How long does your 5mo stay awake in the day before he is ready for a sleep?

[BellaBear]

DS can manage 2 hours before he needs to sleep - which means we can't do bedtime at the same time each night, as we have learnt there is no point trying to get him asleep unless he has been awake a couple of hours. And his naps are inconsistant in length, so sometimes he goes to be at 7, sometimes at 9.

a) is this normal?

b) when will it change? I reado fbabies staying awake for hours at a time, but he would just get really crabby and teary.

when my 2 were this age i tried to get them into a routine as much as possible. they would waken between 6 30 - 7 30 and i would put them back to bed about 9am. i would lift them at 10, back to bed about 12 30, sleep until 2 30ish, small nap at 4 30 ish (usually 20 mins - 30 mins), bath at 6 30 and bed at 7

often they would be grotty by bath time so i would give them half of their milk to tide them over. i bf them at this age, so that was feeding them from one side, then the other side after bath.

keeping to the same times each day (as much as possible) helped me to keep my sanity and be able to plan things around these times.

hth.
xx

Sounds about right to me. Once ds got the hang of daytime naps, he could only stay awake for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. It does change, but I can't remember when.

For the last nap of the day I would only let ds sleep for so long (depending on what time he went down) so he would be tired enough for bath and bed (the nightime routine always started at 6)

thanks

routine - this changes as the next nap happens roughly two hours after he last woke, which is unpredictable as sometimes he sleeps 20 mins, sometimes 1 and a half hours. trying to keep him up longer doesn't help.

he has 4 naps a day usually, sometimes 3, sometimes 5

we do same with ;ast nap of day

One thing I heard was to put them down for a nap at the first yawn. and it worked well for my lo. He'd yawn, then shortly afterwards start to rub his eyes and get a bit crabby and whiney, so I used to snuggle him up for a sleep and he'd drop off fairly instantly. That was generally about 90min after waking.

Unless the varying bedtimes bother you I wouldn't worry, sometimes it's nice to have babies with a degree of flexibility in their naps.

The most common reason my lo would wake early from naps seemed to be getting cold or waking himself up by startling and flinging his arms out, so I found he napped a lot better whilst swaddled (not too warmly in this weather though) and the act of giving the dummy and swaddling him up was enough prompt to get him drowsy. His naps have always been inconsistant, though, and at one point he wouldn't sleep for longer than 15 min aargh. hth!

My ds is just over 5 months a he too wont go much more than 2 hours without a sleep. He can manage 2 1\2 at a push. Any longer than that and we have a fight on our hands.

My ds does the same routine as ja9's do. I find that u can be flexible with it to some extent and still get them to bed at 7 every night. My ds has 2 hours from 12pm till 2pm but will only do this if in his cot. If out in the buggy prob only get half hour, but as long as u time it right when they finally go back to sleep as long as they are awake again by 4.30/5pm they will be in bed again by 7pm!

Same here ja9 and James, 2 hours 2 1/2 max for me. And we start bedtime routine at 6pm, she is in bed for 7pm and then I dreamfeed her at 1030.

Although, DD2 wakes for feed between 6 and 7am. She stays up for 2 hours. Then I let her sleep for max 1 1/2, then take her straight out in buggy. This way, she is fed every 4 hours (or just over) and I keep her up for nearly 3 hours at this time with no problem. In the buggy she just watches the world go by and, by the time I an wondering up the drive, it is time for her feed.

I also agree that watch for the cues as to when you put him down for nap. DD2 does yawm and then pulling at her ears and I know it's time to make a trip upstairs for wind down and nappy change.

I do swaddle too, but for day time use sleep bag with a secondary thin blanket to hold down her arms a little, and give her dummy. For night, she is swaddled and with dummy. (when she can put dummy in herself I will remove the extra thin blanket and sprinkle a few dummies around her head, and she can grab one if she wants one (this is what we did for DD1)

Every baby is different but my 5 months routine is roughly

8am - wake

10am - nap until 11am

Then nap again at 2pm until 4:30pm

Then settle down for the night at 8pm/

DS2 is 6 month and its usually, fully awake from 8am, nap 11-12, then nap 4-4.30 ish, then bed 7pm-6am, feed then back to sleep until 8.

That is if we are at home, if we are out and he's in the pram he can sleep much more than that, and have 3/4 hours over the day, but he still gets put to bed the same time and is usually still ready for a sleep.
Even if he's not he still gets put in his cot at 7 and he'll get himself off to sleep when he's ready

My DS is exactlylike yours BellaBear. He goes exactly 2 hours between naps, sometimes only one and a half though if overtired, and only naps for between 30-40 mins each time. We often have 4-5 naps a day with a variable bedtime depending on when he woke from last nap. It is really annoying and if he would nap longer I think we could make it to bedtime at 7ish on 3 naps. I really sympathise. His sleep at night is very broken too. We are thinking of doing CC in a few weeks and hoping it might impact on daytime naps as well as night time.