My almost 4 month old has been gradually spacing out feedings and I am having a hard time figuring out the end of the day routine. Typically she eats somewhere between 5:30-6:30 and again one more time before going down for the evening. She used to nap between these two feedings but recently has begun to fight this last nap. Is it time to abandon it and keep her awake until she eats again around 7:30/8:30? Her typical wake time is 90 minutes during the day.
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I have no real answer, only sympathy. My 4.5mo has been such a bear in the evenings, so I've been trying harder to get her to take a good nap around 5pm. We don't have a solid bedtime, I try to allow DH to give her her final bottle (pumped, otherwise we ebf), when he gets home from work, but that varies from 5-7pm each night. Lately she's been a doll all day & then is super cranky just in time for the couple of hrs daddy is home to see her finally. It bums him out so much & then me, too. I keep trying to tell him it's not him, just "cranky time", but it's so hard to watch.
I guess if your LO is content & then eats & sleeps well the rest of the day & night it probably doesn't hurt? There are charts out there online about how much sleep babies need at different stages.
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@ldh112: What time does she wake.from.that nap before the one she is fighting?!
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@FaithFertility: her naps are still so short
30 minutes typically... So usually we are still following an eat-play-sleep routine with about 75-90 minutes of total awake time before a nap. I think we are just getting closer to more of a schedule now, as her bedtime is slowly becoming earlier. Currently she just awoke from a nap at 730 before we do it all again and she goes down for real around 9. Seems late, but it's working for her at the moment. Maybe one day we will have an earlier bedtime. I'd love to know how to get there!
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@GoGoSnoGirl: I totally understand the cranky time. He tries to put her down and she hates it! Tonight's nap (with him putting her down) went well for the first time in a while. I hear you on the varied bedtime. We still don't have an official time! I BF and supplement so we do that prior to bed but she won't stay down for the night until at least after 830-9pm. (With one wake up usually MOTN).
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We're doing a cat nap some evenings now. On an awesome day my 4mo will get up at 7, nap 9-10, 12-2, and 4-5, then go to bed at 7. But that doesn't always happen. We try to balance between bedtime needing to be two hours after her last nap and the fact that any nap that starts later than 4 or 5 gets her confused about nap vs bedtime. So for us the regular evening nap is gone now. But sometimes she needs a 20 or 30 minute power nap at 5 if her naps were short or early all day. Otherwise she eats at 5, then usually again at 6:30, then bedtime.
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@MrsSRS: Thanks for sharing. Her naps are so short all day - anything over 30 minutes is rare. I don't really know how to fix it. I'm hoping it fixes itself!
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@ldh112: I bet it will! This schedule of ours only settled in two weeks ago. However, DD does know how to resettle herself and link sleep cycles to stay asleep longer. DS didn't so he did really short naps for a really long time. It was sort of annoying, but it just meant we kept his awake times shorter so he stayed rested. Now he's a good sleeper.
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I would try to drop that nap and gradually get LO to bed earlier.
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@ldh112: DD has a HUGE catnapper it just fixed it's self over time!!!! Same with the earlier bed time!
30 minutes typically... So usually we are still following an eat-play-sleep routine with about 75-90 minutes of total awake time before a nap. I think we are just getting closer to more of a schedule now, as her bedtime is slowly becoming earlier. Currently she just awoke from a nap at 730 before we do it all again and she goes down for real around 9. Seems late, but it's working for her at the moment. Maybe one day we will have an earlier bedtime. I'd love to know how to get there!
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