Very short A times - 3 month old

[Paddys mum]

My DS gets very tired very quickly and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. His A times generally last only half an hour before he starts getting tired. I've tried extending them, but even if it's only 10 minutes past the start of his "tired talking" he becomes overtired - which leads to lots of problems getting to sleep and catnapping throughout the rest of the day. I've tried keeping the activities fairly low-key - they involve some tummy time (which he now doesn't mind and I turn him over as soon as he starts fussing), a bit of a chat, playing with a favourite toy, and/or just looking around the room. Because he ends up so overtired by the end of the day, his night times can be erratic which means we don't always have a consistent start time to the day, but a general day would look something like this:

6am wake, feed, very low-key activity
620 starts getting tired, put into bed
630 goes to sleep after 5-10 minutes of self-settling (2.5 hours sleep)
9am wake, feed, activity
930 starts getting tired, bed
10am goes to sleep after 20-30 mins of self-settling (1.5-2 hrs sleep)
12pm wake, feed, activity
1230 (sometimes he can make it for 40 minutes at this one) tired, bed
1-130pm much harder to get to sleep, often needs help to settle (1.5 hrs sleep; if overtired by now then 45 mins)
3pm wake, feed, activity
330 tired, bed, needs a lot of help to settle
4pm sleep (45 mins - 1hr sleep)
5pm wake - put into rocking chair which he finds very soothing
530 massage, feed
Aim for sleep at 6pm but it usually takes up to 2 hours to get him to sleep at night. I've taken the bath out of his night-time routine and shortened the massage to only a few gentle strokes to try and minimise stimulation. But he still gets over tired. Depending on when he gets to sleep and how overtired he is, he wakes up once or twice through the night (unless it's a bad one like last night when he woke up 4 times).

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, but... I can't go out anymore for fear that I'll miss his window which throws out the rest of the day, that night and usually the next day too. Any ideas on how I can manage this? The only other thing which I thought may be complicating matters is that he's a big boy. He's off the charts for his weight and in the 97th percentile for length (both DH and I are tall too). I haven't come across any reading about this, but I wondered if perhaps he was tired from doing all that growing? Is it possible that he could be in a perpetual growth spurt? Or is there something in the routine that I've missed? I'd love to hear any ideas that would help us be able to get out of the house!

[melimelo]

My four month old is almost exactly like yours, except with shorter naps (usually about 1 hour each) less trouble with being out and about since he'll nap fairly well in his car seat and and he's generally down for the night by 6:00 or 6:30.

I've also been trying to push the activity time a bit but like you say, it's tough because if it goes too far he gets overtired and then the naps are harder and the day goes off the rail. But he does seem to be developing a longer wakeful period in the afternoon, so I'm hoping that's a sign that he's starting to consolidate his daytime waking/sleeping and it will all sort itself out.

[Erin M]

With both my dds, it really comes down to pick and choose - I've gone with messing up the nap less likely to throw off the rest of their day and gone out during that one.  If they sleep, fine, otherwise we just make up for it later.  He has some really long naps in there -- some babies honestly just need more sleep though and some don't.  Eventually he will consolidate more -- I know that's not much help right now, but he will get to the point where he'll be down to two big naps a day and that helps immensely.  If he'll fall asleep anywhere other than his crib, that's the thing to do later in the afternoon - my dd2 will never catnap, but even when she would we would have to be out and she'd be in the stroller or baby carrier.  If nothing else it would leave her less overtired and better able to fall asleep at night.