6 month old schedule

[User52739]

Can people let me know their bedtime and nap schedules for their 6 month olds? Mine’s sleep is all skewiff and I want to fix it.

My baby wakes for the day no later than 5, usually some times after 4:30. He has naps at roughly the following times (variation based on lengths of naps etc):

7am til 8am

10am til 12pm

2:30pm til 3pm

We then take him up for his bath at 5:30 and he’s asleep by 6. He usually wakes twice in the night, at around 1am and 3am.

I would love to shift it all back a bit so he goes to bed a bit later and wakes a bit later, but it’s really hard. By 5:30 he’s shattered and desperate for bed!

What routine do you have and how does it work for you?

My DD used to wake around 4:30/5 at that age, I used to treat it as a night waking, give her a bottle and put her back to bed and she’d sleep again until 7:30/8. Have you tried that?

I wonder if you tried gradually shifting the first nap a bit later it might help. It might be that he knows he's going to get a nap at 7am anyway, so wakes up early for the day. Could you also start gradually extending the bath-bed gap so bedtime slowly becomes a bit later, and then once that's established you could move the whole routine (so bath) back later. Just some ideas - mine is a little bit older but we've had similar issues!

Just went to my Huckleberry app to see what my DD was doing at that age.

5am: wake and feed
5:30-8:30am: back to sleep
10:15am: nap (usually 30-45 mins)
1pm: nap (usually 30 mins, but sometimes an hour)
4pm: 30 min nap
7pm: asleep

Times varied a little depending on nap length but I usually stuck to the above timings give or take 15 minutes.

What I would do is add in a 5.00pm to 5.45pm fourth nap (in the pushchair) and then make bedtime in the region on 8pm-9pm. Just in the short term to move morning wake up time later.

Thank you so much everyone - so many helpful suggestions! I’ll definitely try a fourth nap and later bed time.