Six month old nap routine????

[Lilloulou]

Hi, my LO is just over six months old. She doesn’t self settle & I’ve been trying on & off to get her to for the past two months. I decided I had to be consistent so put aside two weeks with absolutely no plans to try get her in to some kind of routine & to settle herself. I’m now in the middle of the second week and don’t really feel like I’ve got very far.

Plan was to follow EASY routine, Eat Activity Sleep & You time!! Mornings we get up around 7 & I look for signs of tiredness and put her down at 9am. I had two days where she kind of settled for this nap, a lot of picking up putting down etc. However now she refuses and i keep trying and then give her a cuddle and a bit of a rock and she now has an hour & a half nap. I’m so pleased with this as before she would only sleep in the car.
I’ve been told she should be up for 2 hours then another nap so for us this would be 12.30. I just cannot get her to nap at this time, even with rocking.
I’m lucky if I get to put her down for another nap as I think she’s overtired, she tends to fall asleep on bottle at around 4-5 which is too late really.

I suppose I have 2 questions

1. what is your daily schedule?
2. can you put your little one down for a second nap.
3. if your baby has the recommended 3 naps then when do you get out? I feel that if my LO did nap at 12.30 I’d only have hour gaps to get out of the house by the time I’ve fed and changed her. Doesn’t feel very practical?

It really stresses me recently so wondering wether to give up and just accept that she will only nap in the morning.

Thanks ladies

My advise for what it’s worth- ignore the prescribed advice... babies need 3 naps, easy routine and the two hours awake business.

Allow yourself to be led by your baby’s cues a little more.

My baby was only ever on two naps, he just wouldn’t do the prescribed three, he would never follow the up for two hours then sleep business. From what you say perhaps you are putting them down a bit early. Why don’t you try two naps and awake for three hours each time or something along those lines.

How about something like first nap 10 up at 11.30, next nap 2.30 up at 3.30 -4 and then bed.

At six months we struggled fitting two naps in sometimes so bed time was still fairly late as he’d sometimes be put down at 5pm 🤣

He’s 10 months now and it seems he’s getting ready to move to one nap, he’s napping less and it’s harder for him to go to sleep.

So I’m thinking soon I will stretch his first nap until later and he will perhaps nap for one two hot slot than two one hour slots and his bedtime will be a bit earlier.

I’m going off his cues though and if it doesn’t work, we will go back to two

Oh and at six months he wasn’t fully self settling so milk would always be right before nap. At ten months I’ve changed it and he now has milk when he wakes.

We're very lucky our 6 month old will self settle. I don't follow any set routine though I found when I was trying to force two hours of awake and then sleep if she wasn't tired she just wouldn't go.

Now she wakes from 7to 8am usually naps sometime from 10/11 sometimes this is half an hour but it can be up to two hours. Then around 12 to 2pm she goes down as soon as I see she's tired and it's usually another two hours.
Lately though she's been having an hour then waking for an hour then another one.
But if I've got stuff planned I'll just go out and put her down when I get back. She goes to bed at 6 half but if she naps late I'll extend it.
We had a nightmare until we switched to just baby led.

I might point out before it seems too good to be true with the self settling she wakes every hour at night and has to be fed to sleep 😴