, as of 2 weeks ago, and tooth 2 is partially in), so we thought he had pain. But it wasn't totally like normal gas pain signs. He would quiet down when we'd bring him into a lighted room, and meltdown in his room. Day 2 of sleep problems I recognized his signals as overtiredness, and lastnight it was SUPER clear to me that it was the problem. Each night he sleeps a little longer before waking, and each night I can get him to sleep a little easier (Sat 11 pm, Sun 9:30 pm, Mon 8:30 pm) but it's still really weird.
So, I'm wondering if it's a scheduling problem. I've been cutting back on his daytime naps from two 2 hour naps and a 30 minute cat nap to approximately 3.5 hours of naps split between the two naps and a 30 minute cat nap based on teh advice form another board. We were having some wake-up problems at 4 am, and he was getting up for the day around 6:30. He is now sleeping to 7 or beyond, but this nighttime problem is making me crazy!
I'm wondering if the time between when he wakes up from catnap is too long or too short. In the past, I couldn't get him to go down before 1.5 hours of being up after waking from cat nap. But now he's showing sleepy signs before we even finish the bath, so I'm wondering if shortening the naps is making him too tired after catnap?
Please help! Just some ideas of how long your LO is up after the catnap and before bed at 5-6 months old would help immensely! I'd like to know before bedtime tonight as I can't go through another night of this!!