Do I need to change my bedtime?

[fuzzylogic]

So, since it's summer, I tend to sleep later. I was getting up at 5:30 to get ready for work, but now that I'm out, I'm sleeping until 6:30 or 7. E seems to be following the same pattern.

Since bedtime has become a sudden new battlefield (last night she wasn't asleep for good until 9:30) and she's sleeping later in the morning, would it make sense then to move our bedtime later? Maybe she's just not ready for bed yet?

Examples of what she's doing instead of sleeping: "crawling" on me, looking around the room, distracted eating, bouncing in my lap, playing with my face, smiling, cooing, etc. etc. etc. 

I could easily make dinnertime later and push everything about 30 minutes to an hour later. No skin off my nose. What say you, experts at N15?

[allycat]

I question this too. Sometimes F is down for the count at 7; sometimes he naps at 5:30 and isn't ready for bed til after 8.

This kid is driving me nuts. See also: I JUST WANT ONE NIGHT OF SLEEP.

[winogirl]

Jun 15, 2016 9:45:37 GMT -5 allycat said:

I question this too. Sometimes F is down for the count at 7; sometimes he naps at 5:30 and isn't ready for bed til after 8.

This kid is driving me nuts. See also: I JUST WANT ONE NIGHT OF SLEEP.

this is us too. He went down at 7:15 last night and slept till 3am on the futon with me! I had to eat my dinner over him sleeping but it was totally worth it to get some sleep. 

[allycat]

Jun 15, 2016 9:53:57 GMT -5 winogirl said:

Jun 15, 2016 9:45:37 GMT -5 allycat said:

I question this too. Sometimes F is down for the count at 7; sometimes he naps at 5:30 and isn't ready for bed til after 8.

This kid is driving me nuts. See also: I JUST WANT ONE NIGHT OF SLEEP.

this is us too. He went down at 7:15 last night and slept till 3am on the futon with me! I had to eat my dinner over him sleeping but it was totally worth it to get some sleep. 

I wish I could get him to sleep til 3.

[catinatophat]

How does she nap? If she takes a late afternoon nap then I think pushing bed time makes sense but if she doesn't (or fights all naps in general) then I would think she might get overtired and be harder to put down. Also, we were up every two hours with Henry last night so take any sleep advice I give with a grain of salt.

[sunfrogger88]

You could definitely try it. It sounds like shes not tired at all. Give it a whirl!

[younglove316]

I would try it. From what you've described she doesn't seem likes she's ready for bed. Is she rubbing her eyes or anything like that?

[fuzzylogic]

Jun 15, 2016 12:26:00 GMT -5 younglove316 said:

I would try it. From what you've described she doesn't seem likes she's ready for bed. Is she rubbing her eyes or anything like that?

Yes. Sometime she falls asleep on the boob but then wakes up. It's like a nice little catnap for her.

I've tried drowsy awake but it isn't really working for us yet.

[yummeecookee]

What is her usual bedtime? 9.30 seems a bit late for a baby.

[themrsjrd]

Jun 15, 2016 13:57:50 GMT -5 yummeecookee said:

What is her usual bedtime? 9.30 seems a bit late for a baby.

Does it? I don't want to hijack the thread, but reading this (and some other things today) has me concerned that I put my baby to bed too late- anywhere from 9-10pm (realistically I don't think we would be able to put him to bed much earlier than this, though). He STTN, during the week I get him up at 6:30am and if I don't wake him, he usually will sleep until almost 8 =/ Do other people's kids take long naps in the day? He normally has one nap that's pretty long, a couple of hours, then one or two shorter ones an hour or less. I'm probably overanalyzing and should just leave things be....

[fuzzylogic]

@yummeecookie 9:40 was when she went to sleep. She got her bath at 7:15. We usually start bedtime between 7 and 7:15. The night before that she went to sleep a little after 9, after doing bedtime at 7:05.

I mean, should I just give up after a certain amount of time if she hasn't fallen asleep? She's nursing forever these days. Cluster feeding at night sometimes, too.

[yummeecookee]

I have to set a disclaimer that maybe I'm not the one to be doling out sleep advice seeing as C is up every 2 hours, still!
I just think about what happens as they get older and how you want them to have a bedtime routine and be getting enough hours of sleep per night. Just going off what I have seen with my DD, once she got to be an older baby and she was napping less, it was even more important that her bedtime was strict. No matter if she went to bed at 9pm or 7pm, she would still wake up around 6 - 6.30am. So we needed an early bedtime (7.30-8pm) to ensure she got enough sleep at night. Now the question is, how do you make your kid fall asleep earlier if they're not ready. That, I am not so sure about. Fuzzy - we start bed time around 715 also and C is usually passed out by 745-ish.

themrsjrd, sounds like your LO sleeps alot. I think you are lucky =) Mine does a long one at lunch but its only like an hour. Then he usually has 2 shorter naps, about 30min.

[fuzzylogic]

That's the thing -- we had bedtime down to a science about a month ago. She would be asleep in about 30 minutes. Now that she's learning and trying new things, she's more interested in doing that than sleeping! We have a routine. We've had a routine for months. She's giving the routine the finger, basically.

I've got another month and a half of summer vacation. If we push bedtime to 8, I don't see why it will be that hard to pull it back 30 minutes by August for school. And at that point, she'll have to get up by 6:30 anyway so I can feed her (maybe earlier so she can have solids, too, unless H wants to do that before he goes to work). So it seems like she would fall back into that routine, at least eventually.

[pickles4prez]

Ughghshrhdh. YAS.
This is a constant struggle with us. We are trying to move to 2 naps (from 7 zillion) because more than that and she takes power naps but is cranky until the next one. She should logically fall asleep around 7-8pm but instead she takes a disco nap for 45 minutes and then is ready to party until 9:30-10pm.

Current schedule:
Wake-up 7am
Nap 10am-11:30/12
Nap 3pm-4pm (refuses to sleep longer, giggles at my attempts)
Disco nap 7pm-7:45
Sleep 9:30/10

Babies, man.

[fuzzylogic]

pickles4prez, while I appreciate that you are frustrated with your baby, it makes me feel better knowing I'm not alone!

We're down to two naps most of the time. Sometimes she'll sneak a quick one in there for a third but she already moved herself to two. Babies are stubborn, man.

[pickles4prez]

Jun 15, 2016 14:49:13 GMT -5 fuzzylogic said:

pickles4prez, while I appreciate that you are frustrated with your baby, it makes me feel better knowing I'm not alone!

We're down to two naps most of the time. Sometimes she'll sneak a quick one in there for a third but she already moved herself to two. Babies are stubborn, man.

I keep hoping she'll shift her sleep schedule on us, my husband thinks I'm crazy for trying night after night to make 7 her bedtime but one of these days he'll be wrong...right?

[themrsjrd]

yummeecookee I'll try not to look a gift horse in the mouth, then. Lol. I just had no idea what was normal. Guess what's normal for us is the only thing that matters.

William tends to be pretty playful in the evenings as well, which is probably why he stays up so late. If I try to sit still with him, he is not having it! Even if he does fall asleep early in the evening, he still wakes up for night night bottle around 10. Meh. Good luck, fuzzylogic, pickles4prez

[allycat]

Am I the only one who's kid sleeps worse now than he did at 3-4 months? We went from getting a 6-7 hour stretch to being lucky to get 1 3-hr stretch, then he's up every hour/1.5 hours.

I want to die.

[fuzzylogic]

Jun 15, 2016 16:05:08 GMT -5 allycat said:

Am I the only one who's kid sleeps worse now than he did at 3-4 months? We went from getting a 6-7 hour stretch to being lucky to get 1 3-hr stretch, then he's up every hour/1.5 hours.

I want to die.

Nope.

Down at 9:30, up at 12:30 and 3:30 last night? Then up at 7. That was surprising, actually. I didn't think she would go that long. She nurses for so long in the motn that I fall asleep in the chair with her on me, and I wake myself up snoring. But she goes between 2-3 wake ups a night.

See, they don't tell you this. They all talk about newborn sleep like it's just THE WORST but honestly, this is just that all over again. It's a cruel joke to let us know what sleep is like only to rip it away again.

[allycat]

Jun 15, 2016 16:12:51 GMT -5 fuzzylogic said:

Jun 15, 2016 16:05:08 GMT -5 allycat said:

Am I the only one who's kid sleeps worse now than he did at 3-4 months? We went from getting a 6-7 hour stretch to being lucky to get 1 3-hr stretch, then he's up every hour/1.5 hours.

I want to die.

Nope.

Down at 9:30, up at 12:30 and 3:30 last night? Then up at 7. That was surprising, actually. I didn't think she would go that long. She nurses for so long in the motn that I fall asleep in the chair with her on me, and I wake myself up snoring. But she goes between 2-3 wake ups a night.

See, they don't tell you this. They all talk about newborn sleep like it's just THE WORST but honestly, this is just that all over again. It's a cruel joke to let us know what sleep is like only to rip it away again.

We tried sleep training (Ferber). This happened:

[fuzzylogic]

Jesus, allycat

Our later bedtime would have been great last night if the cats hadn't come in and brawled when I was about 2 minutes away from putting a sound asleep baby in the crib. I was trying H's technique of arm-swaddling (just holding her where she can't move her arms and legs so much, she's a twitchy kid) and counting to 100 once she seems to be out and it was actually working pretty well. When they started hissing she screamed bloody murder, then cried for a good five minutes. Totally new sounds. It really freaked her out!

But once I got her asleep after that (after some comfort nursing and I honestly couldn't blame her for that one) she was good until 1:15. It took awhile to get her back to sleep since she wanted a double, but by 2:30 she was out and I was back in bed until I woke at 6:45. But she's still sleeping!

It took about 90 minutes total to get her to sleep, but it would have been shorter without the cat show. So we'll try it again tonight, but with the door shut. I hate shutting the door because I feel very alone, but H won't be here anyway.

[allycat]

Yeah. Sleep just sucks here. Last night I was just about to put him down when the wind all of a sudden whipped up and started howling. Blew over a trash can right outside of his window, rain started thrashing against his window... He was up for another hour after that and then when he woke up at 10:30 (shocker) he came to bed with me and slept(ish) with us.

I'm at a loss. I think right now he's about to cut his top 2 teeth so I'm hesitant to do anything too harsh at the moment, but damn. This kid needs to learn how to sleep.

[kensie5226]

fuzzylogic, I think it depends on what her naps look like? Is she taking a late catnap? If so maybe it's time to try and nap transition. I personally wouldn't screw around too much with bedtime. (As much as I'd love for E NOT to be a morning person). Around this age daytime sleep starts to change which means nighttime sleep shifts as well.
E's best schedule is:
Up at 5:30 (uggghhhh)
Naps around 8 until about 9-10.
Another nap from about 1-3.
Asleep by 6:30.
(We usually get one wakeup for feeding at about 3:30am, which used to be 1:30 so I know she's getting closer and closer to STTN).

Some days her naps are still shorter and she takes 3, but we try not let her nap after about 3:30pm or bedtime is a shitshow.

[kensie5226]

allycat, yikes that sounds really hard.

[allycat]

Jun 16, 2016 9:06:25 GMT -5 kensie5226 said:

allycat, yikes that sounds really hard.

Thanks. If anyone has any advice, feel free to throw it my way.

Sorry Fuzzy, I feel like I'm thread jacking. Can you tell I'm desperate for sleep?

[fuzzylogic]

Jun 16, 2016 9:44:39 GMT -5 allycat said:

Jun 16, 2016 9:06:25 GMT -5 kensie5226 said:

allycat , yikes that sounds really hard.

Thanks. If anyone has any advice, feel free to throw it my way.

Sorry Fuzzy, I feel like I'm thread jacking. Can you tell I'm desperate for sleep?

You're totally fine! I know how you feel, babe. 


kensie5226, nap schedule is roughly 2 hours after she wakes up, and then a nap three hours after she wakes from that nap. So today she got up at 7:15, which is a bit later than a few months ago. However, the house is quiet longer because I'm not up getting ready for work and I think the sounds of the house stirring woke her up before.

So, 7:15, down at 9:15 (though she was actually asleep at exactly 9:22 haha), so if she takes a two hour nap, which is preferable, she'll be up by 11:30. 2:30 we'll attempt a nap and if she goes like yesterday, she'll nap 2+ hours again, which means 4:30 or even later. Having a 7:00 bedtime seems too early. It's only 2.5 hours after her last nap. 8 seems reasonable.

While it took a long time to get her to sleep last night, she was hungry and kept asking for more, then the whole literal catfight thing happened and that delayed us another 20 minutes or so. But it wasn't any later than the night before and I started about an hour later. So I wasn't at my wit's end when the cats flipped out and was able to handle it.