6 month old shortening the morning nap

[becky1969]

My LO is almost 25 weeks old. He's been taking two 2 hour naps and a 30 minute cat nap since he was 5 months old, and before that the only difference was that the cat nap was 45 minutes long.

The last 2 weeks he's been shortening his morning nap on his own - little by little it got shortened to about 1h45. Well, suddenly the last 2 days it was only 1.5 hours! He's waking up happy, chatting to himself which is usually my signal that the nap is done (when he wakes up crying, I try to extend the nap - usually with much success). So, I've just gotten him up without trying to extend.

There doesn't seem to be any ill effects from this shorter nap, and he's been keeping his PM nap at 2 hours. Yesterday I cut out the catnap altogehter and put him to bed at 6. He had some rough times until 7:20 (I think because of pain - he's teething 2 teeth at the same time right now!), but after that slept thru the night until 7:30 am, at which point I woke him.

I'm just wondering, does this seem about right for this age? Does eliminating the catnap and going to bed at 6 seem right? Or should I keep the catnap in and the 7/7:30 bedtime? It's hard to know what to do right now because he IS teething, and so bedtime has been a mess. He goes down just fine, but wakes 20 minutes later SCREAMING with pain in his sleep (he keeps his eyes closed, and if I hold him thru his jolts will stay asleep). Last night was the first night in quite a while he didn't have any night wakings!

[becky1969]

OK, thanks! His A time has been difficult to figure out because he WAS up to 2h15 minutes when he turned 5 months old (but he was 23 weeks at the time), but then the very next week he had what we think was the 6 month growth spurt because he suddenly needed LOTS of sleep. He could BARELY do 2 h awake time and was sleeping more than 2h for naps, and needed to go to bed an hour early! Then after the growth spurt ended, he started teething. I can't tell, but it seems like he's also needing more sleep due to the teething?

I'm wathching his sleep cues, and they are coming right around 2h, so he ends up going to sleep at about 2h10, 2h15. Do you think I should try stretching this more? I mean, it's been more than a month since he started doing 2h15 at first and we have barely gotten back to that level again! I remember at 3 months I THOUGHT I was seeing sleepy cues at 1h15, and it turns out he needed to be up for 1h45! But in that situation I started getting 45 minute naps.

Tonight I skipped the catnap, which meant he was up for 2h45 before bed. Does that seem reasonable at this age? He did REALLY well! In fact, this was the best bedtime we've had in ages. He was smiley the whole time, he fell asleep on the bottle but I woke him up while swaddling. I did my usuall singing/rocking routine and actually put him to bed AWAKE where he put himself to sleep. I haven't been able to do that in awhile because he's been having so much trouble sleeping due to pain from teething/reflux.  Do you think 6 pm is too early for bedtime?

[becky1969]

Ok. Gotcha. We did the same last night - bed at 6, and he woke on his own at 7:15. But I see what you mean about long term it not working. The only thing is, last night bedtime was heavenly for the first time in a LONG time. He was happy, not crabby. Lately he's been so fussy after the bath and just really fighting the bedtime. Last night he actually fell asleep on the bottle. I woke him while swaddling him and was able to put him in his crib awake, where he fell asleep.

But I do see what you mean -- I was kind of hoping by gradually increasing awake time I could move that bedtime up to 6:30/6:45 and then a wakeup of like 6:30/6:45. I wouldn't mind that at all. That would just mean adding 30-45 minutes of awake time over 3 periods, which doesn't seem too hard to do, right? This morning he did 2h20 awake time, whereas yesterday morning he only had 2h. Do you think this plan would be workable too? I just get this feeling that the happy baby I'm seeing at bedtime right now may be a signal that the catnap needs to go. Oh, and he had 2h45 awake time before bed last night.

Thank you for all your help! The last 2 weeks have been bedtime nightmares, and I'm just so relieved to have had TWO normal nights! I'm not sure if the problems have been due to pain or routine issues, so it's been hard to know what to do!

[becky1969]

Ok. Thanks! I'll see what I can tweak this week. I know when he turned 12 weeks old, he was ready for 30 minutes more awake time, and I hadn't even realized it. I actually added it almost all at once and he was fine and the he stopped the 45 minute napping almost immediately. I'm going to gradually increase A time this week, and see how he does. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to catnapping!

Morning nap today was 1hr25. So that gives me lots of room to work with the afternoon nap.