Napping and solids – fitting it all in

[feelingmywaythrough]

My daughter is 6mo. We have just started weaning (a mixture of finger foods and purees). She has no nap routine, largely because she is a classic 30-minute napper. Sometimes, she’ll go down for her last nap at 4.50 or even 5. When this happens, I try to make sure she’s awake by 5.20.

Before we weaned, this was fine. She had a split feed either side of her bath at 6, with a breastfeed before and bottle in pyjamas before bed. But now that there are solids in the mix, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do when we’re working with one of her late naps. Do I still give the breast feed when she wakes, then solids immediately after? My understanding is that there should be gap of around 30 mins, but we simply don’t have time for that. Or should I be forgoing that breast feed and just doing solids, bath, bottle before bed at 7? NB that bedtime works well for everyone and she sleeps beautifully at night so I’m a bit loathe to start mucking around with that.

Advice happily received.

edited to correct a typo

Could you replace the bottle with breast feeds? So wake up and solids, then breast at bed instead of bottle.

I didn't give mine milk before food in case they then refused the food due to not being hungry enough. This was the advice of our paediatric dietician.

How about moving solids to lunchtime? I find it to be a bit less rushed than doing it at tea time. You'll have to do evening solids eventually but maybe the nap schedule will have settled down by then. DD2 is 6.5months and in the past week, her nap schedule has really cemented into two solid naps a day.

Also to add that DD2 has recently been in a study relating to bathing babies and reducing the risk of ezcema and other skin conditions. She was in the intervention group, where we were only permitted to bathe once a week. Apparently the early results are looking really promising so if you want to free up some time, you could drop baths to every other night to start with or even every three days?

Thanks @Asiama and @Noodlesnotstrudels. Noodles, I like the idea of just doing lunch, at least until I’m in the swing of things. I’m trying not to get too excited about the thought of naps consolidating soon, as I know it takes longer for some than others. But that would really be the dream!

Does she need the nap at 5pm? That’s very late for a 6 month old. I’d be tempted to do an earlier nap or skip it, do a proper tea at 5, 30 min gap then milk, bath bottle routine.

She is only 6 months, I'd just give hear breakfast. In a month or so her napping may have changed.

@Overthebow I think so? She gets tired every two-ish hours and only naps for half an hour at a time, so if she’s napping at 4.50, that would mean she’d woken up from her last nap before 3. I’m not sure she could make it to bedtime at 6.30/7 (or anywhere near!) from there. We’re lucky as she sleeps through at night, but she hasn’t learned yet to connect sleep cycles in the day, so her naps are just catnaps. Here’s hoping @Namechangencncnc! You’re the second person to suggest one meal a day so I think that’s what I’ll do.

Both my kids were cat nappers and it worked itself out!