almost 7 months and a few questions

Hi everyone! Had a few questions and wondered if you could help..

1. What do you do about diapers at night? Mine soak through so we end up putting them to bed around 6 and then changing them again around 10 at night so they don't get soaked.. I'm worried we're disrupting their sleep...

2. When did you start sippy cups? We are thinking of trying soon...

3. We are stuck with this 5:45am wake up and eat thing because we leave for work (I work part-time) at 6am to get them to their babysitter... we try to feed them around 5:45 and get out the door by 6:20. We get to where we need to go around 6:45am. Is there another solution to this? I'm wondering if we could wait to give them breakfast when they get there (bottles and food).. do you think this is too long for them to wait to eat their first meal? We just wonder if we will ever be able to sleep past 5:45 am again!!!!


4. any ideas why the morning nap is starting to fade? They seem too young for this, though they do sleep 12 hours per night, so maybe they just aren't tired

5. how long is the span of time that your babies can comfortably stay awake during the day before being put down to sleep?? mine are maxed out around 2 hours


thanks!

 

1.Mine go to bed 830-9. I change them at mid night. Then they sleep still 7. We change them first thing in the morning. Sometimes, I change then at 3 when they got heavy

2. Thinking about it. I guess will do this weekend

3.I have no help here. Mine kids stay home with nanny. Their first bottles at at 730-830

4.We still have 3 naps in the day. They sleep 10-12hrs at night, 3-4 hrs for naps. But some days they cat nap though

5.90mins to 2 hrs awake.if I don't put them in bed they will get fussy.

Btw, mine will be 7 months this sat (5 month adjusted).

 

What size diapers are they in? We have been using Huggies Overnight diapers for quite awhile. But, they don't start until size 4. We were using them starting around 18-19 lbs, though, and they worked well even though they say 22 lbs. We put them on them about 7pm and they are usually changed about 6:30am. Every once in awhile they leak through, but not often.

If those are too big, we used size 3 Pampers Baby Dry diapers before that.

We started sippy cups of water around 7-8 months.

Our boys are early risers - almost always up by 6am. I think we started this by having to get them up at 6am for DH to go to work (I wanted him to help me feed them before he left). We haven't had much success getting them to sleep later - sometimes they will go to 6:30 or 7am on weekends, but it is hit or miss. You could TRY to wait on their food until they get to where they are going. Or, give them one or the other - bottle or food - and wait on the other until you get to the babysitter. Our boys get their first bottle around 6:30 or 6:45
even though they usually wake by 6am, and then they get their breakfast of solids around 8:15am.

You could try making their bedtime 15-30 minutes later and see if that helps them sleep longer.

Our guys are doing this, too, and have been for some time. However, they have always been catnappers - at least 2-3 days a week they will only take two 30-minute naps. And they only sleep 11 hours at night. It drives me crazy!! It helped some when I pushed their morning nap back by 30-60 minutes. They don't seem to have any trouble staying up the extra time, and then they will sleep sometimes more than a catnap. I keep wondering if they are trying to drop to one nap, but they seem really young for that.

Our boys are 10 months. Sometimes they are sleepy after 2 hours, sometimes they easily go 4 hours. When they were 7 months, they were mostly still tired after 2.5 or 3 hours. I'm not sure we're a good measure, though, because our guys do not seem to need as much sleep as other babies their age. They usually only sleep 12-13 hours a day total. Sometimes they will hit 14 hours, but not very often.

 

1. What do you do about diapers at night? Mine soak through so we end up putting them to bed around 6 and then changing them again around 10 at night so they don't get soaked.. I'm worried we're disrupting their sleep...
I think that if you aren't disturbing them now, its not a huge deal. But, my guys are big wetters so I put them in a size up for diapers.

2. When did you start sippy cups? We are thinking of trying soon...
We started them around the 6 month mark. My guys never did grasp the concept of tipping it up to get water, so the straw sippy cups work best for us. they now get angry if there isn't a sippy cup on the ground that they can go to.

3. We are stuck with this 5:45am wake up and eat thing because we leave for work (I work part-time) at 6am to get them to their babysitter... we try to feed them around 5:45 and get out the door by 6:20. We get to where we need to go around 6:45am. Is there another solution to this? I'm wondering if we could wait to give them breakfast when they get there (bottles and food).. do you think this is too long for them to wait to eat their first meal? We just wonder if we will ever be able to sleep past 5:45 am again!!!!
My guess is that they are just so used to the routine right now. I know my guys went through a long phase of them waking up really early.

4. any ideas why the morning nap is starting to fade? They seem too young for this, though they do sleep 12 hours per night, so maybe they just aren't tired
I think that 6 months is much too young for the morning nap to completely disappear, HOWEVER, maybe just a shorter morning nap is required right now. I would stay consistent and keep putting them down in hopes that they will get the idea soon.

5. how long is the span of time that your babies can comfortably stay awake during the day before being put down to sleep?? mine are maxed out around 2 hours
Sounds right to me. 2 hours awake, down for a nap, 2 hours awake, down for a nap. I think it was around the 6.5-7 month mark that I could keep them up from their morning nap until their afternoon nap for longer than just 2 hours. It was at that time that they would stay awake for about 4 hours before bed.

 

1. What do you do about diapers at night? Mine soak through so we end up putting them to bed around 6 and then changing them again around 10 at night so they don't get soaked.. I'm worried we're disrupting their sleep...
We use Fisher Price Happy Days and Nights. They work very well. We stopped changing them in the middle of the night around 5 months and have only had two incidents of leakage. My SIL used a size up at night for her son to prevent leaks. You might want to try that if you don't want to change diaper brands.

2. When did you start sippy cups? We are thinking of trying soon...
We started right around six months with water. The girls are really good at holding the cups and getting them to their mouths, but they're still working on the sucking action. I've given them water and drinkable yogurt in them with success. The first time I tried with formula (about two weeks ago) did not go well.

3. We are stuck with this 5:45am wake up and eat thing because we leave for work (I work part-time) at 6am to get them to their babysitter... we try to feed them around 5:45 and get out the door by 6:20. We get to where we need to go around 6:45am. Is there another solution to this? I'm wondering if we could wait to give them breakfast when they get there (bottles and food).. do you think this is too long for them to wait to eat their first meal? We just wonder if we will ever be able to sleep past 5:45 am again!!!!
My girls are just now starting to get past the early wake up phase. They were waking at 5 and even 4:30. I could usually let them "talk" to each other for nearly an hour, so I could at least pretend to be getting a little more rest before the day started. They are finally sleeping a little longer and waking at 6:15 or 6:45.

You might consider giving them a partial bottle before you leave and the rest when you get to the babysitter. Then you could slowly get rid of it. Though as PP said, you may have to work through the early morning phase.


5. how long is the span of time that your babies can comfortably stay awake during the day before being put down to sleep?? mine are maxed out around 2 hours
I agree with PP. Two hours was about all my girls could take for the longest time. We had a great routine of eat, play, sleep for their three naps. And mine aren't stellar nappers--having 30 to 45 minute naps at a time. Only lately have the naps started to extend past an hour.

 

1.) Diapers at night: Once they were sttn, I never interrupted them. If they woke of course and I could tell by their cries they needed me, I went in, and ultimately would check their diaper. My boys, especially Anthony, would soak through their diapers as they got older. I would suggest going up a size, or getting Huggie Overnight(or something similar) as others have suggested.

2.) Sippy cups: I gave them to the boys at six months old. The problem being-I didn't do it consistently. Rarely did I remember to give them a sippy cup. So it was probably closer to one where I consistently remembered to do so. They caught on pretty quick by then. For Annabella, I did it around 6/7 months and was pretty consistent about it. I started with the regular sippy cups, then moved onto straws.

3.) Have you tried not giving them that bottle until they got to daycare/caregiver, etc? What if you maybe put them in a highchair with Gerber puffs or something while you got ready? A little snack before they got to where they need to be?

4.) Two hours sounds about right before needing a nap. It really doesn't get much longer than that until a year old, and even that can change!

 

1. I don't change my boys diapers at night. They go from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sometimes they leak through but not often enough to do anything about it. I generally use Huggies or Target brand.

2. Sippy cups... good question. I just introduced it to my boys (who turned 8 months today) and they are clueless. I tried taking the valve out so the water would come out easier, but the proceeded to nearly drown one of them so I'm done with that for awhile.

3. My boys are early risers so 5:45 sounds right to me, unfortunately. They often don't get their morning bottle till 6:30 though and seem ok with it. I would just try some different things and see what works. If they can wait until the sitters, that would be easier for you! It won't hurt them to try it.

4. Up until the last week or so, my boys have consistently needed to go down for a nap about 1 3/4 hours after their last nap,with the exception of the first nap of the day. That always happened within an hour of waking up. I noticed recently though that that nap always was 45 minutes, so I started keeping them up a full two hours in the morning and now that morning nap has stretched to an hour or hour & 15 minutes. They are also mostly giving up the 3rd nap of the day and often are staying awake 4 hours before bedtime at 6:00 p.m.

Good luck!!

Lori

 

Sorry, my replies are mixed in with the quotw above!