6-Month-old and Naps/schedule

Yours sounds pretty good, but I also recommend "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". At 6 months my kids were both still taking 3 naps. You might want to stop making her hold out until 9 am for her morning nap. If she's waking at 6 she's probably ready earlier. When my daughter dropped her 3rd nap (at around 9 months) she'd be up at 6 am for the day, and she'd be down for her morning nap by 8am! She'd sleep until 9:30 or so, and then be ready for nap #2 around noon. Then since there was no 3rd nap, she'd go to bed for the night at 6 pm. If you're trying to get rid of nap #3, try shifting everything earlier and move her bedtime to 6 pm (I know it sounds crazy, but if she gets up at 6 am, it will probably work.) So you'd have morning nap at 8 am, afternoon nap at noon and bedtime at 6. Dr. Weissbluth recommends shorter periods of "awake" time in the morning and longer ones in the afternoon. Hope this helps!

Try an earlier bedtime... it might get her to actually sleep a bit later in the morning, thus making the entire nap schedule a bit easier.

Good luck!
J.
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Hi R.,

1. You're absolutely fine in trying to get the baby on a schedule. Many don't believe so, but I'm a big believer in schedules. My son is now 5; I started the schedule thing when he was about 2 months old & it worked well. I needed the schedule because I needed to hug, hold & nurse him before going to work, & had the same need after getting back from work. I absolutely did not want to be the weekend mom whereby I'd come home in the evening & he's already asleep. I asked my mother-in-law to help me in sticking to the schedule as I got back to work after my maternity leave. At the beginning she did not believe in it until my son's biological clock got used to it. At that point he was like Big Ben with his naps. Of course you have to remember that the schedule is relative; it's not exact time, it's always plus/minus but certainly around the same time every day.

2. Every baby is different with respect to what soothes them & helps them learn how to fall asleep. It looks like your daughter found her nitch. My son LOVED the motion-activated music toy that hung safely on the crib. The one we had/still have :o) would play very soft & soothing tunes & it had very slow moving stars that looked like falling stars. So I used to nurse him & put him in his crib even if he wasn't asleep yet (most of the times he fell asleep in my arms). I'd turn on the music & he'll listen for a bit, sometimes "sing" with it, & fall asleep shortly after. It's the cutest thing!

I hope that helps. Best of Luck & enjoy the baby :o)

At 6 months, my first child was waking around 6:30, taking the first nap at 9:00, taking the second nap at 1:00 and then going to bed at 6:30. In our house, we chose to teach our son how to self-soothe so he wouldn't rely on us to put him to bed all the time. In doing so, he would go down drowsy but awake and fall asleep on his own with no crying.

A book you may wish to consult is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth. He is a Chicago area pediatrician who specializes in infant/child sleep issues with over 30 years of specific research. The book will likely answer a lot of your questions and help you make sense of what's going on in your baby's sleep schedule.

My kids were on a very similar schedule at that age. My theory was that a schedule too rigid was no good, but a schedule with some flexibility for both baby and mom works the best.

Be very careful about nursing or lying down with the baby to get them to sleep. If you want to do this and it works for YOU, great, but just be forewarned that you might be doing it for YEARS to come (I have many friends still doing this with 3, 4 and 5 year olds).

There's a great book, I think its called the 'baby whisperer' and in it, you learn to look for the first signs of tiredness - bored, starring off in the distance, rubbing ears/eyes, yawns, etc - and you put the baby to bed straight away (fed & changed). I read it after my 2nd child was born (oh to have it for my first....)

Anyway, my son would lie in his bed a few minutes and then fall asleep on his own. It was a miracle! He also loved having a cloth diaper (which smelled like breastmilk) up around his face to snuggle with. With my first, I didn't know these tricks, and I would wait until she was overtired. At which point I would nurse her, rock her, etc.only to have her wake right up after I put her down.

The only time I would suggest waking her up is that afternoon nap. Let her sleep long enough so that she is tired again at bedtime.

My children had a nap routine, but no schedule. Both at home and at daycare, the children set their own schedule until age 1.

My children took 2-3 naps at that age. One after breakfast around 10 am for 40 minutes. One after lunch, around noon for an hour or so and one around 2:30 for an hour. However both transitioned to 2 naps with the afternoon ones merging.

I nursed my children down when I put them to bed or when I saw they were getting sleepy, but often they just fell asleep on their own.

I have a 5,5 month old and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child has been the best book ever with sound expert advice IMO. My baby is still exclusively breast fed (has a bottle a couple of times with daddy on the weekends with expressed milk.) We transitioned him from a co-sleeper alongside our bed to his own crib/nursery at 5 weeks, purely because we found he slept better and longer on his own than with us. I thought I was going to be AP all the way, but realized early on it was not going to be sustainable or sane for me :). (The co-sleeping part, and wearing your baby all day part.)

Bedtime is usually between 6pm and 7pm, he'll typically wake for 1-2 (2 max) feedings per night and then wakes up between 7am & 8am. HSHHC says not to let him go past 7am, but sometimes I enjoy that little lie-in so I go with it :). I usually have him back for a nap within 1,5 hours, never more than 2. If your LO is waking at 6am, she probably needs to go down pretty quickly because she needs an extension of her night sleep. On the night feedings note, I will speak to my ped about weaning him because I know he definitely can go 8-9 hours without food, he's done it a lot in the past, and as I say, he's breast-fed. I don't agree with moms who make blanket statements about these children needing to eat more often. My son is 75-90% for weight (97% for height), so he's always grown quite well without needing to be fed every 2 hours at night.

For the rest of the day I don't have specific times for my boy to nap, because it depends on how long he napped for. Anything less than 45 minutes I don't consider a restorative sleep so I'll watch him closely and re-nap him if he rubs his eyes, even if he's only been awake half an hour. But generally I try to keep within the 2 hours of wakefulness recommendation. He often needs a 3rd nap, but if he goes down at 4pm and is still sleeping at 6pm I'll wake him (switch on lights, be a little noisier, so he rouses himself) so that I can play with him, feed him, do his bedtime routine, and have him down again by 7:30 at the latest. We were just recovering from jetlag so I think that is why he was taking longer 3rd naps, and I didn't want them to be part of his night sleep and up at 4am for the day!

How do I put him down? When I notice his drowsy signals, OR we're closing in on that 2 hours of wakefulness window (whichever comes sooner) I feed him if necessary, speak quietly and gently, make sure he's got a clean dry diaper, sing him a little song, swaddle him (I want to transition him out of that soon but he has a strong sleep association with it for now), pop him in his crib, sometimes put the mobile on for a short wind-up, and walk out and close the door. Sometimes he'll giggle at the mobile, then silence. Sometimes he'll fuss a little bit. Sometimes he'll fuss more loudly. I leave him in there and eventually he'll drop off. I know he's fine, and 90% of the time he self soothes with no problem. If he does cry quite a bit and for a long time (say 20 minutes) I'll go in and rock him a bit, and try popping him down again. As a LAST resort I'll nurse him to make him sleepy. Even at night feedings I'll change the diaper last so that he will self-soothe back to sleep.

I hope that all helps. I will also say that I recognize babies have different temperaments and some are more demanding than others, so you have to figure out what works for you. My son felt very high maintenance in the beginning weeks, but he's pretty peaceful now. IMO this is partly temperament and partly because since finding the HSHHC book I have been super vigilant about periods of wakefulness, quiet & motionless sleep, and trying to get him on track to self-soothe. He is very amiable and alert when he's awake, and hardly ever cries. I wish you all the best with your little girl.

P.S. If you are in the Chicago area, the author of the book has his offices in the city, I believe.