8 month old naps

[Deduct37]

Really struggling with any consistency regarding naps. Probably due to the fact he never wakes at a consistent time in the morning. Could be 5, could be 7. We try to make 6 wake up time but he doesn't always want to cooperate. Naps can vary in length from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Ive tried the 2 hour wake time approach for some time now, but I'm beginning to wonder if I should be looking more at the clock now he is older. I've tried to see when he has better sleeps but struggle to see any connection. I sometimes struggle to get him to take a third sleep, even if he has only had 2x 30 minutes earlier. He doesn't sleep well in the pram or the car, just generally get a 30 minute nap. I think he is very sensitive to overtiredness but could be wrong. He goes down for his naps pretty well, generally put him in the cot and he falls asleep immediately with his dummy in. If he wakes after a short nap, there is no way of extending it. He's up and that's it. I've tried reducing wake time after short naps to see if that helps but again there's no connection. His night time sleep is very good. Generally sleeps 6-5ish. Could be as early as 4.30, or as late as 7 like yesterday. He doesn't have a night feed and refuses one in the early morning if we try. He eats really well through the day having 3 good decent sized meals, with pudding for lunch and dinner and snacks in between. He is offered water throughout the day as he will not have any daytime bottles (at all!!!). He has a bottle at 5.45 which he will usually have 5oz. I honestly feel that hunger is not an issue as I've seen long sleeps before lunch and shirt sleeps after a big lunch. I think it's just the timing of naps that needs to be mastered but I'm still struggling. If he doesn't take a third nap he can be up from 1ish until bedtime without a sleep. And that usually leads to an early morning wake up the following morning

Bedtime at that age should be between 6-7 (I'd say any time before is too early and any time after is too late, though of course it depends on their naps).

My DS had dropped his third nap by 8 months (he dropped it at 6.5 months IIRC). He still has the same routine now (13 months) as he had then. It is:

Wake time is any time between 5 and 6 - more towards 6 now thankfully.

Nap 1 is 9-10
Nap 2 is 1-3 or thereabouts, sometimes a bit less, very occasionally a bit more
Bedtime is usually 6.30 depending on when wake time from his last nap was.

Have you tried wake to sleep at all? That's where you wake them gently just before they would usually wake, the idea being that they then put themselves back to sleep and thus get used to connecting sleep cycles. Google it - wake to sleep.

Thankyou. Bedtime does usually fall between those times, closer to 6 as his naps are generally rubbish and he ends up having a meltdown about 4/5 o clock.
If we have a big nap, or 2 big naps like yours, the. There is no 3rd nap, but because of irregular catnaps, I try to squeeze one in
I've tried 3 hours wake time but usually end up with a catnap
I haven't tried wake to sleep but have read about it. Because he doesn't make up every nap after an exact amount of time I don't think it would work with him because once somethings woken him, there's no going back. He's a very light sleeper

Do you particularly need to change things at this point? I ask because your post sounds full of doubt about how to manage things, but there doesn't seem to be an actual problem - if I've read it right. I identify with the feeling! My 7.5 month old appears to be in the process of extending her standard 30 minute naps into something longer, but like you we're very inconsistent and all over the place! She goes to bed between 8.30 and 9.30 and sleeps till 6.30-7.30. Mostly it's 3 naps a day, but we still squeeze in 4 if she's up early and only has catnaps all day - it's starting to get more common for her to do a good hour-hour and a half (or even two) though.

I think, until their naps are consistently longer, there's not much point trying to impose a routine. That will work as they start to fall into a more reliable pattern, but we're on a hiding to nothing trying to make a baby who wakes up at random times and sleeps for random lengths of time follow the clock! I think (I think) it's a developmental thing, and it sounds like we're both in the awkward transition phase. I often wonder if there's a better way I should be handling things, but until she can reliably stay asleep for an hour+ I'm just watching her cues and going with the flow. A two nap day just wouldn't work for her the way she's currently sleeping!

Generally sleeps 6-5ish

Is that 6pm to 5am? With no wake ups I assume. Are you happy with a 5am wake up? Becayse 11h night sleep is about right for this age, so a 6pm bedtime is going to give you a 5pm wake up.

Yes, there might be some flexibility in that - 4am-7am would all be quite reasonable for a 6pm bedtime. If you shifted to an 8pm bedtime, then your average wake up should be around 7am, with a range from 6am-8am all being nothing to be concerned about.

At the moment while you have no to-the-clock routines is the time to establish that change, if you intend to.

Onto your actual question about starting yo set more older baby routines - that begins with wake up time. Hence having a regular, set wake up time. I would start off with 11h after bedtime.

If you want a 6pm bedtime then 5am will be your get-up time. So any wake up before 4.30 I would consider night and resettle or ignore if not distressed. Then any wake up 4.30-5am baby is allowed a norning snuggle in your bed. 5am you get up. If baby isnt awake, you wake him.

Or make bedtime 8pm. Morning cuddles from 6.30am. Get up 7am and wake baby at 7am if not awake.

That them gives you a consistant start to the day. Then with your 2h awake time it automatically routines the first nap as 9am.

I would keep 2h awake times while naps are short. So it might be naps at 9-9.30am, 11.30-12pm, 2-2.30pm, 4.30-5pm and 8pm bedtime.

Or it might be naps at 9-10am, 12.30-1.30pm, 3.30-4.30pm and 8pm bedtime.

Then as as naps extend to more like 90m-2h, you might have 9am - 10.30/11am and 2pm - 3.30/4pm. But the consistant factor in all of this is bedtime and get up times of 8pm and 7am.

Ephraimwhite - the only reason I'm asking is because we have so much unpredictability throughout the day with a baby who has lots of grumpy moments due to be tired. Today for example he woke at 5.30 from 6 last night. By half 6 he was already rubbing his eyes and getting cranky because he hadn't had enough sleep. I didn't put him down fir a nap at that time because it was so early. By 7.30, he was uncontrollably crying through exhaustion. He was put in his cot at 7.40 and was asleep by 7.45. Woke at 8.15. Happy initially then as we were leaving for playgroup at 9 he was cranky again. Rubbing eyes, yawning which indicates he is still tired. Quick catnap at playgroup 10.20-10.40ish. Then home at 11.20, into cot and slept 11.25-12.20. Then same within an hour of waking. Fought any sleep until 3.30 and then only dozed for 15 mins max. So is then absolutely exhausted come 6. If he was happy then I wouldn't be on here questioning things. It because he's not happy that I was wondering if I should be trying to schedule his naps properly to make more consistency. As some days he's napping straight after lunch, other days he's napping before lunch which makes eating time midday very unpredictable.
Yesterday he was up at 7. Napped 8.45-10.15. Then 12.30-2.15 then that was it for the rest of the day. It's as though we are stuck in a 2/3 nap dilemma which often results in a huge wake time before bed which I think contributes to earlier wakings. I was looking for mad ice on nap timings to see if I was missing something

Ah, I see. I hadn't realised he was getting some overtired. DD is similarly unpredictable but she will do at least 40 minutes per nap (almost always) so although she can wind up cranky if she's only has short naps all day, she will do as many as I put her down for. So not as similar as it first sounded.

Anyway. I'm going to follow Fate's suggestion and try for a set bedtime and getting-up time, see if that encourages her toward a pattern. Good luck!

Fate destiny - thankyou for your reply. I have read many of your posts in other threads and can see a lot of positive comments that you have made. The morning get up time is not actually a major problem to be honest. I have a 3 year old who is always in bed for 6 and generally sleeps until 6.30/7 so an earlier time kind of suits our home life. When I put 6-5 then yes that is consistent sleep and am very happy that we can pretty much guarantee at least 10/11 hours of interrupted sleep. I know this is fab for my little boys age, we had 2 years of sleep problems with my little girl who got stuck in an overtired cycle and we barely slept at all (so 5am seems like a miracle to us!).
As for a later bedtime, we always used to put him to bed much later, but he was getting restless through night and waking up early and I worried we were getting into the same overtired cycle that we did with my little girl. We were really struggling to get him to nap after 3/4 o clock and he was just whacked come 8.30 so we gradually made bedtime earlier, he started sleeping more soundly and woke later in a morning. He has never been great at sleeping in the pram or car so this soon wasn't an option because it failed 90% of the time and we just saw it as a waste of time when he still wouldn't nap! We are actually going on holiday next week so I know things will not go to plan while we are there but was hoping to have a plan in place for when we return. When we have been away before, both kids go to bed later than usual and they are both guaranteed to wake earlier in the morning. (Last time we were away they were in bed for 8.30ish, baby was up through night then wide awake at 4 every morning, little girl was wide awake between 5 and 6. It wasn't much of a holiday. This time we are going abroad so bedtime will be even later and I dread to think what time they will both wake in the mornings! Do you have any tips for children that does this? No one I have ever spoke to has experienced it, other than a friend of my sister in laws who 4 year old must be in bed and asleep before 7 or he wakes at 5, where if he is asleep for 7, he sleeps until 7

Deduct37 - sounds like your DS needs less than 2h awake time between naps.

In my house, first sign of being grumpy = nap time. Doesn't matter to me if that's only an hour after waking. Doesn't matter if it's half an hour.

First tired sign = sleep time
Grumpy = sleep time
Clingy/demanding = sleep time

Basically anything that is not smiley and happy means it is sleep time at this age. Regardless of the time of day or how long they have/haven't been awake.

That was a crossed post an in reply to your previous post, not this latest one.

Ephraimwaite - my little boy generally does at least 30 minutes in the cot, but elsewhere we can have shut eye of 10 minutes and that's it! As the day goes on he generally gets worse and this is when we really struggle to get him to nap. Dinner can end up being refused if he too tired and no amount of rocking, pushing in pram, taking for a drive is guaranteed to work. We generally have screaming fits on car journeys if he gets so bad and when he's in the pram, he's just too nosy to switch off (even with a mosquito net kind of thing pulled over him from underneath the oyster seat). Don't get me wrong, hes not always cranky and everyone comments on how happy he is when he's at playgroups etc. So we do have happy times aswell. I just worry about getting stuck in a vicious cycle of overtiredness and the effects it may have on him.
How long is your little one usually awake before needing a nap? And does it differ if she's had a long or short nap? If I were to follow his cues, I'm sure I'd be putting him in the cot all day some days!

Oh God, holidays 😣

No great ideas there from me, my children are nightmares in terms of sleep on holiday. My children's ages are 12, 11, 7 and 2 - the 12 year old has only just started sleeping in in the morning.

For the last decade or so my children have their bedtime and have the time they usually wake up - and nothing in the world will change that. Putting them to bed late, on holiday or during the 6 weeks school holiday for example, makes zero difference to wake up time. Late nights just result in increasing more tired and grumpy children, not late wake ups. So no point whatsoever.

I had the good sense with subsequent children to establish them with later bedtimes than my eldest two. They used to have 6.30pm bedtime. But by the time DC3 came along bedtime had moved to 7/7.30 so he fitted in with that. Now we have DC4, her bedtime matches DC3s at 7.30/8pm.

It means out whole household wakes up about 7am and that works for us.

If your early mornings work for you, no read on to change it at all. Just start getting baby up at her 5am natural wake up time, and go from there.

Aw really. Maybe I am assuming coz he's getting older he can cope with more awake time but maybe that's not the case. I will definateky start trying to get him back to sleep sooner then he currently does. (I have thought about this because of him falling asleep pretty much immediately). But then I see baby's of this age and the suggested wake times and think that I'm trying too soon

I'm still putting her down after two hours awake. Over the last month or so I've found she can be harder to get off if we're out and about, as she gets distracted. Previously she would start getting grouchy after 2 hours and 3 minutes (could set your watch by her) and quickly reach meltdown point - she can cope a bit longer now, so we're definitely in a transition phase! Next nap doesn't seem to vary in line with previous nap, but she's definitely easier to get off to sleep and sleeps more soundly after a 'good' napping day!

I'm sure I read Fate advice somewhere on here about the tired thing. Totally helped me. I put mine down an hour after she wakes in morning and she needs it too :)

Also, she will often go down an hour/ninety minutes after first waking - it's like a delayed lie in! But mostly we're still on two hours.

Maybe I am assuming coz he's getting older he can cope with more awake time but maybe that's not the case

Awake time is linked more to developmental stage than age. In the same way some babies walk at 7 months old and some at 20 months old, some children's sleep will mature to fewer, longer naps at 4 months old and some will not make this developmental change until 14 months. And every possibility in between.

This isn't a case of "he's 8 months so he can do 2h awake time". It is "he is having short naps so needs shorter awake time" - the age is irrelevant.

While you have short naps (usually 20-45m) I wouldn't consider keeping a tired baby awake. In fact I'd aim to predict when he will be tired and get him to sleep before he shows any tired signs.

When we had short naps, I kept awake time as always less than an hour. That's a lot less awake time than most people would but I have little patience/tolerance for whinging or clinginess - so anything other than being happy to play independantly would result in nap time.

Thankyou. I felt like we had got to the point where we could reliably say 2 hour awake time then nap, but it seems like that is not the case now and it's confused me. And because I'm struggling to get any nap after 3 I wasn't sure if I should be aiming to have a set am and pm nap to try to avoid a huge wake time before bed. Plus we were/are getting much more longer naps, but then seem to revert back to catnapping when I feel there is more of a pattern In place.
Today we had a 6.20am get up (perfect in my eyes). He started getting wingey around 7.40 so put him down and he slept 7.45-9.15 (great I thought). Then the next nap went tits up and he only napped for half an hour from 11.30-12 (too much awake time I think, but I'd popped out and ended up being home later than expected). Was getting a bit wingey again at 12.30, still wingey at 12.45 so into cot again. But just played and talked and messed about for about half hour. So now he is up playing, been awake for 1 hour 40 and don't know what to do next. He clearly wasn't tired when I put him down earlier

Regardless of the nap being short, if baby woke up at 12pm then they are unlikely to want to sleep at 12.30. Or even 12.45 if he is used to 2h awake time.

This is akin to the nightmare that is a car journey on the way home from somewhere just before bedtime/naptime. My DD's nap time is 12-3pm. I know that any lengthy car journey that happens from 11am is risky. If she was to fall asleep in the car (which is likely, as nap time approaches), even if just for 15 minutes, there's no way she would go to sleep again at her usual 12pm. I would end up needing to keep her awake until 1.30/2pm because the mini nap at the wrong time completely messes with her sleep pattern.

7.45-9.15

That's a long nap! 90m naps show he can link sleep cycles. I'd have expected a 2h to 3h awake time after a long nap like that.

Could anything have woken him from the 11.30 to 12pm nap? Your son clearly can link sleep cycles (given the morning nap) so what woke him? Is he eating alright, drinking plenty of milk, having plenty of water for hydration? Have you tried white noise in case some background noise is waking him?

Regardless of this nap being short, I still wouldn't have tried again until 1.30-2pm. His internal sleep clock was reset by the 30 minute nap, so no point in battling for a nap he just won't take earlier than that.

Sorry, I read on one of your other replies about first sign of tiredness being sleepy time whether it is an hour or even half hour after waking. So that's what I went with in case I had been missing cues. This is not something I would naramlly do, but given the advice I thought it was worth a try and that it might surprise me.
The 11.30 nap was after a 2h 15 wake time. This is what is confusing because there is no link to when naps are short or long which make things pretty difficult when trying to get into 'routine'. He had just eaten dinner , pudding and had water. He drinks lots of water (about 2 tomee tippee beakers) during the day but refuses milk except the last bottle of the day. His appetite is huge! We live in a quiet cut de sac so there's very rarely anything to waken him (although the postman almost knocked my door in 10minutes after he'd fallen asleep, but didn't even stir when I looked on the monitor). If we get a good morning nap of 1h 30-2 hours, I very rarely can get the second nap to work aswell. I can remember maybe 2 occasions where he's had 2 good naps, but then has refused any kind of catnap so has been awake from 2ish until bedtime. He's currently in the cot again trying for another nap but this one is definateky the hardest. We can get 2 naps no problem. I usually end up having to hold him to get this nap and it can be a big fight as he holds himself stiff and doesn't really want to be held!

Sorry Deduct, in I'm finding it difficult to follow too. I thought your DS was still having short 30 minute naps.

The stuff I do with my DD is fine, given that's what she's used to (straight to bed if tired, shorter than most people's awake times) but your son isn't used to that so you can realistically jump straight in. If yes used to 2h awake time, start from there.

Regarding a routine - start with a routine start and end time of the day. The same every day. Go with the flow with naps, but wake baby at the same time every day and bedtime at the same time every day. A daytime nap routine can then organically develop.

So set an alarm and get him up at 5am
And have him asleep by 6pm.
Every day. Always the same night.
Start from there.

Sorry, it is confusing, I understand that. He does still have short naps, mixed wth long naps so a bit all over the place. Days of all catnaps. Days of 2 naps, either 2 long ones or 1 long and 1 . sometimes a long morning nap then 2 catnaps. Sometimes a catnap, a long one then another cat nap. It is very very irregular.
Suppose I will just carry on doing what I'm doing regarding naps and see if I can master them one day

Routine his night first. Bedtime and morning wake up.

The rest will follow from that.

My 8 month old just doesn't at the moment!! He's had a morning hour as per usual, he had about 40 minutes this afternoon waking around half 2 and has been wide awake and full of beans since.

He sleeps 12 hours at night but napping in the afternoon is a daily battle unless he's in the car or in the mood.

At night you put him in his cot awake and he lays there like an angel and falls asleep in minutes. Afternoons he howls, cries, bangs his head numerous times and occasionally goes to sleep. He will have a teatime power nap in my arms but tried cot today - he's currently up there having a paddy.

Sigh, arms it is.

Hmm unless you move him into the recovery position, then he falls asleep instantly....

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