Catnappers and 'bad sleepers' support thread

[AwesomeSuperTasty]

This is inspired by this napping thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/2123505-Any-advice-for-daytime-naps A user commented that they wanted to start a catnapping thread, but seeing as no one did, I thought I might start a 'support group' for all parents of catnapping babies and generally poor sleepers. (I hope the user who prompted this thought will come forward to claim the credit!)

Anyway, it's really just a place to vent and maybe share experiences.

So, I will start. My 7 month old son still catnaps 30 mins at a time, something he allegedly should have grown out of. He also wakes every 90 minutes at night, and wakes up at 5.30 in the mornings. He self settles to sleep and has an early bed time but can't resettle at night. Basically, since he was born, I've not slept longer than 2 hours at a stretch. I'm sure I'm pretty exhausted but stopped registering it.

I do have some questions for anyone who'd like to share.

• If you have an older catnapping baby, how long does she/he go between naps?

-Has anyone managed to sucessfully implement some kind of a napping schedule, for babies who sleep only 30 mins?

And please don't tell me to get a sling...or co-sleep

Yes my DD does this too and I can even time when this happens. It's always 45 mins in to a nap. Therefore I think it's when she's transitioning to the second sleep cycle.

Utterly, utterly fed up. Fed up of not being able to go out or do anything even slightly out of the norm in case it should disrupt her naps ('going with the flow' does not work, I've tried). Fed up of having to rock her to sleep every sodding time (buggy naps just don't happen any more, sleep training doesn't work for either of us). Fed up of her constant whinging because she's tired. Fed up of feeling like a prisoner.

Just been trying to get her to sleep and had to put her down in her cot and leave the room because I was in floods. DH up there now trying to get her to sleep. I appreciate the gesture but it's just going to make things worse. What happens tomorrow when he goes back to work? And the next day, and the next? I just can't go on like this, it's killing me. Yes, she has good nights (mostly) but the days are horrendous. She can't drop a nap or anything like that because she's already exhausted as it is. This is the fourth day we've had like this, of refusing to go down despite being shattered. I can cope with the 45mins nonsense but not this.

It's supposed to get better. It's getting worse. I can hear her moaning for me over the monitor and for the first time in her tiny little life I don't want to go up and help. I just can't do it.

Well I don't want to speak too soon but dropping a nap has so far been hugely successful - yesterday he slept an hour in the morning and two full hours in the afternoon (his longest ever nap, EVER) and went to bed at 7:15, slept til 7 this morning with just a quick feed at 4am.

Slept 1.5 hours this morning and has just gone down again. If he can do another 1.5 hours I'll be ecstatic!

@coodlemoodle- how old is your LO? Mines been extremely unsettled too for the past 3 days and not even settling to sleep t 7 despite being exhausted. I think it's to do with teething. Could yours be a similar reason?

@mrsmugoo- how old is your LO? I know you've prob mentioned it before but I've forgotten (baby brain). Also wen dropping a nap was he whinging at all in the late afternoon or was happy to stay awake?

He's 6 months.

I was finding that he was sleeping around 1pm-1:40pm and then not really being tired again until gone 4:30 by which time if he slept til gone 5pm then bedtime wasn't til 8pm and I prefer him to go earlier.

So now we're shooting for naps at around 9:30/10 and 2ish. If like yesterday he can manage to pull decent length sleeps at both then this just about gets us through the day but with an early bedtime.

Yes he is a bit whingy when dropping a nap - you have to deploy all your best distraction techniques!

@mrsmugoo- my DD is 4 months and se sounds similar in te sense she has 2 separate naps between 12-2pm and then is not tired until 4.30/4.45pm which means if she was to sleep then he would not settle for a 7pm bedtime. I've tried cutting out the nap but then she's overtired and hyterical just before bedtime and falls asleep without her finishing all her bottle. Kind of in a hard middle place at the moment.

I think 4 months would be quite young to drop to 2 naps - mine at 4 months could only manage 2 hours awake time. Now he can go 3 hours, slightly longer between last nap and bedtime.

I think if you aim for something like 2.5-3 hours of sleep over the day split between however many naps then that is about right.

She's 6 months as well, on the 11th. No evidence of teeth yet except for fingers in her mouth but she does that to keep herself awake!

Woke up at 5:45, napped from 7 until just before 8 and is currently nearly 90mins asleep! Really not sure what this means for the rest of the day though. She needs at least one more good sleep or she won't make it to bedtime.

Sometimes I feel like I'm buggered if she sleeps and just as buggered if she doesn't!

Well, she woke up at 12 (1.5hrs!) and now I'm deploying everything to keep her awake until 3ish! Then the same until a slightly earlier bedtime. Just hoping the extra long nap won't make her awful tonight - it did last time!

Mines just gone down for 2nd nap - hope he sleeps until at least 3pm or this evening will be interesting/horrific

Kept her going until she conked out at 3pm (on the dot) and she's just woken up crying after 40mins. Arrrggghhhh

He slept until just before 3 but still couldn't quite make it through to a 7pm bedtime so he had a 20 minute snooze on me after his feed at 6 and has still gone down by 8 bless him!

Hi catnappers - so we are kind of reliably doing approximately one hour naps most times now - sometimes up to an hour 15.

We have fallen into a kind of routine where he gets up about 6:30 (ugh) and naps at 9:30-10:30 then naps 1:30-2:30 (maybe a bit later) so 3 hour wake times.

He can't quite make it to even a 7pm bedtime on this so we've been doing a 20 minute feed to sleep in my arms just to help him get through, but this means an 8pm bedtime so really he's losing about 40 minutes net of sleep overall (because he doesn't get up any later when he goes to bed later) so ideally I would prefer him to make it to early bedtime rather than need this catnap but at the moment he just can't make it - he's madly rubbing his eyes and won't take a proper feed because he's too sleepy.

I do feel this is real progress though and totally understand that even though the last 6 months have been SO frustrating with his short naps, I know that longer naps are really a developmental milestone that only come with time - it was literally exactly 6 months that he started to nap a wee bit longer.

that's great mrsmugoo, sounds like you're making real progress.
we're still on 3 naps a day and mostly catnaps but the frequency of longer naps is definitely increasing.
ds slept 7.30 til 7 last night so mega chuffed with that

That sounds like progress too Schmoop! He was throwing in the odd longer nap for ages amongst a sea of pissy little catnaps!

I'm sure we're not 100% out of the woods but it feels like we're on the right track.

In fact since I wrote that last post, yesterday he did 1.5 hours in the afternoon and he made it to 7:15 bedtime with no afternoon catnap. And he slept until just before 7 this morning - amazing!!

haha yes so I'm still in the sea at the moment
ds is constipated for the first time and I feel terrible about it, it must be weaning related, he's only been having 1 meal a day until the last 2 days where I also introduced lunch. we've been blw apart from yoghurt and porridge but yesterday I gave him half a jar of carrot & potato puree that I got free in weaning pack, I think its that
hope it doesnt make his naps worse

Weaning not exactly going great here - he point blank refuses to be spoon fed so I guess we are BLW by default. It's just that it's so messy and wasteful as he isn't really eating anything yet, just playing and throwing.

I had really hoped he would take to it so I could start leaving him for a few hours given he refuses bottles.

Hopefully he will start taking an interest for you soon mrs The waste does annoy me abit, he does take a fair bit on board but theres always mushed up slobbery remnants

DS did two longer naps yesterday so that's a further improvement

We are now over 2 hours into first nap and I've taken the decision to go and wake him
Well this is new!!!

You woke him - why??

As I opened the door he was just stirring so I didn't actually wake him. I was getting twitchy that the day was going to go to pot if he just did a catnap at dinner but left it too late for an afternoon nap too.

However it's going to be a 2 nap day
Morning nap 9.15 - 11.25ish
afternoon nap 2.20 - still asleep now at 3.45

That's an excellent nap day!

I think he did 10-11:15 & 2-3:30 today and bed at 7:30

Did your LO's just start doing this themselves or do you think it has something to do with being on solids now? Mines still a little catnapper. She does 35mins then I rock her straight back and she sleeps for another 50mins. I just wonder why she wakes after 35mins te first time round. Also she self settles the first time round