Wakes up screaming after 30-45 mins into 2nd nap

[AGILL]

Sorry, this is going to be a bit long... My LO is a week shy of 6 months and up until a couple of days ago 4 hour EASY had been working like a charm for us. For the past week or so he'd started taking a little longer to go down for his second nap, so the past two days I've tried putting him down 15 minutes later. It hasn't really seemed to make any difference (ie. he's still taking longer than usual to go down), plus he has woken up screaming after 30 or 45 minutes. Both days I've tried in vain to get him to go back to sleep with PU/PD, but he's completely alert and can't resettle himself. I haven't had to use many get-back-to-sleep techniques before, as he's always been such a good sleeper, only going off track once in a blue moon. I'm thinking the problem might be that he's still not tired enough and that I should extend his awake time a bit more, however I need some advice on how to deal with the routine for the remainder of the day. Also, he's not giving me sleep cues anymore, so I'm having trouble knowing if he's tired or not. He used to rub his eyes and/or yawn, but that all vanished into thin air about a month ago. Here's what our routine has been for the past couple of days (BTW, his morning nap doesn't seem to be a problem).

07:00 wake and BF
09:30 nap (1.5 hours)
11:00 BF
13:15 nap (1.75 hours, theoretically -- he used to nap for a full 2 hours from 13:00 to 15:00)
15:00 BF
17:30 catnap (30 minutes, never goes down earlier and never sleeps past 18:00)
19:30 bedtime
23:00 dreamfeed and sleep 'tl morning

If I started putting him down for 13:30, should I just give him 1.5 hours nap and keep the catnap in place? Or should I try to get him to sleep for the full two hours, as he was doing before and then drop the catnap (although 4 hours of A in the late afternoon seems way too much to me).

Thanks for your input,
Alison

[malialeanne]

Hi there. We're dealing with this too. I think you're probably correct that he needs to go down for nap 2 a bit later, especially since he's doing a 2.5 hour A time first thing in the a.m.--many babies have shorter A times first thing, so he's doing fine with 2.5 hours there he will probably be able to handle at least 2.5 hours later in the day.

I would try nap 2 at 13:30. You may have to experiment to find what works best in terms of the catnap. I find 2.5 hour A times pretty tricky, because while you usually can't permanently drop the catnap until A times are around 3 hours, 2.5 hour A times are just long enough to make it a struggle sometimes. You can try a 1.5 hour p.m. nap and try for a catnap from 5 - 5:30 and bed at 7:30. If you find that the catnap is a struggle at this time, it's probably better to drop it rather than push it later since that will likely push bedtime much later too. In that case go for a 2 hour p.m. nap and move bedtime up to 6:30 so he's only up for 3 hours for the last A time. He may surprise you and handle it really well.

HTH!

[AGILL]

Thanks for the advice. I had another thought which could very well tie in with this problem. In the morning, Finlay has a pretty active A time (under the Gymini, rolling over, tummy time, etc.) so he's probably pretty pooped by the time he goes down. Nine times out of ten I actually wake him up for his 11:00 feed. But often during the next activity time I go out with him in his stroller to run errands, and usually get back less than a half hour before he goes back down for his next nap. Maybe sitting in his stroller isn't "physical" enough for him to be tired for this nap?... So I'm going to try extending his second A time and put him down for 1:30 instead of 1:00 and see how we go with that. I'm not sure if he'll accept the catnap if I manage to get him to sleep for the full two hours, but I think it's a better option to drop the catnap instead of shorten his afternoon nap. I'll let you know how we get on over the next couple of days.

BTW, should I be concerned that this tweak in nap times will affect his feeds? If all goes to plan, he'll BF at 3:30 when he wakes, but if I end up feeding him just before bed at 6:30 that will mean he'll only have gone for 3 hours between feeds. I'm worried that he might not be hungry enough to take a full feed at 6:30 and will therefore wake up before it's time for his 11pm DF. Or maybe I shouldn't worry about that unless he actually wakes up early... But if you've got any suggestions, they'd be more than welcome.

Thanks,
Alison

[malialeanne]

Before we started solids I was doing a bf right after the catnap at 5 and another at 7 before bed--my form of cluster feeding. It was fine. Once we stared solids I was doing the 5 p.m. bf, solids at 6, and she was just NOT interested in her bedtime bf, so I am now just doing a solids meal around 5 and a bf at bedtime (4 total milk feeds per day). It goes much more smoothly. We're working on dropping the catnap too, so she's up from about 3 - 6:30. I bf when she wakes from nap 2, do a small solids meal around dinnertime, and bf again to top her off before bed.

A lot of moms begin to wean the df close to 7 months, so it may be that it's not a true "need" at this point and he won't wake early for it. He may have a couple of "off" nights as he gets used to the new schedule, but I doubt it will be too much of a problem.

[AGILL]

So yesterday was smooth sailing all the way, with pushing his second nap to start at 1:30 (2 hours without so much as a peep) and then keeping him up until bedtime at 7:00 (I know you said 6:30, but we just couldn't get it together in time). No problem with the DF or sleeping thru 'til this morning.

Then today we tried the same thing again. This time he woke again after 45 mins into the second nap, but luckily DH was here to put him back to sleep (lately he's had this great knack of getting Fin back down within a couple of mins -- I'm not so skillful myself). But still, he slept for the full two hours. For his next A time, I didn't want to overstimulate him and get him overtired for bedtime. Whenever he's playing he always rolls onto his tummy, but is still struggling with keeping his head up and ends up getting tired pretty quickly. So I decided to take him to the park in his stroller so he could just chill out and watch the world go by. However, just as we were leaving at 6:00 to come home for his bath he fell asleep on me (sitting upright in his stroller -- a first for him). I didn't have the heart to wake him up straight away so I let him doze for 10 minutes, and then he had a hard time waking back up. So I decided to put him to bed at his previous bedtime (7:30) as I wasn't sure he'd go down early since he'd had that little power nap. It seems that it worked okay, as he's now sleeping. Do you find yourself in this predicament at the moment? It's true what you say, that 2.5 hour activity time is a bit difficult to work with... 

[malialeanne]

Glad to hear things are going a bit better. Yes, with 2.5 hours A time I find we're in between needing the catnap and not needing it. Sometimes she'll do what your lo did and take a little power nap, which is fine. When she takes a regular catnap, which for her used to be 30-45 minutes, it gets really hard to put her down for bedtime. So the little power naps are better.

We're moving to 3 hour A times right now and I like it much better!

[AGILL]

This is going a little off subject, so bounce this message over to another board if you'd like, but I figured that since your LO seems to be just one step ahead of mine... We've just started solids (today is day 3), that he takes about 1 hour after his 11:00 BF and he seems to be taking well to them. Fairly often during Fin's A time I end up taking him out in his stroller to run errands (usually at least once a day). He's only used to catnapping in his stroller and generally won't sleep for more than 30 mins when he's in there, as his two "long" naps are more or less always in his cot. Whenever I've taken the chance of having him take a long nap in his stroller, he's always woken up after 30 mins or so. My concern is that when we're up to three "meals" a day, we're not going to have enough time after his solids and his next nap to do errands until we're up to a 3 hour A time (which I think won't be for a little while, since we've just transitioned to 2.5). I suppose my only option is to try going out just as he should be going down for his morning nap (since it's the shorter of the two) and see how long he'll stay asleep?... Are there any "techniques" out there for stretching nap times when LOs are in their strollers?

[malialeanne]

I have never been good at getting a long nap on the go...it's hit or miss. Some people find that their lo will wake at 30 minutes if the motion has stopped (car or stroller) but will go back to sleep if the motion starts again. Mine won't. But you're right that if you need a daytime nap on the go it should be the a.m. nap, hopefully if it ends up being shorter he can make up for it with a longer p.m. nap at home.

We're just starting to get to solids 3x a day, but for midday it's just some fruit in her mesh self-feeder thingie. If necessary she can have that while in the stroller or carseat b/c she feeds herself. Banana isn't too bad (it's also her favorite) or too messy. I don't do it often but it's an option if we have to be on the go.

[AGILL]

Thanks for all your help. I might see if I can't get my hands on one of those mesh feeders.