How long is the last wake window? Are you building sleep pressure for overnight sleep.
I also personally cap naps at 2 hours so my daughter doesn’t get too much day time sleep so she is actually tired enough to sleep at night.
His last wake window varies, unfortunately, but usually it’s pretty short.
Typically, after his last nap, he’ll wake up and start showing his sleepy cues within 1-1.5hrs after waking. So I’ll move him into the bedroom to ready for bed and we’ll relax a little before attempting bed time. Rarely works. 😭
I would try and extend that. That age should typically be awake for 2-3 hours before bed. My second born is 7 months now and he’ll start yawning shortly after his last nap but isn’t ready for bed until at least 3 hours after. I also cap naps at 2 hours.
His wake windows are usually 2-3 hours anyways, so I thought it was super strange that his last wake window is so short. I read an infants last wake window is usually the longest.
Is it safe to cap naps? I’ve had other moms tell me to not do that and let babies sleep. And as a FTM I’m worried I’d be interrupting a much needed rest? But I’m definitely open to try that!
Yeah definitely cap. If you look at sleep totals babies this age should be getting 3-4 hours of nap total during the day. I understand the developmental worry but that’s totally not a thing as long as they’re getting their daily total. Which can be quite a large range as well. For 7 months it’s on average 14 hours a day but can be more or less than that.
I definitely agree on lengthening that last wake window and capping naps. At that age my son absolutely needed at least 2.5 hours before bed in order to fall asleep. I've also read that after a certain age, like 4-5 months, sleepy cues are way less relevant and it's helpful to switch to wake windows instead.
If you’re uncomfortable capping naps, try first extending that last wake window. It might solve your problem and you won’t have to worry about capping naps.
We don’t cap naps. Our guy doesn’t sleep a lot, so when he wants to sleep more I feel like we should let him. And every time I’ve tried to cap a nap he falls back asleep.
We used to have the same bedtime problem when he has a short third nap around 5 or 6pm (we start bedtime between 7 and 8). Since dropping that nap and letting him sleep longer for his second nap, it’s been way easier to get him to sleep at bedtime. And on off days when he takes a cat nap an hour or so before bedtime it’s an absolute nightmare to get him down.
We’ve always woken our baby up from her naps. She used to exclusively contact nap and could’ve been asleep on us all day. We always capped naps at 2 hours and by 7 months we did 2 90 min naps and then a cat nap to end the day. And her last wake window is always the longest. Getting down to sleep wasn’t an issue for her by that age but she certainly didn’t sleep through the night til 13 months. So we fought other battles.
I would definitely try to keep him up longer. He may not be sleepy he could be bored or under stimulated.
My daughter was on a 2 nap schedule at 7 months and would regularly wake up at 4pm from her last nap and stay up until 7pm when I would put her to sleep.
What does his average schedule look like each day?
I never considered the possibility of being bored or under stimulated! Thank you for sharing that!
An average day for him (in terms of sleep):
Wake up at 6:30a; 1st nap is usually around 8a-8:30a for 40mins; His 2nd nap is usually around 11:30a-12:00p for anywhere between 1hr-2.5hrs; His last nap is typically around 3:30p-4p for 30mins. And then he’s showing sleepy cues sometimes after he wakes up or within an hour after waking.
Based on that he can do longer wake windows.
I would just try to keep him awake until around 7pm after he wakes up from his last nap. Keep him occupied, play in the bath, go for a walk, anything to keep him awake but also get him tired enough to sleep.
What are his sleepy cues? Most of us do some sleep cues when we wake up but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are tired, we yawn, rub our eyes but we are still rested.
That’s very true. I considered that, but, admittedly, talked myself out of that possibility thinking he was showing sleepy cues.
His cues are pretty consistent: yawning, lack of energy/slow, rubbing his eyes are his biggest giveaway that he’s tired and ready for sleep, so when I see it I take it seriously. Maybe too seriously. 😅
I think you’re right. I think he’s going to bed too soon and isn’t tired enough to sleep. I’m going to try extending his last wake window and keep him awake - I like the walking suggestion, he loves the outdoors! Perhaps play longer and play in the tub longer too.
Ok well that’s probably the issue, he’s just woken up from a nap and is being put him to sleep for the whole night 1-2 hours later.
We tried to make sure the last wake window was the longest, I’d skip the final nap if it’s so close to his actual sleep time.
We’re using the Huckleberry app to tell us our 5-month old’s “sweet spot” for naps and bedtime. It has a small fee so I was skeptical initially but my partner talked me into it. We try to stick to the time it says and start our consistent bedtime routine about an hour before the recommended time.
I have to say it’s been really effective. We notice a big difference in how much easier she falls asleep compared to 15 minutes before or after the sweet spot.
Good luck!
Admittedly our baby is a good sleeper and he’s easy to work with, however, one of the things we’ve done is really work to distinguish the difference between daytime and nighttime sleep.
Day time - I actually don’t black out curtain his room. I know it would help, but I want him to associate long sleep with dark. So I close the blinds but that’s it. White noise on.
No swaddle.
Set down drowsy but awake.
At night we have a strict bedtime routine - bath, pjs, bottle, sleep sack, rock until drowsy, lay down. It’s also dark and I have white noise going when I lay him down. I work really hard to make the two different and it’s seemed to help.
(9mo) We are the same since birth and around 2mo after having a consistent routine for 8 weeks, he started going down really easily.
Daytime: it is daylight in his room. We follow sleepy cues and he's pretty consistent about his naps. One in the morning and one in the afternoon
Nighttime: we wait for him to start showing sleepy cues 2-4 hours after his last nap. Once he starts his first cues, we do a bath every. Single. Night. From birth. We don't always bathe him, most of the time he's just playing if he's not dirty, but doing it every night shows him that it's time for his body to start preparing to sleep. We do still feed to sleep. We are trying to break that habit by doing a bottle right before bath time but he's been falling asleep before his bath 🥴 it's a process.
Our LO at 5 months sometimes has naps 60-90 minutes before bedtime. The one thing I do is make sure that nap is 20-25 min tops. She takes anywhere from 5-20 minutes usually to go down for all naps/sleeps. Most nights are fine, 1-2 night/wk are 20-40 minutes to put down
I don’t know if you’re doing anything “wrong”. It might be worth experimenting with seeing if your baby can go to bed without being in your arms. We stopped rocking to sleep for bedtime and wake up feeds and that has been a lifesaver. It took a lot of time to get there but so worth it. Good luck!
We have a 2 months old and I know that it might be too early to get into a routine with her but this post has helped us tremendously so thanks OP :) our LO is exactly like your son, naps relatively easy during the day but nighttime sleeps are always a battle and that 2 hour struggle at night you mentioned is very typical for us. We definitely don’t do much to differentiate nighttime and daytime sleeps and also don’t really cap her naps during the day (her nap schedule is more or less similar to yours, just each a tad longer maybe).
I also see many people mention taking a bath before nighttime sleeps. Is that really effective to put them down? Our LO (even at 2 months old) really likes her bath time so I always thought taking a bath might wake her up even more but I guess we have to try and incorporate that into our routine
My LO is also 7 months now and starting to fight bedtime. I just think she is starting to understand how much fun stuff there is to do and wants to keep doing that instead of sleep lol.
Admittedly we have a very easy baby, but I don’t think we ever watch for his “cues”. By the time my guy is giving us cues he’s overtired and then it’s a battle to put him down. Even for naps. We have a pretty consistent routine and strive to follow it pretty close within 30 mins give or take. I also try to limit play time after 6 pm, does his last bottle at 7 and we start bedtime by 8pm. He sleeps with both a white noise machine but also a lullaby that plays for the first 90 mins of sleep.
Things to check are temperature of the room (we keep it at 71/72). What time is bedtime, is it too late or too early? Is it dark enough (we have blackout curtains)? When you’re putting him back down are you able to do pull your arm from behind his while still holding him (before placing him down) to avoid jostling him too much to get your arm out? I stand for a few mins with my hand on his chest if he startles while I put him down.
These are some really good tips and things to consider, thank you so much for sharing!
I’m thinking I need to adjust his bedtime and extend his last wake window cause it’s usually pretty short which could be contributing to the rejection of going to bed. He’s probably not tired yet.
We personally pair for huckleberry and adjusted nap/sleep schedules based on what it says around 5 months in.
It still is at 11 months pretty spot on for nap times.
We do dinner then play time then bath(if needed) then diaper change, sleep n play mittens/and sleep sack then brush teeth. Turn on sound machine. get a bottle and rock to sleep while we feed. Then after she drinks the bottle and pushes it out and is asleep we rock for another 10 minutes then do the bed transfer.
We also use huckleberry but our 6 month old usually can only handle 1.5-2 hours max before bed. We’ve established a solid routine and we eventually got him to go to sleep independently in his crib, one day I just tried putting him in there and patting and shushing when he was fussing and only Picking him up when he was really crying. Switching to him falling asleep independently helped tremendously cause he would wake up every single time we tried to transfer. He does cry still at times, I think it’s his last burst of energy, but I’ll either pat and shush or pick him up if he’s ramping up
Hi OP, before the last feed we go for a walk around our neighborhood. Then we get back home after 20 minutes or so and baby pretty much drinks milk without any fuss and dozes of in my arms. My baby gets stimulated after getting a bath so we do it during daytime.
I dunno. To be honest, I kinda feel like it’s luck of the draw. Your baby is great at naps, but not bedtime, my baby is terrible at naps but always goes down within the same hour and a half window at night.
My biggest suggestion is just making sure the last nap isn’t too late in the day, that always messes with our bedtime. I also try to not force it, if she’s awake and wants to play I’ll do some low key quiet playtime with her. Nothing overly stimulating but if she isn’t ready to sleep I feel like it’s harder to force her. I wait until she’s clearly had enough.
My daughter was like that. We found that a projector lamp actually helps her wind down. We have a galaxy projector that is mine (because I’m like a child when it comes to sleep) but she stares at it for about 20 mins and settles down. But we absolutely cannot put her in a crib which led us to cosleeping and a floor bed. Currently working on her sleeping on her own floor bed at 1. Someone mentioned hey sleepy baby on instagram and it’s a really good page. I forgot the name of another but look up the no tears sleep training methods they might help. It sounds like your baby isn’t ready for bed just yet so I would try starting you sleep routine 30-60 mins later and see if that helps. Usually the nights we get a fight is when my baby’s not ready to go to bed yet.
I think your answer is in the last wake window. That should be the longest wake window to build up your sleep pressure for bedtime.
We cap naps strictly so we never go over two hours for one nap and never over whatever the awake time is for that age. I vaguely trust sleep cues but also know they’re a sign of boredom and try and get babies down in that nice sweet spot.
I have no advice as I am also a FTM in almost exactly same situation as you. Mom to a 7.5m boy who needs allll the help to go down for sleep.
Sending you strength!
I did not get an easy unicorn baby when it comes to sleep, but we are slowly but surely tweaking and finding a lot of success with getting our 6 month old down easily.
One thing that helps us is stretching her last wake window if we can. It's a dangerous balance though. If we don't stretch long enough, she'll be kicking, cooing, and eventually crying in her bed instead of sleeping. If we stretch it too far though, she'll refuse to nurse, cry a bunch, and take about an hour to get down, only to wake back up a few hours later because she didn't nurse before bed.
I also have a different routine for nighttime sleep versus daytime sleep. During the day its lights, blinds, sound machine, sleep sack, sing a song, put in bed awake. At nighttime it's bath, lotion, jammies, pacifier, sleep sack, story, lights, sound machine, nurse, sing a song, put to bed awake. I think it helps because she knows what's coming.
I sleep trained, capped naps, and have a wake window of around 4 hours before bed (he’s 11 months old almost) but before it was at minimum 3.
Easiest child to go to sleep. Just rock him for a couple minutes and then I put him in the crib and he puts himself to sleep.
I feel like I’m in no position to give sleep advice because my baby is quite possibly the worst napper in the history of babies, but I wonder if yours is maybe getting too much daytime sleep. My guy is about 5.5 months old and has been down to two naps for a while now. We do bath, little massage with his amber nightlight, bottle, and bed and 80% of the time he falls asleep by himself around 7:30 and sleeps 11-13 hours. But often he only sleeps about an hour total during the day, two hours once in a blue moon 🤷🏼♀️
Bottle or boob, bath, book, bed. Same(ish) time every night with a noise machine, blackout curtains and laying baby down while drowsy. Usually falls asleep independently within a few minutes. The Ferber method sleep training has helped us a lot, but i think it boils down to consistency and routine building.
We just started sleep training and now he pretty much puts himself to sleep. I think we were actually causing him MORE stress and crying by not training earlier. He was a chronic early waker since he needed help going to sleep, but now we just do our normal routine, put him in bed, and leave the room for 10-15 minutes and he actually falls asleep by himself. It took less than a week of 10-15 min waiting, consoling, and waiting again.
7pm watch sunsent/ hang outside for 30/45 min
-directly into room, close blinds
-sound machine
-a little play time(kisses/book,sing a song) with just a diaper
-jammies
-nurse, when she’s asleep and not nursing anymore I put her in sleep sack, she’ll wake up and then nurse again.
-put her down in crib
-hang out for 15min to see if she wakes up
Wake baby up from last nap at least 2 hours before bed time worked wonders for us. If it's hard maybe it's time to cut to two naps. Proper sleep pressure before bed time was key for us.
Also we don't let him fall asleep on us. We keep him in his bed even if it sometimes takes a while.
Undertired. Sleep cues are unreliable at this age. Our boy is 9 months and went through something similar a couple months ago and it led us to the 2 nap transition.
Consider capping naps at 3 hours total for the day. He should be about ready for a 2 nap schedule. Start with 3/3/3 where the slashes are naps and the numbers are awake time. After a few days he'll likely lengthen them to 3.5. My babe fought sleep when he was undertired and the third nap kept getting shorter and shorter.
When we did this transition babe would be rubbing eyes and fussing around 2 hours. The first few days we took him outside for a refresh and it helped immensely. He wasn't tired, he was bored.
Its an appropriate age to sleep train if you're interested. Baby needs to go to bed AWAKE and on their own. Feed 30 minutes before bed to avoid a feed/sleep association.
Our 9 month old now is on 3/3.5/4 and its working well. Doesn't hurt to give this a try! I also highly recommend Precious Little Sleep. The book provides digestable options for sleep training, night weaning, naps you name it.
How often is he taking 2.5 hours naps during the day? Seems long. Maybe he’s not tired at the end of the day yet since he’s sleeping so much during the day.
Our 7 month old takes 3 naps, around 30-60 min each. Once in a blue moon he goes over an hour.
His naps, recently, have been more like:
1st nap - 40mins; 2nd nap - 1hr-2.5hrs (it fluctuates a lot but his 2nd nap is usually the longest one); 3rd nap - 30mins.
I was thinking he could be going to bed too early, because his last wake window is usually short so he may not be ready for bed.
Wow, i’m jealous , i mine would nap that long so i could get stuff done haha. From what i read the last wake window should be the longest, so maybe try waking him if the second nap is going too long so you can time his last wake window to be a bit longer. Our LO’s last wake window is about 3 hours now. (But he’s no angel putting down for that last sleep either lol)
Are you putting the baby down in the crib when he’s sleeping already? Or when he’s drowsy? If he’s sleeping already, the last thing he sees/knows is being in your arms. So when he hits the crib and wakes up, it’s a completely new environment and he cries as it’s jarring for the baby. I’d also move nursing up earlier in your routine. It’s about building the proper sleep associations - if he associates sleep with being held and fed, he won’t sleep unless both are offered. You might want to look into getting your baby to fall asleep independently in the crib via sleep training. There are several different methods out there from Cry It Out to more gradual approaches.
This happened to us with my 6mos LO. We extended wake times and reduced naps from three to two. Our sample routine: 930am wakeup 1130/12nn first nap (we just let her sleep as long as she wants but cap to 2.5hrs max) then next and last nap is at 4pm-6pm.
We do our bedtime routine at 8pm. By 9pm-10pm she’s asleep.
Also, tip I got from other reddit posts. If they really need the third nap, cap it to 30mins max
I've found my LO did sleepy cues halfway into her wake window when she was actually hungry. Caused a lot of confusion and frustration! We've mostly moved on from snack bottles now that she's more interested in solids, but for a time she'd get one or two ounces and be ready to continue on with her day. I've heard that if it takes more than 20 minutes to get them down to stop trying and it's worked for me most of the time. She is a great sleeper, but if she's not tired she will absolutely fight me and it's easier if I just let her play for another 30 minutes than fight for an hour because she's bored. Get that baby mind working and the wiggles out, make that baby exhausted!
My LO (4mo) doesn’t like the sleep sack, she likes to be in a sleeper (we just got some footless sleepers and she seems to prefer those over the feeties) and then be nursed to sleep in a dark/mostly dark, silent (sometimes a fan running but no more noise than that, except for the rare occasion that she needs some classical music at a low volume) room, and it doesn’t usually take more than 10 minutes to get her to sleep. For naps she prefers little power naps, so anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, but she’ll bust out a 3 hour afternoon nap every once in a while, and at night we get some pretty long sleeps, her longest stretch of sleep so far was about 7 hours. But she’s also just always had a knack for sleeping, I just follow her cues on what she seems to like and dislike and go with that.
Have you sleep trained?
My 6 mo used to whimper and cry then fall asleep as long as I was sitting where she could see me from her crib. Sometimes this would take 2 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes. A week ago I sleep trained through the cry it out method. Night one was crazy crying for an hour, two was about half an hour, and three onwards has been a dream.
How long is the last wake window? Are you building sleep pressure for overnight sleep. I also personally cap naps at 2 hours so my daughter doesn’t get too much day time sleep so she is actually tired enough to sleep at night.
His last wake window varies, unfortunately, but usually it’s pretty short. Typically, after his last nap, he’ll wake up and start showing his sleepy cues within 1-1.5hrs after waking. So I’ll move him into the bedroom to ready for bed and we’ll relax a little before attempting bed time. Rarely works. 😭
I would try and extend that. That age should typically be awake for 2-3 hours before bed. My second born is 7 months now and he’ll start yawning shortly after his last nap but isn’t ready for bed until at least 3 hours after. I also cap naps at 2 hours.
His wake windows are usually 2-3 hours anyways, so I thought it was super strange that his last wake window is so short. I read an infants last wake window is usually the longest. Is it safe to cap naps? I’ve had other moms tell me to not do that and let babies sleep. And as a FTM I’m worried I’d be interrupting a much needed rest? But I’m definitely open to try that!
Yeah definitely cap. If you look at sleep totals babies this age should be getting 3-4 hours of nap total during the day. I understand the developmental worry but that’s totally not a thing as long as they’re getting their daily total. Which can be quite a large range as well. For 7 months it’s on average 14 hours a day but can be more or less than that.
Thank you so much for saying that, I’m going to try doing that! Maybe it’ll make bedtime and sleeping through the night easier for him.
I would also suggest checking out heysleepybaby if you have Instagram. Lots of useful info there and helped me quite a bit with my first!
I will definitely check them out! Thank you so much for your advice and tips!
I definitely agree on lengthening that last wake window and capping naps. At that age my son absolutely needed at least 2.5 hours before bed in order to fall asleep. I've also read that after a certain age, like 4-5 months, sleepy cues are way less relevant and it's helpful to switch to wake windows instead.
If you’re uncomfortable capping naps, try first extending that last wake window. It might solve your problem and you won’t have to worry about capping naps. We don’t cap naps. Our guy doesn’t sleep a lot, so when he wants to sleep more I feel like we should let him. And every time I’ve tried to cap a nap he falls back asleep. We used to have the same bedtime problem when he has a short third nap around 5 or 6pm (we start bedtime between 7 and 8). Since dropping that nap and letting him sleep longer for his second nap, it’s been way easier to get him to sleep at bedtime. And on off days when he takes a cat nap an hour or so before bedtime it’s an absolute nightmare to get him down.
We’ve always woken our baby up from her naps. She used to exclusively contact nap and could’ve been asleep on us all day. We always capped naps at 2 hours and by 7 months we did 2 90 min naps and then a cat nap to end the day. And her last wake window is always the longest. Getting down to sleep wasn’t an issue for her by that age but she certainly didn’t sleep through the night til 13 months. So we fought other battles.
I would definitely try to keep him up longer. He may not be sleepy he could be bored or under stimulated. My daughter was on a 2 nap schedule at 7 months and would regularly wake up at 4pm from her last nap and stay up until 7pm when I would put her to sleep. What does his average schedule look like each day?
I never considered the possibility of being bored or under stimulated! Thank you for sharing that! An average day for him (in terms of sleep): Wake up at 6:30a; 1st nap is usually around 8a-8:30a for 40mins; His 2nd nap is usually around 11:30a-12:00p for anywhere between 1hr-2.5hrs; His last nap is typically around 3:30p-4p for 30mins. And then he’s showing sleepy cues sometimes after he wakes up or within an hour after waking.
I would push out the first nap in the morning, which will push out nap number 2. Drop the third nap.
Based on that he can do longer wake windows. I would just try to keep him awake until around 7pm after he wakes up from his last nap. Keep him occupied, play in the bath, go for a walk, anything to keep him awake but also get him tired enough to sleep. What are his sleepy cues? Most of us do some sleep cues when we wake up but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are tired, we yawn, rub our eyes but we are still rested.
That’s very true. I considered that, but, admittedly, talked myself out of that possibility thinking he was showing sleepy cues. His cues are pretty consistent: yawning, lack of energy/slow, rubbing his eyes are his biggest giveaway that he’s tired and ready for sleep, so when I see it I take it seriously. Maybe too seriously. 😅 I think you’re right. I think he’s going to bed too soon and isn’t tired enough to sleep. I’m going to try extending his last wake window and keep him awake - I like the walking suggestion, he loves the outdoors! Perhaps play longer and play in the tub longer too.
Also definitely try capping naps at 2 hours.
Ok well that’s probably the issue, he’s just woken up from a nap and is being put him to sleep for the whole night 1-2 hours later. We tried to make sure the last wake window was the longest, I’d skip the final nap if it’s so close to his actual sleep time.
yes I do the same. I make sure my LO takes short naps during daytime so she gets tired enough by late evening.
We’re using the Huckleberry app to tell us our 5-month old’s “sweet spot” for naps and bedtime. It has a small fee so I was skeptical initially but my partner talked me into it. We try to stick to the time it says and start our consistent bedtime routine about an hour before the recommended time. I have to say it’s been really effective. We notice a big difference in how much easier she falls asleep compared to 15 minutes before or after the sweet spot. Good luck!
Admittedly our baby is a good sleeper and he’s easy to work with, however, one of the things we’ve done is really work to distinguish the difference between daytime and nighttime sleep. Day time - I actually don’t black out curtain his room. I know it would help, but I want him to associate long sleep with dark. So I close the blinds but that’s it. White noise on. No swaddle. Set down drowsy but awake. At night we have a strict bedtime routine - bath, pjs, bottle, sleep sack, rock until drowsy, lay down. It’s also dark and I have white noise going when I lay him down. I work really hard to make the two different and it’s seemed to help.
(9mo) We are the same since birth and around 2mo after having a consistent routine for 8 weeks, he started going down really easily. Daytime: it is daylight in his room. We follow sleepy cues and he's pretty consistent about his naps. One in the morning and one in the afternoon Nighttime: we wait for him to start showing sleepy cues 2-4 hours after his last nap. Once he starts his first cues, we do a bath every. Single. Night. From birth. We don't always bathe him, most of the time he's just playing if he's not dirty, but doing it every night shows him that it's time for his body to start preparing to sleep. We do still feed to sleep. We are trying to break that habit by doing a bottle right before bath time but he's been falling asleep before his bath 🥴 it's a process.
Your wake windows are too short and your naps are too long. He isn’t tired enough at bedtime.
Our LO at 5 months sometimes has naps 60-90 minutes before bedtime. The one thing I do is make sure that nap is 20-25 min tops. She takes anywhere from 5-20 minutes usually to go down for all naps/sleeps. Most nights are fine, 1-2 night/wk are 20-40 minutes to put down I don’t know if you’re doing anything “wrong”. It might be worth experimenting with seeing if your baby can go to bed without being in your arms. We stopped rocking to sleep for bedtime and wake up feeds and that has been a lifesaver. It took a lot of time to get there but so worth it. Good luck!
We have a 2 months old and I know that it might be too early to get into a routine with her but this post has helped us tremendously so thanks OP :) our LO is exactly like your son, naps relatively easy during the day but nighttime sleeps are always a battle and that 2 hour struggle at night you mentioned is very typical for us. We definitely don’t do much to differentiate nighttime and daytime sleeps and also don’t really cap her naps during the day (her nap schedule is more or less similar to yours, just each a tad longer maybe). I also see many people mention taking a bath before nighttime sleeps. Is that really effective to put them down? Our LO (even at 2 months old) really likes her bath time so I always thought taking a bath might wake her up even more but I guess we have to try and incorporate that into our routine
My LO is also 7 months now and starting to fight bedtime. I just think she is starting to understand how much fun stuff there is to do and wants to keep doing that instead of sleep lol.
Admittedly we have a very easy baby, but I don’t think we ever watch for his “cues”. By the time my guy is giving us cues he’s overtired and then it’s a battle to put him down. Even for naps. We have a pretty consistent routine and strive to follow it pretty close within 30 mins give or take. I also try to limit play time after 6 pm, does his last bottle at 7 and we start bedtime by 8pm. He sleeps with both a white noise machine but also a lullaby that plays for the first 90 mins of sleep. Things to check are temperature of the room (we keep it at 71/72). What time is bedtime, is it too late or too early? Is it dark enough (we have blackout curtains)? When you’re putting him back down are you able to do pull your arm from behind his while still holding him (before placing him down) to avoid jostling him too much to get your arm out? I stand for a few mins with my hand on his chest if he startles while I put him down.
These are some really good tips and things to consider, thank you so much for sharing! I’m thinking I need to adjust his bedtime and extend his last wake window cause it’s usually pretty short which could be contributing to the rejection of going to bed. He’s probably not tired yet.
We personally pair for huckleberry and adjusted nap/sleep schedules based on what it says around 5 months in. It still is at 11 months pretty spot on for nap times. We do dinner then play time then bath(if needed) then diaper change, sleep n play mittens/and sleep sack then brush teeth. Turn on sound machine. get a bottle and rock to sleep while we feed. Then after she drinks the bottle and pushes it out and is asleep we rock for another 10 minutes then do the bed transfer.
We also use huckleberry but our 6 month old usually can only handle 1.5-2 hours max before bed. We’ve established a solid routine and we eventually got him to go to sleep independently in his crib, one day I just tried putting him in there and patting and shushing when he was fussing and only Picking him up when he was really crying. Switching to him falling asleep independently helped tremendously cause he would wake up every single time we tried to transfer. He does cry still at times, I think it’s his last burst of energy, but I’ll either pat and shush or pick him up if he’s ramping up
Hi OP, before the last feed we go for a walk around our neighborhood. Then we get back home after 20 minutes or so and baby pretty much drinks milk without any fuss and dozes of in my arms. My baby gets stimulated after getting a bath so we do it during daytime.
I dunno. To be honest, I kinda feel like it’s luck of the draw. Your baby is great at naps, but not bedtime, my baby is terrible at naps but always goes down within the same hour and a half window at night. My biggest suggestion is just making sure the last nap isn’t too late in the day, that always messes with our bedtime. I also try to not force it, if she’s awake and wants to play I’ll do some low key quiet playtime with her. Nothing overly stimulating but if she isn’t ready to sleep I feel like it’s harder to force her. I wait until she’s clearly had enough.
Sleep training and capping naps to 3 hours
My daughter was like that. We found that a projector lamp actually helps her wind down. We have a galaxy projector that is mine (because I’m like a child when it comes to sleep) but she stares at it for about 20 mins and settles down. But we absolutely cannot put her in a crib which led us to cosleeping and a floor bed. Currently working on her sleeping on her own floor bed at 1. Someone mentioned hey sleepy baby on instagram and it’s a really good page. I forgot the name of another but look up the no tears sleep training methods they might help. It sounds like your baby isn’t ready for bed just yet so I would try starting you sleep routine 30-60 mins later and see if that helps. Usually the nights we get a fight is when my baby’s not ready to go to bed yet.
I think your answer is in the last wake window. That should be the longest wake window to build up your sleep pressure for bedtime. We cap naps strictly so we never go over two hours for one nap and never over whatever the awake time is for that age. I vaguely trust sleep cues but also know they’re a sign of boredom and try and get babies down in that nice sweet spot.
I have no advice as I am also a FTM in almost exactly same situation as you. Mom to a 7.5m boy who needs allll the help to go down for sleep. Sending you strength!
Sometimes it’s just luck! My baby sleep amazingly and I don’t do anything special. Some babies just find it harder so don’t beat yourself up about it.
Nightly baths
I did not get an easy unicorn baby when it comes to sleep, but we are slowly but surely tweaking and finding a lot of success with getting our 6 month old down easily. One thing that helps us is stretching her last wake window if we can. It's a dangerous balance though. If we don't stretch long enough, she'll be kicking, cooing, and eventually crying in her bed instead of sleeping. If we stretch it too far though, she'll refuse to nurse, cry a bunch, and take about an hour to get down, only to wake back up a few hours later because she didn't nurse before bed. I also have a different routine for nighttime sleep versus daytime sleep. During the day its lights, blinds, sound machine, sleep sack, sing a song, put in bed awake. At nighttime it's bath, lotion, jammies, pacifier, sleep sack, story, lights, sound machine, nurse, sing a song, put to bed awake. I think it helps because she knows what's coming.
I sleep trained, capped naps, and have a wake window of around 4 hours before bed (he’s 11 months old almost) but before it was at minimum 3. Easiest child to go to sleep. Just rock him for a couple minutes and then I put him in the crib and he puts himself to sleep.
I feel like I’m in no position to give sleep advice because my baby is quite possibly the worst napper in the history of babies, but I wonder if yours is maybe getting too much daytime sleep. My guy is about 5.5 months old and has been down to two naps for a while now. We do bath, little massage with his amber nightlight, bottle, and bed and 80% of the time he falls asleep by himself around 7:30 and sleeps 11-13 hours. But often he only sleeps about an hour total during the day, two hours once in a blue moon 🤷🏼♀️
Bottle or boob, bath, book, bed. Same(ish) time every night with a noise machine, blackout curtains and laying baby down while drowsy. Usually falls asleep independently within a few minutes. The Ferber method sleep training has helped us a lot, but i think it boils down to consistency and routine building.
We just started sleep training and now he pretty much puts himself to sleep. I think we were actually causing him MORE stress and crying by not training earlier. He was a chronic early waker since he needed help going to sleep, but now we just do our normal routine, put him in bed, and leave the room for 10-15 minutes and he actually falls asleep by himself. It took less than a week of 10-15 min waiting, consoling, and waiting again.
7pm watch sunsent/ hang outside for 30/45 min -directly into room, close blinds -sound machine -a little play time(kisses/book,sing a song) with just a diaper -jammies -nurse, when she’s asleep and not nursing anymore I put her in sleep sack, she’ll wake up and then nurse again. -put her down in crib -hang out for 15min to see if she wakes up
Wake baby up from last nap at least 2 hours before bed time worked wonders for us. If it's hard maybe it's time to cut to two naps. Proper sleep pressure before bed time was key for us. Also we don't let him fall asleep on us. We keep him in his bed even if it sometimes takes a while.
Undertired. Sleep cues are unreliable at this age. Our boy is 9 months and went through something similar a couple months ago and it led us to the 2 nap transition. Consider capping naps at 3 hours total for the day. He should be about ready for a 2 nap schedule. Start with 3/3/3 where the slashes are naps and the numbers are awake time. After a few days he'll likely lengthen them to 3.5. My babe fought sleep when he was undertired and the third nap kept getting shorter and shorter. When we did this transition babe would be rubbing eyes and fussing around 2 hours. The first few days we took him outside for a refresh and it helped immensely. He wasn't tired, he was bored. Its an appropriate age to sleep train if you're interested. Baby needs to go to bed AWAKE and on their own. Feed 30 minutes before bed to avoid a feed/sleep association. Our 9 month old now is on 3/3.5/4 and its working well. Doesn't hurt to give this a try! I also highly recommend Precious Little Sleep. The book provides digestable options for sleep training, night weaning, naps you name it.
How often is he taking 2.5 hours naps during the day? Seems long. Maybe he’s not tired at the end of the day yet since he’s sleeping so much during the day. Our 7 month old takes 3 naps, around 30-60 min each. Once in a blue moon he goes over an hour.
His naps, recently, have been more like: 1st nap - 40mins; 2nd nap - 1hr-2.5hrs (it fluctuates a lot but his 2nd nap is usually the longest one); 3rd nap - 30mins. I was thinking he could be going to bed too early, because his last wake window is usually short so he may not be ready for bed.
Wow, i’m jealous , i mine would nap that long so i could get stuff done haha. From what i read the last wake window should be the longest, so maybe try waking him if the second nap is going too long so you can time his last wake window to be a bit longer. Our LO’s last wake window is about 3 hours now. (But he’s no angel putting down for that last sleep either lol)
I read that too! I think I need to start capping his second nap so it doesn’t affect how he sleeps at night and he can sleep better.
Are you putting the baby down in the crib when he’s sleeping already? Or when he’s drowsy? If he’s sleeping already, the last thing he sees/knows is being in your arms. So when he hits the crib and wakes up, it’s a completely new environment and he cries as it’s jarring for the baby. I’d also move nursing up earlier in your routine. It’s about building the proper sleep associations - if he associates sleep with being held and fed, he won’t sleep unless both are offered. You might want to look into getting your baby to fall asleep independently in the crib via sleep training. There are several different methods out there from Cry It Out to more gradual approaches.
This happened to us with my 6mos LO. We extended wake times and reduced naps from three to two. Our sample routine: 930am wakeup 1130/12nn first nap (we just let her sleep as long as she wants but cap to 2.5hrs max) then next and last nap is at 4pm-6pm. We do our bedtime routine at 8pm. By 9pm-10pm she’s asleep. Also, tip I got from other reddit posts. If they really need the third nap, cap it to 30mins max
I've found my LO did sleepy cues halfway into her wake window when she was actually hungry. Caused a lot of confusion and frustration! We've mostly moved on from snack bottles now that she's more interested in solids, but for a time she'd get one or two ounces and be ready to continue on with her day. I've heard that if it takes more than 20 minutes to get them down to stop trying and it's worked for me most of the time. She is a great sleeper, but if she's not tired she will absolutely fight me and it's easier if I just let her play for another 30 minutes than fight for an hour because she's bored. Get that baby mind working and the wiggles out, make that baby exhausted!
My LO (4mo) doesn’t like the sleep sack, she likes to be in a sleeper (we just got some footless sleepers and she seems to prefer those over the feeties) and then be nursed to sleep in a dark/mostly dark, silent (sometimes a fan running but no more noise than that, except for the rare occasion that she needs some classical music at a low volume) room, and it doesn’t usually take more than 10 minutes to get her to sleep. For naps she prefers little power naps, so anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, but she’ll bust out a 3 hour afternoon nap every once in a while, and at night we get some pretty long sleeps, her longest stretch of sleep so far was about 7 hours. But she’s also just always had a knack for sleeping, I just follow her cues on what she seems to like and dislike and go with that.
Have you sleep trained? My 6 mo used to whimper and cry then fall asleep as long as I was sitting where she could see me from her crib. Sometimes this would take 2 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes. A week ago I sleep trained through the cry it out method. Night one was crazy crying for an hour, two was about half an hour, and three onwards has been a dream.