6.5 month old thinking bedtime is 4th nap

[emg6062]

Just wanting to see if anyone's experience this before with their little ones. My 6.5 month old recently has decided that bedtime is his 4th nap of the day, he seems to wake within the first hour of being put down and won't go back to sleep for another 2 hours. Because of this he's not falling asleep for the night until 10-11pm and then still wakes up at his usual 7am.

He is breastfed and his current naps are 3 naps a day, first two naps are 1-1.5 hrs and 3rd nap is 30 mins. Wake windows between naps are 2-2.5 hours.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

They usually drop the 3rd nap at 6-7 months if the other 2 naps are of a decent length (cat nappers are different obviously!).

I would try the 2,3,4 schedule. So 2 hours wake window for nap 1, 3 hour wake window before nap 2, 4 hour wake window before bed.

Thank you for this. I should have stated actually that we've only just got out of catnapping stage, so his naps from 4-6 months were all catnaps. He still has the occasional day where he catnaps, on these days we do have 4 naps just to see him through until bedtime.

What I worry is actually getting him to 2 naps eventually as I feel like the 2.5 hr wake window is so long for him. He's already rubbing his eyes after being awake for an hour and a half. I worry trying to get him to last longer wake windows he will really struggle.

I found they adapted really easily. By stretching the 2nd wake window to 3 hours I found they slept for longer after lunch and did 2 hours so they naturally weren’t as tired in the afternoon. When things start to go pear shaped at bed time it was always a sign for my kids that a nap transition was needed. You can look up the ‘234’ to see if it sounds right for your baby, it’s such a well established schedule for 6-15MOs that there’s loads of info out there. Good luck!

Thank you very much, going to research it tonight. It's definitely worth giving it a go!

What issue is it causing op? He is so tiny, I just went with my little ones signals at that sort of age.

I found it helped to have clear associations with sleep so alongside going with his signals I used to do things like draw the curtains, put on a bit of low white noise, give a drink, change his bum.

Eventually at about 18months I just had to do those things for him to settle and he would stay awake until it happened.

Hi Emg,

You are doing such a great job of looking after your son.

When did you make the move from 4 to 3 naps? I think it can be quite normal to swap between those for a few weeks after a transition.

Obviously that is a big difference for you as you don’t get a break if you’re on a 4 nap day, but I just wanted to say I don’t think lots of people have this experience too.

When your son wakes up, do you feed him again? My son is the same age and has nights where he’s really unsettled and wakes within 1 hour - 1 hour 30. That usually puts him back to sleep. If not, I repeat our bedtime support.

I used to nap my son in the moses basket or pram/pushchair. He never napped in his cot or bed to help him learn the difference between nap time and bedtime.