Trouble at bedtime...

[porpentine]

I've posted here before and had really good advice, so I'm hoping someone might be able to help me again.

DS (8mo) has just started sleeping through (!). He usually wakes between 5-6, which I'm hoping to fix at some point but for now am just so relieved to be getting 6-7 hours consecutive sleep I can live with it. His day is usually like this:

5-6: wake
9-9.45: nap (I wake him up from this)
1-2.30: nap (but I'm trying to shift this a bit later to make the nap a bit longer - today 1.20-3.
bed 6.30ish.

He usually goes to sleep no trouble , often pretty much immediately as he's knackered by bedtime, but for the last few days there's been a lot of shouting. He's obviously tired, heavy eyes which he keeps rubbing etc., nodding off over his bottle, but then seems to wake up after a couple of minutes in his cot and wants to play - starts shouting if I leave the room. I was wondering if bathtime was too stimulating, but really nothing's changed in his routine so I don't know why it would suddenly be a problem. Has anyone got any ideas?

Hey there. In my experience most of the time it's not their routine changing, it's just them changing. Just when you get into the swing of a routine and everything seems to be working well they go and change it all . We always just end up trying different things - e.g. Bedtime later or earlier, moving nap times/length, changing bedtime routine, night light or not in room, lullaby music or not - and so it goes on! We seem to get there eventually and he settles back into a routine for a while, until the next developmental burst comes along to change it all again (DS is just about to turn 3) . Its all just to keep you on your toes! Good luck!

Hi Porpentine - my dd is just over 8mo and like yours has just started sleeping through (sometimes) but waking early like your LO and she doesn't take great naps either.

I was trying to push naps later too, to try and make them longer and also in the hope to get to bed time, (between 6.30 and 7pm) without getting overtired. It seemed to work ok for a few days but then all went wrong again! I think, by keeping her up and keeping her going from waking up til nap1 then from nap 1 to nap 2, she'd actually get more overtired than before. After first few days it didn't actually make naps longer, rather shorter.

I'm finding (at the moment at least) that putting her down when she first seems tired (rather than keeping her going) seems to work better. Altho as above post says, just when you thinbk something works, the LOs change or they get a tooth or start to poo (tmi) at odd times early morning!! and it all goes out the window again!

Not much help probably but I know how you feel!

Hiya

I'd say you have a few things contributing here.

1. the morning nap is starting a wee bit too early at 9am. This will be part of the reason he is waking early. Also because the nap is early, you are having to stretch him to a later afternoon nap in order for him to make it through to a semi decent BT.
2. the gap between nap 1 & nap 2 is too big now, yes it gave him a longer nap BUT left him with a shorter time awake between nap & bedtime. He'll be tired from the early waking/long day, possibly overtired from being pushed too hard before that afternoon nap but on the other hand possibly not quite tired enough to settle given the nap was later.
3. really, with a 6.30pm BT, a 5-6am WU time is pretty reasonable & technically not an EW, though no-one wants to be up that early. r

IMO you need to work on shifting his entire routine slightly later. The way to do this is to very gradually push the morning nap later by 5mins every 3 days until it starts at 9.15am at the earliest (still cap at 45mins), but you may need to push this nap to a 9.30am start. For now, I would leave the afternoon nap at a 1pm start, and just see what happens. You might find that by shortening the gap between the morning & afternoon nap, he might actually sleep for longer at the afternoon nap. If he does then you may be able to push BT back out to 7pm. If the afternoon nap stays at 1.5hrs or less, or he starts to fight going down at 1pm, then I would trim the morning nap back 5mins at a time. You might even find you need to bring the afternoon nap slightly earlier for a while, esp if morning nap gets to just 30mins. You may want to eventually aim for something like this:

Up: 6.30-7am
Nap: 9.30-10
Nap: 12.30-2.30
BT: 6.30-7pm (depending on length of afternoon nap)

I think you'll find the thing that makes the biggest difference to his night sleep is pushing the morning nap later. That is key to eliminating the early waking & will help prevent him getting overtired through the day.

HTH.x

Hi Omama, im not stalking you (honest). It's just I've been reading your posts with interest and really wonder whether you would be able to give me some advice. You seem to know your stuff - more than me anyway.

My lo is 8.5mo. She's never been a good sleeper but has got much better due to learning to self settle really. Problem is we just can't seem to get a routine cos everyday is different. She wakes at different times, is tired at different times, naps for different lengths of time. I've posted on here lots recently (you may have seen) as I'm literally diriving myself nuts trying to get something that works every (or at least most days).

We have different problems and issues each day, from EW, short naps (sometimes only 2 40mins a day), waking at 6.30am one day, repeating exact same rouitne next day only to wake at 5am!!!

This is the schedule I'm trying to keep to as it worked some days:

6.30ish - wake
Nap - 9.45am - 11.00am
Nap - 1.40pm - 3.00pm
(these nap times are based on when she falls asleep. She always takes 10-15mins form when I put her down)
Bed 6.45pm (so she is asleep by 7pm)

NB I have tried cutting nap 1 to 45mins only but rather than make 2nd nap longer it has opposite effect and she will only sleep 40mins for nap2 aswell!

However, this is what happened to day:

5am
She chatted to herself. I checked her and let her know it was still 'sleepy' time. She re settled at about 5.45 and slept til 7.30am
10.00am - 11.15am - nap
1.55pm - 3.25pm - nap
6.45pm - in bed (asleep by 6.55pm)
I put her in bed when she started to look sleepy. Put her in bed awake.

She has now been really unsettled all evening. Not crying but I can hear her awake at times and she is being really restless. This is as opposed to yesterday where she would only take 2 40 min naps and stayed asleep peacefully (albeit she woke at 5am but did re settle at 5.45am).

I just don't see where I'm going wrong or what else I can do.

Do you have an advice at all??

hi madallie

I started typing a reply to you on that other thread but I'll put it here instead, though the nap routine you've posted here is a wee bit different?

First of all please don't think you are doing anything wrong! My DS used to be exactly the same, every single day was different & it was incredibly hard to get a routine down so I know where you are coming from. But with hindsight I know that no matter what you do there will always be slight variation (because of activities, because they are more tired some days than others etc). I also learned that my worst enemy was myself - I'd try something for a couple of days, got a different result each day so decided it wasn't working & would try something else. Meanwhile poor DS's bodyclock must've been so confused, there's no wonder we didn't settle on a routine. What I finally learned is that whatever I did, I needed to do it for several weeks consistently, before judging whether it was working or not. I needed to give my DS time to adjust to it, & thats exactly what I wasn't doing.

So my first advice is to be consistent. If you want to establish a routine one way to get it going is to wake her at the same time each day eg 7am, so you are always starting from the same point. It can be tempting to let them sleep, but if they wake at 6am one day & 7.30am the next, they will need to nap at totally different times. Once routine is established, you can start to be more flexible with it, but short term, it really does help things to fall into place.

I would then stick with the same naptime each & every day, give or take 15mins if she is extra sleepy. This way you are giving her a consistent routine & this will allow her bodyclock to get used to it.

Some things I do want to ask are:

Is your DD happy & content during the day??? Does she settle well at bedtime? Generally STTN with no night wakings? Are her naps typically 1h 15-1.5hrs or more often than not 40mins?

As really & honestly, the napping routine you are aiming for looks ok to me. If she having between 2-3hrs of daytime sleep most days & going to sleep at 7pm wakening between 6-6.30am that really is pretty good going. I really don't think you need to change anything, unless her naps are consistently just 40mins or she starts consistently waking before 6am.

If she does start waking earlier more regularly, you could try cutting her morning nap a touch shorter, by 5mins every 3 days until the EW stops. I see you already tried a 45min nap but it led to a short 2nd nap too. When you cut the first nap shorter, you will need to bring the 2nd nap earlier to compensate. As if she normally naps 1h 15mins & stays awake 3hrs before needing another nap, if you suddenly wake her after 45mins she probably won't manage staying awake 3hrs as usual, she might need to nap again after 2.5hrs, make sense?

HTH.x

Thanks omama, I was hoping you would reply - your advice on here always looks so helpful! I agree, everything does need to shift a bit later but he's just always been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of baby so I'm never very confident that I can change it. How long should I stick at 915/1 to see if it's made a difference or not do you think?

Thanks so much Omama.

In answer to your questions - she is mostly happy and content, altho can get tired very quickly, she generally settles to bed well (asleep within 5-15mins), she sometimes wakes in the night or quite restless at night, altho self settles and really her naps are a split between 40mins, 1hr 15 and 1hr 30.

Think I'm definitley guilty of changing things too soon. Will try to be more consisent (usually keep for up to a week but will try longer).

Altho now I've got myself in a rut with her walking before 6am. Yesterday 5am today 5.45am. Because dd is happy to play in her cot I left her chatting to herself and both times she went back to sleep after about an hour.

So yesterday she slept again from 5.45am - 7.30am, the today from 6.45-7.30am (I woke her today)

Now I know that won't be her natural wake time when she just sleeps all the way through but I knew she would be too tired to reach a reasonable am nap time (so let her sleep).

Do you think I should have just woken her at 7am both days (would have been only 10-15mins after she went back to sleep this morning)?

I'm just baffled cos last week she managed to sleep 6.45pm til 6.20 or 6.40am 3 times. She stayed up later one night (only til 7.30pm) everything was fine for a few more days then it started going wrong again!

Do you think I should always get her at say 7am not matter what?

IYO do you think I should just stick to the routine I posted and even if it does not work exactly, try for those nap times/bedtime consistently for 2weeks to see if it eventually works?

Thanks so much for your help.

Also meant to add to that last post - would you still keep nap times the same time even if lo wakes at different times.

E.g. I'm never sure whether I should go by how much awake time she's had os just more or less keep to exact nap times each day?