6 months of dreading bedtimes

[HiMyNamesLee]

LO is 5.5 months and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve managed to have some time to myself in the evening. Typically I put him to bed at 8 but this ends up with him waking up 30-60 mins later then refusing to settle until I cosleep with him. Naps are good, I put him in the crib and he put himself to sleep. For bedtime he needs me to cuddle him to bed. Schedule is more or less the below (yes I know the first nap is long but should I be waking him up?)

7am wake

9am first nap

11.30am wake

3pm second nap

4pm wake

7pm bedtime routine

8pm bedtime (barely ever asleep by this point)

Hiya, LO is 4.5 months so slightly younger (20 weeks). What sort of mood is he in when you’re doing bedtime routine? There’s a possibility he is overtired by bedtime which is causing the false starts. 4 hours awake time after his last nap is quite long I think the maximum recommended wake window for a 5 month old is 2.5 hours. Mine just about manages 2 hours after his last nap. He was waking during the sleep regression but I think we’ve passed that now thankfully and he sleeps 7-6.30ish but if bedtime has been later for whatever reason I do find him a lot more unsettled.

Have you tried bringing bedtime forward by an hour? Or start with 15 mins earlier each day and see if that helps at all and there is improvement?
hope you find a solution!

Definitely too much wake time before bed. I'd recommend the evidence based sleep group on Facebook to give quite prescriptive guidance on wake windows throughout the day. Almost always it's due to being too tired at bedtime.

Way overtired! It's called a false start when they wake up after the first sleep cycle when they are overtired. Most 5.5 months still have 3 naps. I probably wouldn't add it back in. But you need to adjust your schedule to about 2.5 hours awake time before bed. So it might be a very early bedtime for awhile until that wake window needs to lengthen.

Or, do a 10 min Power Nap at 5.50ish to get you to an 8pm bedtime if that's what you want

And yes, personally I would wake from the first nap. Every sleep programmes guidance is different but the one I follow is focused on a long middle of the day nap and at 5.5 months has the first nap capped at about 30/45 mins to encourage a long middle of the day nap as that's the one you keep into toddlerhood.

I agree with the power nap! My two are 5mo and we start the day around 6am. They feed every 3hrs roughly. Their wake windows are around 2.5/3hrs. They have their last bottle at 730pm and are down for around 815ish. (Sleep through until the morning) But they have a quick power nap around 5.30-6 otherwise they are overtired/fussy

I was going to say the same about the final wake window being too long! My 12 month old has a 4 hour wake window.

Thanks all but sadly despite reducing the last wake window to 2.5 hours the false starts still
persist. Still dreading bedtimes!