6-month not sleeping through anymore

[LabRat90]

Hi all! Sorry this has become longer than I'd planned...

We've been so lucky with our son and he's been sleeping straight through the night since 8-weeks. Absolute dream for first timers!

He's always liked his sleep and up until about a month ago he took 30/45min naps on me throughout the day and then his big sleep in his sleeping bag in his crib at night.

About a month ago we found we could put him in his crib during the day and he'd nap 3 or 4 times a day which was a game changer for me as it gave me a lot of my day back to clean and whatnot.

However, since we've started that he's waking up every morning at 3:30am without fail. We've tried going back to our old method, tried keeping him up later and tried feeding him right before he goes down but he seems to have set this as his routine wake up.

Any advice on how to break him out of this??

Is he sleeping too much in the day? 4 naps is a lot. I think somewhere between 6 and 7 months we dropped to 2 naps. Now and then he still has 3 if needed but one is a short cat nap.

If naps are at home we have a white noise machine on constantly and dummy in. White noise on and dummy in all night too.

Mine used to only nap on me too unless he was in the pram or car.

How long would you say each of your naps are? That's exactly what we think the problem is so we've been trying to stretch his naps out so he has two 30/45 min naps and one longer nap for about 1-2hrs.

Whereas when we put him upstairs in his sleeping bag he's sleeping for 1-2hrs during each nap.

We've only changed back recently so kinda hoping it's just taking him a while to settle back into shorter naps.

White noise is an absolute life saver! We even took an Alexa on holiday recently so he could not off like normal 😅

I think they say 3.5 hours sleep at this age??? Maybe 1.5 in morning then 2 hours afternoon?

6 month old routine:

6.30/7am milk feed
8am porridge
9.15-10am nap
Outing
11.45am purée
12 noon milk feed
12.15-2.45pm nap
3pm milk feed
Outing
5pm purée
6pm bath
6.30pm milk feed
7pm bed

if the lunchtime nap is short you can do a catnap in the buggy for 15 mins at 4.45 and a 7.15pm bedtime.

Most days it's (roughly) an hour in the morning and then anywhere from an hour and a half to 2 and a half hours in the afternoon. It varies. Naps are usually 11 and 3 o'clock.

Occasionally he needs an extra nap and I go with that. Doesn't happen very often. He's 9 months now and this routine has been the same for a good while- somewhere around the 6 month mark.

He went into his own room at 8 months and he was still waking every 2 hours at night. His dad took over the nights gradually, going in more each night til I wasn't going in at all. He seems to have settled on two wakings a night now. The first his dad goes in for and he just gets a cuddle and resettled. The second, I go in for and breastfeed. Hoping to get him down to one waking a night or (fingers crossed!) none!

It's a minefield and there's a lot of trial and error.

Thanks a lot everyone! That's really handy to know, looks like we'll keep persevering with the reduced day sleep and see if it kicks in.

@LapinR0se thanks for a full breakdown, my DC wakes up around that time and has him first nap around the. So might try and mirror that 😊

It's working! Two nights in a row he's slept through!

Yay!! Long may it continue