Putting baby to bed earlier

L

Lisainhk

Registered User
Hi everyone.
Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions on getting my 6 month old boy to bed earlier? At the moment he has just learnt to get to sleep by himself (YESSS!!!) but his bed time is getting later and later as we try and adjust to having real naps instead of catnaps all day. He used to go to sleep at 5am as he had his night and day mixed up and I have slowly gotten him back to 12am or 1am. But lately he won't sleep til 2am or later due to him taking 2 x 2hour naps during the day. He still wakes up at the same time around 10am and I don't want to shorten his naps because he sleeps poorly at night (tosses and turns a lot and wakes a lot but puts himself back to sleep). When I try to put him to bed earlier, he thinks its a nap and wakes up after 30 mins and if I try to put him back to sleep he is too awake and I have to wait til his next sleepy stage (usually 90 mins later).
Any suggestions???
 
first, definitely make sure your baby is over jetlag - for every hour it's a full day and I remember for my son, it took about 3 days extra days too when we traveled back from NYC to HK.

Personally, my suggestions would be: shorten his naps to just 1/1.5 hours in the morning than 2 hours in the afternoon. I would adjust the bedtime how you would do it when you are in a new time zone. Push it up in 15 minute increments each night until you meet the desired time. Our son when to sleep at 7/7:30pm every not night starting at 6 months. He still goes to bed at 7:30pm at 26 months.

Do you have a nightime rountine before he goes to bed? We always did dinner, bath, milk, stories then bedtime so he knew that it wasn't naptime, but going to sleep for the night.

If all else fails, as in he keeps waking up after 30 minutes, ferberize him. He is tired, believe me....Ferberizing worked for us after we had tried other methods, but again, it's not for everyone. There are tons of threads on this website (do a search for more feedback of ferberizing vs. no-cry etc...), so without opening a can of worms again, these are just my suggestions.
 
My 6 month old baby used to go to sleep really late and not wake until 10am, I wanted her to sleep from 7-7am and I found the best way after a couple of months of trying different things was to wake her at 7am regardless of what time she went to bed and then put her down for her morning nap at 9am and let her sleep for an hour and then put her down and 12 and let her sleep to 2/2:30. I had an overtired baby for about 3 days as she still resisted going down at 7, but now she sleeps 7-7 with no fuss at all. For the first week however I was extremely strict with nap times and ensured I was home and there was absolutely no deviations from the times. Now we can be much more flexible with the day naps and it doesn't seem to affect her night routine.
I was amazed that this worked so quickly and with so few tears from baby!
 
We did something similar to Flack. Even when we travel, we try to be on local time by 7am, so we wake up and feed the baby regardless of how the previous night or the day was. The key was to manage naps and meals that day because the baby is really tired. We did need to ensure that there was a 3-4 hour awake time before bedtime otherwise it would be hard to put him down at bedtime-7pm and always with exactly same routine down as any other night. Hope this helps!
 
Good stuff guys! I'll definitely start getting him up earlier. Do you think it will work getting him up 3 hours earlier than he is used to?? Or should I get him up half an hour earlier this week and then do it slowly over a few weeks?
And yep he is a ferberized baby now. We're at day 11 and he goes to bed pretty easily now. Just wakes up 45 mins later if he is put to bed earlier than usual and then doesn't want to sleep again til next sleep cycle.
Thanks for the feedback. I can't wait for him to go to bed earlier! He really needs it!
 
I agree with everyone, wake up at 7am irrespective of what has happened in the night and begin the day (I used to cheat and do 7.30am when I was really tired!). At 6 months you could cut the morning nap to 1 hour, 2-2.5 hours mid afternoon and put an extra short nap in late afternoon (no sleeping later than 5pm) if he really needs it. Bed at 7/7.30pm and tough it out through the 45 mins wakings - it will only take a little while. And he will be much more tired as he will have got up much earlier.
 
Something like this?

7am - morning feed
Nap (say 1 hour)
11am - noon feed
Nap (say 2 hours)
3pm - afternoon feed
7pm - night feed -> Sleep
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top