Lets get up with the birds mummy!!!

[lizzywig]

DD will be 19wo this week and although we?ve had various sleep problems, some worse than others, on the whole she?s been a good sleeper and I consider myself to be very lucky. Usually the problems sort themselves out but this time I can sense some bad habits starting. We put her into a bedtime routine (starting at 7pm) at 6wo and she learnt to self settle around this time too. She would sleep for about five or six hours at night time when she would wake to be fed and then go back to sleep usually sleeping until morning. Then at about 11wo she started sleeping through the night. As she was awake from 7 ? 7 and she was taking long naps during the day, usually two 2.5hr naps a day she has never needed a third nap. I think she?s only ever had a third nap a handful of times in her life, so she?s simply not used to them.

About two months ago she changed her bedtime of her own accord to 6pm. She just couldn?t seem to stay awake any longer, she was screaming the house down and in quite a state night after night, so we put her to bed at about 6pm. I spent a couple of weeks trying to get her to go to bed later, I would try doing everything later by five minutes (as the experts advise) the idea being that eventually we?d be doing everything at the right time, however my efforts would be to no avail as the following day everything would be back to the normal time. I kept persisting but this method did not work.

A little over a month ago she started waking up every three hours in the night, for a while I presumed she was hungry but then I just tried tucking her in instead and she would go back to sleep. So I bought her a baby sleeping bag and now she is sleeping through the night again. However she then (having not woken during the night) started waking up earlier in the mornings, say 5:30am. I spent a week of feeding her and popping her back down only for her to play in her crib and not go back to sleep and then getting her up anyway. So I started just getting her up and dressed and then putting her down for a nap around two hours later when she obviously needed it. When you think about it she?d slept for almost 12 hours anyway and probably didn?t need any more sleep! This worked for a while but then about two weeks ago she suddenly cut this morning nap from 2 hours to 40 mins. This meant that everything was bought forward quite significantly.

So now she is waking up at around 5:30am, napping at about 7:30am for only 40 mins and then taking her second nap at about 10:30am and sleeping until about midday. As she is not used to a third nap, having never needed one before, she simply won?t take it. I have tried everything I can think of (even taking her out in the buggy) but nothing works. So for the entire afternoon I am trying to keep her happy so that she will last until bedtime. Even 6pm is a struggle now, the other day it was 5:30pm because she was so upset. Yesterday was a little better and she let us put her to bed at 6:15pm (latest for what seems like forever) but then she woke up today at 4:40am and wouldn?t go back to sleep.

I am at a total loss. I know that we need to put her to bed later and the obvious way for her to do this would be for her to take a third nap but when she refuses it I am at a loss. Am I missing a trick here?

Hi there this sounds very much like what we have been going throught recently with our son, 16 weeks. Although he's never slept through, he was going to bed, waking up for feeds, and we could then get him down again til seven, we were doing seven/seven too. But then he just decided that this wasnt happening anymore and was ALL OVER HE SHOW for weeks, could not stick to a regular bedtime, sometimes he fell asleep at 4.30, i would think it was a nap, he'd be like, nope, this is bedtime, and if i tried to wake him up he would just cry! But then would wake up crazy early! Naps were just a mare, no routine at all so feeding routine was hard to establish and keep too as well. I felt and still feel that i was just guessing what was wrong and what to do all the time.

Its not much better to be honest, we are moslty up and down throughout the night numerous times, we can get him to bed between 7 and 8 now and can generally eek him out til 6am. I think its been down to various things, like start of teething, growth spurt, developmental changes...and ive just had to accept that when he's ready he will be more settled, we are doing everything right in terms of encouraging good sleep habits (i thinh!!) and hopefully sooner or later he will start towing the line a bit more!! Im just so tired most of the time though which is hard to deal with!! Sorry not much advice there if any, just wanted you to know thats its normal and happening to other poor sods as well!!! Xx

My dd went through this at 5or 6 months too....the only way we could crack it was by absolutely not letting her nap until 9am regardless of what time she woke up. By letting her nap earlier we were feeding into the cycle of early waking. We also had to limit this morning nap to 45mins as too long a nap what also mean early waking. Once in this kind of timing then bedtim should start going back to 7ish. Hth

completely agree with mewkins that an early nap (and especially an early and long nap) encourages a vicious cycle of early waking to continue that is very hard to get out of. But it can be done, honest!

I think what you have experienced i.e. morning nap shortening from 2hrs to 40mins was a sign your DD was ready to stay awake for longer before her morning nap. At between 5-6 months old, the amount of time a baby can stay awake from starts to increase from 2 to around 2.5hrs, and then at 6-7 months it will likely increase to around 3hrs. When a baby isn't tired enough, its pretty typical for naps to shorten to around 40-45mins. But of course this can throw your day off, like you have described.

I think what you will need to do to get things back on track is very gradually start to shift that morning nap later, by 5mins every 3 days, until the morning nap starts no earlier than 9am, but I think you may find as she nears 6/7 months it needs to start no earlier than 9.30am if you want her to wake up at 7am. At the same time, as you push the morning nap later, her second nap will go later in the day. You might need to extend the amount of time awake before this nap nearer to 2.5hrs too (assuming she's napped more than 40mins at the AM nap).

We also limited our DS's morning nap to around 45mins, but TBH we didn't do this until he was a little older, more like 9 months. I think at 19 weeks she's still quite young so I'd be inclined to let her nap til she's done, but if she continues to wake early even when you have pushed the nap to a 9/9.30am start then its something to consider.

HTH.x

A big thank you fabby mums of mumsnet. If this works I will be worshiping the ground you walk on!!

What you have said makes an awful lot of sense. Yesterday for example she was due a nap and I tried but she resisted and so gave it an hour and then she was more than ready but even though she'd been up for an extra hour she still only slept for 40 mins. However in the afternoon she had a nap of 2 hours which is the longest she'd had for ages. She then didn't wake up until 4:30pm which meant that she lasted until 7pm!! I went to bed with her at 7:30pm last night and she slept through until 6am, it was amazing!!

I managed to keep her up until 8:35am today but have only just read your messages and so I will try to keep her up until 9am tomorrow. Wish me luck! I'm hoping that I can keep her going for as long as posisble today to have a later bedtime again, if I can then hopefully wake at a more reasonable time tomorrow and then the 9am target won't be so hard.

I can see that it makes a lot of sense though. So the theory is that by keeping her awake to 9am repeatedly then everything will start slightly later and bedtime will be later (well 7pm hopefully) and the she'll sleep longer in the mornings because she will get used to nap time being later on?

Her morning nap did used to start at 9:30am (or there abouts) but when she started waking so early at 5am that went to pot. My trouble is that she will one minute be fine and the next minute just go mental because she's so tired but it's not nap time. I think I'm going to have to be creative at keeping her occupied.

Thank you again, it's good to know that there are other crazy special babies out there!

That.sounds like things are going well! yes, the idea is to get the bulk of sleep at night so the naps are then just add ons. What I found useful in keeping dd awake but not too hyper was.to do some gentler activities before naptime, like reading quietly or just wandering around the garden with her etc. I always remember when she got a bit older though and dh was pushing her around the garden on a trike and I could see her head nodding -it was obviously too relaxing an activity for her!

Lol bless her that's very cute! Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a go. Previously I was giving her bouncy chair time, playmat time and finishing off with sitting on mummys lap time so maybe I will encorporate some relaxing things rather than being too excitable.

Previously I had been putting her down for naps when she seemed tired but thinking about it, naps did often be a struggle and I wonder if although she was tired she hadn't been doing enough to burn away all of her crazy energy. Subsequently when it came to her last nap she was up by 1pm and would not nap again no matter what I did and so it was such a battle to keep her up until 6pm.

Yesterday was better, after I read your comments I tried to keep her going as long as possible throughout the day, rather than just at the end of the day. It worked much better. She took her first nap at 8:35 for 40 mins, then another nap at 12:10 for 40 mins, then she took ANOTHER (the elusive 3rd nap) at 3pm and slept for an hour. She then lasted until 7pm...hurrah. AND she woke up this morning at 6:30am but only because DH forgot to turn his alarm off. I managed to keep her up until 8:55am today and now she's napping, she's been asleep for almost an hour and I'm starting to panic because we've got to go out in 45 mins lol.

I don't know why none of this occured to me before, it really is the most logical thing. So thank you wonderful mummies of mumsnet. Am I getting a bit ahead of myself here?!!

DH informed me clocks go forward next week....ho hum.

clocks going forward is a good thing hun .... it means if she was waking at 6am, then this will be 7am new time, so you can immediately get her napping at 9.30 without having to stretch her!xx

excellent! and yes that should help out a bit more once the clocks go forward. Not sure if that topic has been started yet!x