sleep question

neither sttn and naps are going okay. the first morning nap is wonderful, 1-2 hours about 2 hours after waking at 7ish. second nap is around 1 or 2 and sometimes is 1-2 hours, sometimes not. i thought they were dropping the 3rd nap so i stopped putting them down unless the 2nd nap was less than a 1/2 hour or so and they were acting really tired. now im confused about the whole 3rd nap and if theyre still needing it or not. they get horrible from 4-6:30 when they go to bed. should i bump up bedtime, or throw in the 3rd nap around 4:30 again and put them to bed around 8? tia everyone!!

 

I've always been a person who would rather put my girls to bed earlier rather than later. I just love to have evenings to myself, it seems like by the end of the day I am so ready for some quiet time alone. I would just keep the 2 naps if possible since that's where they will definitely be in the next couple of months.

 

oh i love bedtime too lol. at around 3 im already counting down how many more hours i have to survive haha

 

def early bed-i really believe babies need this ; all my kids go to bed at 6:30pm; the boys are 6 and 3.5yrs and the twins-wake up time is 7am no earlier i dont let anyone downstairs unless its a hungry baby-boys stay in thier rooms til 7am-and the girls usually start waking around 6:30am

 

I would just maybe try pushing back the second nap. Here my girls' schedule:

7am-wake&bottle
9am-breakfast
10am-12:30 first nap
12:30 bottle
2:30-4:30 second nap
4:30 bottle
6:00 dinner
8:00 bottle&bedtime

They sleep through the night and don't get fussy/tired in the evenings. We tried moving the bedtime earlier but neither like sleeping longer than 11 hrs, so it just meant an earlier wake up time, which we didn't like. I don't think all babies benefit from the earlier bedtime...if they do get fussy I will let them take a 3rd 30-45 minute nap(this happens occasionally, maybe once a week or so). HTH!

 

I say, bump up the bedtime. Once mine dropped their 3rd nap, they went to bed at 5:30 on the nose. A minute later and they were completely overstimulated and harder to get down.

 

The only way I was able to get to two naps was by pushing the nap times back a little. We did this around 8 months and they went about 3 hours between naps. I didn't see much difference in their behavior when pushing it back, plus they slept a little longer. So most days it worked perfect getting them to their regular bedtime. They get up at 8, go down at 11 for the first nap and sleep to about 12:30, go down around 3:30 for the second - sleep til about 5 and go to bed at 8. So far this is the best schedule they've been on.

There were too many days where they just fought the third nap, but they were crabby and seemed to need it to get them to bedtime. I was tired of the stress of it everyday, wondering if they would sleep that day. So that's the clue I used to do a schedule change. But mine never took long naps like yours do (my son was 45 minutes tops), so it sounds like your schedule is working relatively ok. Maybe dropping the nap and moving up the bedtime is all you need to do.

 

I would push back the naps a little. 6:30 is already a pretty early bed time.

 

thank you everyone! i guess we'll try pushing naps back some and see if that works and keep our 7ish bedtime, if not ill keep naps and bump bedtime up to 6ish. now if i could just get them to sttn lol ...one day!

 

QUOTE(cottoncandysky @ Jan 24 2009, 10:14 PM) [snapback]1160956[/snapback]
thank you everyone! i guess we'll try pushing naps back some and see if that works and keep our 7ish bedtime, if not ill keep naps and bump bedtime up to 6ish. now if i could just get them to sttn lol ...one day!

I'm finding that their wake time nowadays is more like 2.5 hours, which means sometimes we have a thrid nap and sometimes we don't. If their first two naps are only an hour they will have a third, but if they are very long then they get sent to bed around 6:30.


Good luck!! You and I are in the same boat!! Mine have never slept through the night either.