7.5 month old will settle for naps but not for bedtime - help!!

[fajita]

Please help ...!!

My 7.5 month daughter has been happily going to sleep by herself now for naps and bedtime for about 5-6 weeks or so. However in the last week it has all gone horribly wrong for bedtime. She's still great for naps (goes to sleep within 5-10 minutes without a fuss) but as soon as we put her in her cot at bedtime it's a whole different story. She's getting herself all worked up and crying / screaming so I've been relenting and feeding her to sleep (which is how she fell asleep before we did a gentle gradual retreat at 6 months).

Any ideas what I could / should do and what could be causing this...? She has recently dropped her third nap, so I'm not sure if it's that or teething, having had a viral thing at the beginning of the week (she had a slightly high temp and then a rash but otherwise was well in herself ...) entering leap 6 a few days ago ... or none of these??!!

Her sleep today was :-

7.15am wake up
10-12.15 nap
3-4.15 nap

And we tried to put her down at 7pm with no luck. Looking at that I wonder if she's had 30 mins too much sleep?!

Any suggestions please??!!

I would suggest tweaking the timings of your naps. Once you move from 3 naps to 2, you want increasing awake times through the day.

A good approximation for awake times on 2-nap days is 234 (hours).

If you look at your awake times, they are around 3 hours each. Try for shorter awake time in the morning (which should reduce the nap length since she won't be do exhausted for this nap) and lengthening the awake time between 2nd nap and bed.

For example:

7am wake
2h awake time
9-11am nap - and wake at 11am if not already awake
3h awake time
2-4pm nap - and wake at 4pm if not already awake
4h awake time
8pm bedtime

It might be that one nap is shorter, for example 7am wake 9-10 nap, 1-3 nap and so a 7pm bedtime. This is fine too.

I'd also question your technique if gradual withdrawal took only a matter of weeks. It's not a problem that your sleep training was quick, just that it's unlikely to have been what I recognise as gentle gradual retreat.

I mention this because with gradual retreat, it's usual to need to go up and down the 'ladder' of how retreated you are. My suggestion would therefore be to simply be less retreated rather hhan going right back to feeding to sleep.

What did you actually do as part of sleep training last time?

Thanks! 8pm bedtime is a lot later than what we're doing now ...! I'll give your suggestion a try re. awake times and naps and fingers crossed that'll help a bit :)

So with the gradual retreat, I started by lying her in cot and sitting with my hand on her tummy until she fell asleep. First time I did this she went to sleep after about 20 minutes with no real crying just a little bit of grizzling. I did that for about 4-5 nights and then just sat to the side of the cot with no contact for 3 nights. Then I moved a bit further away for 3 nights then for 3 nights I sat by the door (it's a single bedroom so they were the only steps I could fit in ...!) Then I moved to putting her down and leaving the room. There was no difference in her between steps, ie she was no more upset when we moved further away etc.
Definitely happy to gradually retreat again - I was unsure about what to do for the best, particularly as for nap times she's perfectly happy to be put in cot awake and will go to sleep with no crying in 5 mins!

At what point do I pick it up again from - sitting with hand on her tummy again...??

So you do seem to have a ladder to how withdrawn you are:

• hand on tummy
• sat next to cot
• further away from cot
• stood by the door
• outside of the door

It's really normal to sometimes need to go back down the ladder.

So if DC is upset, I'd immediately go and by the cot with my hand on chest. When baby is calm, remove hand but stay sitting there. If upset, hand goes back. As soon as calm, hand removed again - and so on.

Then progress as upu were, but say on one night when you were sat by the bedroom door and baby got upset - you how back down the ladder. Immediately go in, sit by the bed with hand on baby's to calm her right down. Remove hand when calm as before. If calmed down easily, retreat back to the door. But if not, stay sitting closer.

If you got through the whole retreat without any crying at all, then you're probably just not used to needing to go up and down the ladder of withdrawal.

I wouldn't go back up feeding to sleep. That will set you back a lot of progress. But as soon as baby got upset (like immediately, straight away be there), maybe you just needed to stand by the door shushing and doting so she knows you're there. If that doesn't work, go back down another "rung of the ladder" and go closer, reassuring all the time. Go back as far as she needs to be able to calm down, but do the calming down with her in the cot. Then once she is calm, immediately start the slow and gradual withdrawal again.

Perfect thanks so much. Makes perfect sense so will do that!