If you rock/feed/pram your 6 mo to sleep....

[MidLine]

How long are you leaving between doing so for naps? I'm still working on the 2 hour ish mark (from wake up to next nap) and I think the consensus is 2-2.5 hrs for this age but because dd is soooo random I just feel I can't read her at all at times eg some days she can go 3-4 hrs between naps and be fine then others she's crying from poss over tiredness in less than 2 hours .

Also, because she wakes at different times each morning I can't even get a similar start point to work with so the whole day does feel like I'm juggling her naps/milk feeds/solid feeds/classes etc especially as her nap lengths are anyones guess too!

Anyone else have a similarly random beast and if so, how do you deal with the juggling act?

My beast is very random too. It is difficult isn't it. Mine is 7mo and she has her first nap 90 mins after waking and the rest is anyone's guess. The only thing that is certain is her naps are only half an hour.
I just try not to get hung up on it (I fail at this) and hope that one day it changes. I think if wake up time was consistent I would find it easier. I think lots of people are in the same boat.

My 6 mo DS is the same - gets up anywhere between 6.30 and 8am, sometimes tired 90mins after waking, sometimes 3 hours, only naps for 30-40mins at a time (occasionally up to 1.5hrs but no idea how/why!), sometimes has one nap at 2pmish and is ok til bedtime, other times he'll nap at 5pm and still be ready for bed at 7pm!

It can be frustrating if I think about it but I try and just go with the flow as he's also very random. E.g. If I think he's tired I try to get him to sleep, if he doesn't sleep within 10 mins I don't keep trying and wait a bit longer. If we're due to go out and I think he's tired/due for a nap, I'll put him in the pram/car seat and get myself ready.

All I would say is try to let it go over your head and don't dwell on it, this phase won't last forever and I'm sure at some point in the future we'll be wishing they were 6 mo again lol!

DS is 7mo and I'm struggling with this too! He's currently gurgling in his cot after waking at 6am but showing no signs of wanting to sleep yet! I have given him a feed, shushed and sang to him but, nope, wide awake so I've just left him to it while he's happy. The randomness of it all is quite amazing really!

Have also been wondering lately, for those who have fed to sleep, at what point do you stop doing it and teach them to fall asleep on their own? And how on earth do you do it?!

I fed to sleep for 12 months at bedtime but towards the end it became harder and harder to feed him to sleep, often I couldn't pop him off the boob and get a dummy in without him waking up and I'd have to rock him to sleep and the feed would take ages.
We tried putting the feed at the beginning of the bedtime routine and then having a daddy bedtime but daddy would have to rock him to sleep so that didn't really help (he is getting heavy!)

Our new routine involved me feeding, brushing teeth, read story, kiss and cuddle, put him in cot, lie down on mattress next to cot and soothe him from there. It is working ok-ish but I have no idea what would have happened if we tried it earlier on.

At six months it was fairly random here too and we also had lots of the 30 minute naps but about 8 months things got a lot more routine and he would do longer naps more of the time.

My 5mo DS is like this too...no real pattern to his naps, in the mornings he seems usually has his first nap 90mins-2 hours ater waking, but the after that it's all just madness! In the late morning he usually squeezes in another short nap before his lunch bottle, so he is only really awake for 1h15 after his first nap which makes morning activities a bit of a nightmare

In the afternoons he is generally better and seems able to stay awake for 2 hour quite happily. But if he ends up needing a nap around 5pm (ie cos he woke up from one at 3pm), that's a nightmare, cos he really fights naps at that time of day.

I have been getting really stressed about his naps and have been desperate to get him into a predictable pattern everyday preferably with a nice long 90 min-2 hour sleep over lunchtime, but the HV said this is much more common around the 9 month mark, and that I shouldn't try to force his arm, he'll get there in his own time. So I am trying to chill out about it now nd just go with the flow not easy for a control freak like me

hope that's helpful!