Help! DS not falling asleep til Midnight or later...what to do?

[denna]

DS has always been so good about sleep (knock on wood), since we have such early mornings (450am wake-up). He has slept through the night (for the most part) since about 7 weeks old and now at 8mo has decided to not go to sleep until Midnight or somewhat after. His old *bedtime* was 830-900pm and he would sleep through til about 530am. Now its up til 1200am and up at 530am (w/ effort) and back to sleep til 9-ish (with the sitter). What do we do to get him back on his schedule? This has been going on for about a week and a half now, and I'm scared this has/ will become his routine? Any advice?

I need more sleep :(, 4 hours just isnt cutting w/ working 10hrs-5 days a week.

Thanks so much,

Denna

[SnuggleBuggles]

What is the nap schedule (time of naps and duration of the naps)?

Beth

[denna]

He doesnt really have a *set* schedule, but I will give the 'rough' estimate:

Wake-up 530am-715am
Sleep 715-900am
Nap 1230-100pm (this is the cat nap)
Nap 330-430pm
Sleep 630-730pm

In bed at about midnight.

His schedule used to be pretty similar:

Bed 900pm (latest) to 530am
Nap 730-900am
Sleep 1145am-100pm
Sleep 430-500pm (car)
Nap 600-645pm

and in bed at 900pm.

Yesterday went pretty well though. He didnt nap at all after 500pm and was in bed by 930pm he did wake up at about 200am to eat which he has done occasionally and then was up at 600am eating again. Hopefully he got himself back on his normal routine (with a little push from mom and dad) :)

The schedule I listed above is a rough estimate because he is with the sitter all day (5 days a week) so I really dont know his exact sleep time, but this is close to what he does on the weekend.

[samantha546]

Well, you might want to check with the sitter to see if they are putting him down for naps more.

It seems to me that your son is taking a lot of naps and therefore not being able to go to sleep soon after waking up from a nap. We generally will skip dd's afternoon nap if she doesn't nap by 3pm. I like to make sure that she's up for at least 4 hours before she goes to bed for the night. That way she's ready. So if you skip that last nap and prolong it, you should be able to put your son to sleep by 6-7pm for the night.

DD used to take a late nap and then wake up and not go to sleep until 11pm. So we switched her nap schedule around and then did like I wrote above and it's been working great. We made sure she had a "bedtime" routine every night. Eat dinner, play a bit, have a bath, nurse and off to sleep. I wouldn't let her get up if she didn't want to sleep. I'd rock and do whatever I could to get her to sleep at 8pm. We changed it around to find the right time for her. Tried all the way from 6-9pm and 8-8:30 was the best.

Hope this helps.

[proggoddess]

I'm in a similar boat. DS goes to bed at 10:30pm and wakes 3 times a night. Then he's up at 8 am. Terrible!

I looked back at DD's baby book, because she was always such a good sleeper. There was a note that at 6 months, DD started dropping her afternoon nap. Her last nap would be from 1-3 pm and bedtime at 8.

You might want to shorten the afternoon nap to only an hour.

What I'm doing with DS is trying to not nurse him at night anymore. (Or at least only once per night, not 3 or 4 times!) But the only way he goes back to sleep without a feeding is to buckle him in his car seat.

I'm hoping that he'll get used to not nursing back to sleep and after a couple weeks, I can remove the car seat and have him sleep a full night in his crib.

If your DS loves his car seat, you could try that for a few nights just to break this bad pattern. Just buckle him up so he doesn't squirm or roll out.