When did your babies start staying up longer?

My girls have been sick all week, but they've also decided that instead of our "two hours up, two hours down (yea right)", they're wanting to stay up for 3 sometimes 4 hours at a time. What's with this? Is it because they're sick and can't sleep or is it because they're 6 months old and they've reached the point of not napping every two hours? They still sleep fine at night, nothing has changed there.

 

Mine have been staying awake longer since last week...when they turned 2 months old!

 

Maybe they are ready to move to 3 naps a day instead of up every 2 hours, down for 2 hours. At 6 months old my girls woke up early and stayed up for 1 hour before taking a 1 hour nap. Then they stayed up for about 2.5 hours and took a 1.5 hour nap. After getting up from that nap about 3 hours later they took a 3rd 1 hour nap.

 

I think at 6 months, I think they are definitely old enough to be up longer than 2 hours at a time. So, probably it's just their age & they are going to start being awake longer now. Might be time to move to a regular 3 nap a day schedule!

 

I like Aimee's suggestion about going to 3 naps a day. I bet that will help the awake time during the day.

 

Can anyone give some examples of their 3 nap a day schedules? Thanks!

 

Here's what we were doing around 6 months:

7am Nurse
8:30-10am Nap
10am Nurse
11:30-1pm Nap
1pm Nurse
2:30-4pm Nap
4pm Nurse
5-6pm Dinner (Practice Solids)
7pm Baths
7:30 Nurse & bed

Or course, every day was subject to change. Some days they would only nap for 45 minutes and some days for 2 hours. Also, if I venture out, we go right after the first nap. That keeps them up longer and then we just push back the next two naps (sometimes now they only get one afternoon nap if we're out for awhile).

Hope that helps!