Naptime in relation to bedtime: 12 weeks

[kimkim]

Hi we have been dealing with this I think since her birth but I"m now having enough energy to deal with it instead of suffer through it.  DD is 12.5 wks and gets tired around 7pm (pre time change) and tends to get fussy, then nurse for an hour, then be antsy or alert or fussy  again anywhere from an hour to two hours, which is exhausting and I've decided is unnecessary for both of us.  I'm in bed for 3 hrs trying to calm down an overtired child but she fights sleep (she also fights naps).  We co-sleep.  She tends to wake up at 9am (now with the time change, 9am wake up and usually asleep between 8 and 9pm) 

I've started paying attention to her naps, usually around 11am, 1or 2pm and she shows signs of tiredness between 4 and 5pm. so i guess my q is should I encourage that last nap or am I in for trouble if I do? I don't know if the last nap will help with bedtime being easier or if she will be totally alert and fight bedtime even more?  In the past I just let her do whatever but she's so distracted and alert lately that she fights naps and needs encouragement to sleep longer than 15 minutes) that I don't think she's sleeping enough.

What are your nap schedules? When is the latest nap in relation to bedtime?

Any advice in bedtime routines?  We're working on some but we don't do daily baths, so I've been doing a nighttime walk around the block, followed by naked baby yoga, offering the potty then nurse in bed with lights out.  I"m experimenting with music....

[Youngfrankenstein]

Your baby at this age should sleep when she is tired.  As she gets a few weeks older, she will need at least 3 naps a day.  That is very common.  They really don't usually give up that third nap until about 6 months and up.  Then they stay with two napes until 14-18 months or so.  Of course, YMMV

[snoopy5386]

Originally Posted by Youngfrankenstein 

Your baby at this age should sleep when she is tired.  As she gets a few weeks older, she will need at least 3 naps a day.  That is very common.  They really don't usually give up that third nap until about 6 months and up.  Then they stay with two napes until 14-18 months or so.  Of course, YMMV

[kimkim]

so if she's tired at 4pm should i put her down to bed?

our problem is that from 6-9pm she tends to fight sleep but if we don't bring her to bed by 6pm she's really fussy until 9 but if we bring her to bed she's not fussy, just antsy for hours.  so i don't know when the ideal time to get her to bed is if i don't want to spend 3 hours laying there staring at her in the dark...

IS there a rule about last nap time before her typical asleep for the night time?

[Knitting Mama]

I say if she is tired at 4, put her down for a nap. Cecilia has always been the kind of baby who sleeps well the more sleep she gets, and conversely, sleeps horribly if she gets less sleep. At that age, she was sleeping after being awake for 90 minutes, max. By about 5 months it was 2 hours. Now at 7 months it's about 3 hours. She definitely doesn't sleep well if I try to keep her up for any reason.

[Chloe'sMama]

DD2 is almost 11 weeks and I can't even begin to tell you her sleep schedule.  She sleeps when she is tired and is up when she isn't.  DD1 was like this too.  I don't think we got into a rhythm until about 4 months or so.  Even then I would let her sleep when she is tired (heck, I will let her sleep now when she is tired and she is almost 2.5)

[Knitting Mama]

Yep, I think getting down for sleep as soon as the tired signs begin is really vital, especially early on. Sometimes the clock is the best way to determine it, if they aren't showing really obvious tired signs. That's why I aimed for 90 minutes when Cecilia was that age. Half the time she acted tired after 90 minutes, the other half she didn't, but either way, she went down quickly when I swaddled and nursed her.

[Blessed1]

At that age 90minutes was the max for Emily too.  When we would start to hit that 90 minute mark we would begin to rock her in our rocking chair.  Sometimes she would knock out in 5minutes and sometimes it would take much longer (up to 45minutes) but regardless it was relaxing for her.  I felt that sometimes she would fight it but it would be so much worse if we didn't start the "rocking" process at that 90minute mark because she would be so overtired and much fussier. 

We didn't really have a "bedtime" routine at that age.  It was kind of all over the place. 

Now, at 5months, she is starting to get into a "routine" of some sort.   I LOVE our bedtime routine now. 

It consists of  this:

We take her to her nursery and put her on her changing table (she LOVES that place) and we begin baby massage for about 10-15minutes. I dress her in her pj's and then I walk into our dark room and nurse her to sleep. She eats very well and then knocks out.  I get up and sneak out of the room and she stays asleep until we join her in bed.  The good thing about our bedtime routine is that I can do it at different times if I need to and she knows that it's bedtime regardless of the time.  Sometimes we put her to bed at 630pm and sometimes we put her to bed at 9pm or 10pm.

If we put her to bed at 630pm, she stays asleep until we "accidentley" wake her a little when we crawl into to bed around midnight and then I nurse her a few seconds and she is back to sleep very quickly.

If we put her to be around 9pm, I throw in an extra nap throughout the day and she does fine. 

Your night time routine sounds great.  We don't do daily baths yet either.

Good luck mama! :)

[ann_of_loxley]

My 6 month old still has four naps a day.  They are not long naps.  A few are - at the most - an hour long.  He tends to show he is tired and ready to retire for the day anytime between 7 and 9.  It really depends on what time he wakes up which can be anytime between 5 and 8 in the morning!  We have no 'nap time' or 'bed time'.  He follows his own body clock.  During the day he either naps whilst nursing or in the sling. 

[newmamalizzy]

My LOs naps turned into a disaster at this age, and it took us a while to figure out what she needed.  Turned out she was a chronic catnapper and we settled into a pattern of 4x40minute naps with 1.5 hours of awake time in between each, then about 2 hours between the last nap and an early (6 - 6:30 p.m.) bedtime.  Your baby's awareness and alertness are really developing right now, so if your LO is a chronic sleep-fighter, you may have to completely rethink your nap/sleep schedule rather than just tweaking the one you have.  I also agree with Cecilia's Mama that sometimes the clock is a better indicator than sleep signs.  My LO needs to be already prepped for sleep by the time she displays obvious sleep signs or it's too late. Good luck, and don't be afraid to think outside the box!

[Youngfrankenstein]

Originally Posted by kimkim 

so if she's tired at 4pm should i put her down to bed?

our problem is that from 6-9pm she tends to fight sleep but if we don't bring her to bed by 6pm she's really fussy until 9 but if we bring her to bed she's not fussy, just antsy for hours.  so i don't know when the ideal time to get her to bed is if i don't want to spend 3 hours laying there staring at her in the dark...

IS there a rule about last nap time before her typical asleep for the night time?

Honestly at this point, just go with what you think she needs at the moment.  I know that may not sound very helpful! LOL.  I'm just saying that having a specific bedtime wasn't really on my radar at that age.  I spend a few crummy months trying to get her to "sleep like the book says" (not with CIO or anything) but babies don't read....(unless you buy that program ;)   )

Do what works for all of you.  As she gets older it will be much easier to see what she needs and how to go about making stuff a bit more regular.

[redvlagrl]

Both DD and DS had v erratic nap schedules until about 5 mths when they settled into a 2 nap routine. Bedtime for us is 7pm - it works well for both kids. We did a bedtime routine with DS from when he was 10 days old and it worked very well for us. I have never worried about how late they nap when they are little like that - it only seems to be a problem when they are older than say, 15 mths or so (in our experience). If your child is fussy at 7pm, try putting them down to bed earlier, at 6.30, and stick with it for at least 2 weeks (even if it doesn't seem to be working). Do a routine (we do bath, nurse, bed) the same each night.

[snoopy5386]

At 4 pm she should still be taking a nap. Heck my 7 month old takes an evening nap at 5/5:30 pm half the time. Have you tried just having her out with you in the living room in the evenings with the lights dim? At that age both my kids were still catnapping on and off until we went to bed at around 11 or 12. By about 3.5 - 4 months they settled into a 8-9 pm bedtime.

[kimkim]

the problem we've noticed is if we are NOT in bed, she gets super fussy and takes 3 hours (or until 9pm) to calm down or go to sleep. we've tried keeping her in the living room with us but she gets fussy there if past 6pm but i found i can usually get her to sleep in 2 hours if we are in bed by 6pm.

last night was weird, i was at the computer with her and she wanted to nurse. she nursed for 5 minutes and passed out at 5:45pm. thinking it was bedtime, i put her down pretty easily.

within the hour she was up and wired and would not go to sleep until 9pm. that seems to be her magic cutoff...but i can't seem to just hang out with her until 9 in the living room.

i tried to nurse her to sleep for an hour but all she wanted to do was play, so dh came up and played the guitar and eventually we had 3 diaper changes, 9 came around and out she went. but she's usually up to nurse every 3/4 hours and last night was every 2 and was wide awake at 7am for an hour, being super smiley and cute and cooing, then passed out until just now (noon).

i don't understand it.

maybe i should stop trying to understand?

i just want bedtime to stop being a 3 hr affair.

[Youngfrankenstein]

This is all normal behavior and really doesn't have much to do with sleep.  They can all go through times of being tough to get to sleep.  I think a lot of it is just them getting older and being interested in new and different things.  But of course they can only express themselves in a few limited ways.  This time really will pass.  Just do what seems to work at the time.  Now is not the time to worry about setting up patterns and routines quite yet so don't sweat it!

I just would say again that bedtime is a very relative term at this age. 

[TreeRose]

Blessed1 I LOVE your routine - made my heart happy and made me hopeful.

OP we have a lovely 11 week old DD and her sleep is all over the map. I took 2 weeks to chart her sleep schedule: how many hours asleep, how many awake, when she had major meltdown vs when she fell asleep easily. Staring at the chart I made, I came up with no answers! Ha ha ha... oh well, it made me feel better to do it. I've been reading the No Cry Sleep Solution (which doesn't seem to apply to us because she cries whenever she needs to sleep anyway) and the Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby book and I have felt like I'm going crazy. I tell DH all the time we can't program her. We can't "make" her go to sleep. All we can do is help her.

Do you babywear? She has the best days when she's in a wrap (we use Didymos) - she falls asleep easily and without a fight. We hope one day to be able to help her fall asleep and actually put her in our bed (like Blessed1). Sometimes it works but she usually wakes herself up. The evenings are rough around here as well and I really feel for you. I have been so frustrated lately that when I go to bed (between 9 and 10) she just nurses off and on off and on and I want to scream. I don't know why sometimes she falls right asleep and other times the mere smell of me seems to wake her.

She hates being swaddled but I've taken to swaddling her once she's asleep, just something to lock down her arms. It helps during the day, when I lay her in the swing to sleep so I'm going to try at night and hope for a better night sleep for us!

GL!!!!