Sudden nap refusals at 6 months - leap?

[Lemondrop99]

My DS is just about to turn 6 months. He’s been strongly fighting his 3rd nap for the last month but as he’s clearly tired after 2-2.5hrs, I really don’t think he’s ready to drop it even if he doesn’t want to take it.

While that nap is always a palaver, he usually settled himself nicely for his morning and lunch naps and bedtime.

The last week, we’ve been in nap refusal hell!! Every sleep has become a drama and currently the only thing sometimes helping him sleep is to feed him. We try and make sure he isn’t hungry before a nap but once he hits the cot, he decided she’s ravenous. I’m sure it’s not always genuine hunger and I’m worried about creating a feed to sleep association which is something we’ve never had and I have no wish to add.

I don’t think he’s teething. My gut feels like this is a development leap (if the WW are to be believed, we’re smack in the stormy week of Leap 5). The last week has been a big one for him.

We’ve started weaning
He’s finally mastering rolling in the other direction
He’s desperately trying to crawl (although there currently just pivoting on his stomach and occasionally inching backwards)
He’s started to pull up to stand holding my hands (he’s always had bandy legs and not been keen to stand)

We may also be in the middle of nap transition. Some days he just point blank refuses the third nap so we bring bedtime forward but he’s still up a long time. Several nights this week, he’s woken for a feed but then been awake for up to 2hrs in he middle of the night. I have no idea if this is caused by overtiredness or busy brain.

Should I just ride this out on the assumption that it’s just developmental?? It’s pretty stressful for us all. How do I soothe him/help him without creating new sleep association which we don’t want?

Dummy is the simplest (and by far the best imo) no-crying way for him to get to sleep independently. If not dummy, then soothing will involve putting baby in cot and patting, shushing or cuddling through the inevitable crying so that baby goes to sleep in the cot.

5-7 months is around average for dropping the 3rd nap. Try to resettle towards the end of the first 2 naps (before baby actually wakes up) to extend them. As these two naps go past about 2h plus total, the 3rd nap will drop naturally and bedtime come forward.

We ditched the dummy at 3.5 months because he kept pulling it out of his mouth and making himself hysterical. We replaced it with a muslin comforter and, up until this week, he’s been pretty good at settling himself in his cot the vast majority of the time.

He currently has around 40 mins in the morning then sleeps around 1.5-2hrs at lunch time. If he has the 3rd nap, he’ll sleep the 40 mins again if left to his own devices. He probably is ready to drop the nap, but even bringing bedtime forward, 3-3.5hrs seems like a long time to be awake. He refused the nap today and coped up to bedtime well. My concern is that he does these awful 2 hr long wakes in the middle of the night when he misses his last nap, which I can only assume is due to cortisol build up from overtiredness.

Just to update, in case it helps anyone searching. It was a development issue. It lasted for 5 (long, horrible) days then just resolved itself. At the same time, DS nailed rolling in the other direction. He’s now back to settling himself quietly within a few minutes. Phew!

Oh and we have dropped the third nap