7 mo old still only awake 2 hours

[mtnlisa]

Hi Mamas, my dec baby is having a hard time getting to sleep for bedtime (ie I'm at the end of my rope by the time she finally falls asleep) Sometimes she can go more than two hours of awake time during the day, but I'm wondering if she is overtired. During the day she naps two but usually three times between forty minutes and two and a half hours and goes to sleep easily (in a wrap while nursing since she cannot sit still to nurse unless almost asleep!).

I'm looking for some BTDT mamas who remember when their baby started really enjoying longer awake periods. The big problem for me is that midnight is way too late for me to go to bed--if I can move the waking up time earlier will she go to bed earlier???

Thanks!

[DaisyMae08]

If she's not staying awake for long, why is she going to bed so late?  I'm confused, I think.  She must be waking up pretty late in the morning if she's making it to midnight with only 2 - 3 naps and can only stay awake for two hours, right?  What time does her last nap start?

[mtnlisa]

Right nowshe wakes up at 9:30, takes a nap by 12, another 2-3 hours later (sometimes the first nap is 2 hours, making the next nap at 4 or 5pm) and then another nap around 8 or 9.  Sometimes, thoough very rarely, she is staying asleep for the night.  That is, she is willing to be nursed back to sleep every 20-40 minutes until 11 or 12 when she stays asleep. More often, even if the last "nap" begins at 9 or a little later, she is up again and sometime between 11 and 12 I am actively working to get her to sleep (wrapped in moby wrap while boucning on exercise ball for example, or rapidly walking up and down the stairs)  I feel awful because I haven't taught her any strategies for going to sleep on her own and by midnight, I am exhausted and I think that so is she!

[DaisyMae08]

Ugh.  I'd stick with trying to make that 8 or 9 pm nap her actual bedtime.  I'm sure it's going to be awful for a while, but I wouldn't let her play, etc. when she wakes up after going down that late.  You might need to adjust her morning wake up time as a result, because 8pm - 9:30am would be a LONG night sleep.  And actually, if you do that you might find you have an easier time getting her down earlier.  You could also try moving her bedtime up by 15 minutes each night.  So if she's used to midnight, try 11:45 tonight, 11:30 tomorrow night, etc.  And I would still adjust the morning wake up time to make it easier.

[noahs_wings]

also dec baby here and he does the same thing. i remember dd did this too until we night weaned at 2.5 dont mean to scare you haha just think its somewhat of a natural pattern. DS is asleep right now and its only 7 but i bet it will be his "nap" then at 9 or so he will wake and not want to go back to sleep, i will bounce him on yoga call in ergo foran hour or so until i give up and just let him play haha

in general during the day he is still doing 2 -3 hours wake time then sleeping. Its either growth spurt or teething or a million other things here and there we will have a good night/day, if he naps well in the day he will sleep better at night i notice

ive tried to get him on some sort of sleep schedule where he goes down at the same time for naps and its usually 9 or so and 12 or 1, One of those naps will be 40 min and one usually around 2 hours.

I remember also with dd that at some point i started not allowing (or trying to prevent) napping after 3:30 or 4, meaning she cant go down for a nap after 4, not waking her if she is still asleep or whatever then 7:00 bed time, so i keep trying this with ds.

tonight dh is going to try sleeping with him and bringing him to me in another room to nurse. i have a feeling it wont work out haha but we will try. dd also slept better with boobies far away from her :)when i f.inally night weaned her

[WifeofAnt]

I wish my December baby napped like that, lol.  Today was... up at 7:30.  Eat, play, eat, play.  Spend 2 hours trying to get a cranky baby to take a nap.  Somewhere around 12:30 or 1 PM he finally passes out.  (Up until recently he had a 9 AM nap but he's refusing it.)  He sleeps for about 2-3 hours and this is the longest nap of the day.  Now its getting closer for time for Daddy.  Rarely we'll get a short 20 minute or half hour nap around 4:30.  If Daddy comes home on the earlier side, no nap.  Around 5:30-6:30 we have another short nap.  It never lasts long though.  Around 9:30 PM he 'goes to bed'.  This process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour and a half and he's up and down until midnight.  We leave the lights off and stay in bed.  Usually nursing him gets him to go back to sleep.

On an awesome sleepy day we can get a 9:30 nap, a noon nap, a 4 PM nap, and a 7 PM nap.  Awesome sleepy days are very rare.  Two naps (a long and a short) are the norm at the moment and I probably spend a good 3-4 hours a day (not all at once) trying to get him to sleep.  Its 10 PM and I can hear him rustling around right now.  Daddy is working the whole night and DS is fighting deep sleep.  He's not awake but he's not quite sleeping either.

[mtnlisa]

 Glad to hear that other babies are not really in deep sleep til midnight. Yesterday I had to work so I got up at 7 and she woke up at 7:30 so we decided to try making a big move in wake up times.  DP put her down for a two (!) hour nap at 9 and again at 1, short nap at 6, asleep easily at 9ish, slept for the usual 40 minutes and then I spent a full hour getting her back to sleep, but we were in bed at 10:45 (indicentally 15 minutes before we were in bed the night before).  She sleeps in about three hour stretches in the night, so when she stirred around 7 I did not nurse and instead we got up.  I feel like a big meany making her get up then, she wasn't really awake for about an hour, though we did have a nice nursing without trying to crawl away wiht the nipple in her mouth becuase she was so sleepy still!  I also took her outside in the sunshine for a few minutes--I feel like I read somewhere that getting enough sun can help reset the internal clock??  Anyway, down for a nap at 9, so we'll see how the days goes.  I agree that when she naps well, she sleeps better at night, too.

[noahs_wings]

just an update dh sleeping with ds ... what was i thinking

never happened, he heard ds crying at 3 and came in

walked around the house with him for 15 min. i fell back asleep and was woken up by dh standing over me handing ds back - wide awake

then at 6 dh came back again after hearing ds cry and put him in the ergo. ds went back to sleep and dd woke up at 6:30

ds was up every 1.5 hours....

but he is so close to crawling so i think that must be the reason

[poppiesinjuly]

Do you have a bedtime routine?

My baby is 6 months old, but we started doing bath, book, feeding, bed at about 6-7pm when he was about 2 months old.  He still only goes 2-3 hours between naps, usually 2 or 3 naps per day.  His naps are anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours long.  If we are out and he ends up with a late nap, we just start the bedtime routine a little later, but always aim for a bedtime no later than 8:30.  If he stays up too late, he does not sleep as well for the night once he does finally go down.

Usually, he'll go from 7-10:30 or 11 before needing to eat again then until about 4:30ish on a good night.  Sometimes when he wakes, it takes longer to get him back down than others, but after we put him to bed, all of his wakings are "nighttime" wakings.  We leave the lights off, he eats, we talk little, change his diaper if he needs it, but try to stimulate him as little as possible and don't really leave the bedroom with him.

He goes down for the night in his own bed (beside our bed) and comes to bed with us his first wake up after we go to bed. 

He is up for the day between 6 and 7am.

I do think the bath, book, eat, bed, every night helps cue him to it being nighttime.  We also have blackout curtains because it's light from like 4:30-10 right now.  They really seem to help.

[mtnlisa]

 Ah yes, I really have been meaning to have a bedtime routine.  Of course, we do have one, it just really sucks!  I realized this week that I have been putting her in the crib when she falls asleep for the night (where she sleeps for naps) and I think that it might ahve been cuing her that she was taking a nap, not a sleep! So last night I just got in bed with her and we were in bed at 10! A new record in recent weeks!  The other thing that happened yesterday was that she took a 3(!) hour nap from 4-7 (slept for an hour in the crib and I have a terrible cold and so was sleeping as well, when she woke up I brought her into bed and nursed and she slept for two more hours.  I'm going to try doing whatever it takes to make more/longer naps during the day for a while to see if we can solidify this going to bed before midnight!

RE: bedtime routine, what do others have?  We find that a bath seems to really rile her up and results in a crash before falling asleep (this had been our routine about 2 months of age, and now looking back, I think she was telling me that she was ready to move her bedtime earlier then, and thats why she initially began to crash after bath--so tired).  I'm wondering if it would help me if I wrote down the parts of the bedtime routine so that we could get consistent about doing it??

[QuestionGal]

ETA: I take back everything I just said. As soon as I hit "submit" on this reply DD woke from her nap and has refused to sleep since then.... 6, almost 7 hours ago!! I take back all my sleep advice b/c every time I give some it seems my children do their best to disprove whatever I'd stated.... I take it back, I take it ALL back!!!

evening routine: DH gets home at 6:30

Dinner til 7

hang out time

7:30 bath then in to her room for PJ's, wrap in her special blanket, feed her in the rocking chair, then lay her down in the crib (sleepy but NOT asleep). If she's still rustling around after a minute or so I turn on her "aquarium" to whatever mode seems most soothing at the time (lights, Sounds, & action down to just music). 

Have you heard of the 2, 3, 4 routine? That made a HUGE difference when DS was stuck in a similar sleeping pattern to what you describe. Basically they take their 1st nap 2 hours after they wake up in the morning, 2nd nap begins 3 hours after the AM nap ended, then bedtime is 4 hours after the 2nd nap ended. 

ie: wake at 8, nap 10-12, awake 12-3, nap 3-5, bedtime is 8pm for us (we never actually make it to 4 hours but that's okay). 

Also learning to identify their sleepy signs and responding to those IMMEDIATELY (even if that means skipping the bath or cutting a meal short). For both my kids it's been red eyebrows. Other signs are the 10 mile stare (zoned out), not making eye contact, crying at the sight of something stimulating, turning head away, turning head into my arm/shoulder (nuzzling as if to nurse but I EP so it's not a sign of hunger), rubbing eyes. 

I learned with DS that if I paid attention to those signs and responded quickly then it would make it a million times easier to get him down for a nap. He was the type of kid who's routine took 2 hours and if something didn't go "right" then we'd have to start all over again. it was hell. 

Also it's okay to give them a few minutes to try and settle down. I'm not advocating CIO, because if our kids ever start crying then we go in and help them calm down. BUT I will often just take a "wait and see" approach. Give DD a few minutes and see if she can get herself comfy without my intervention. More often than not she's zonked out within a few minutes, without my intervention, and without crying. 

Also from what I've read if your baby is waking up in the middle of the night "WIDE AWAKE" and ready to play then they are getting too much sleep during the day. 

Edited by QuestionGal - 7/18/11 at 7:45pm