He has slept through a few times to 6.30 or else would wake up once a night to feed. He goes to bed at 7pm (no props but has a lovey).

To give some background, my son is 6 months old.

If he fights this a lot, consider the extra short nap in there. I would try to get him to go back to sleep as quickly as possible (assuming leaving him for a few minutes doesn't result in him just falling back asleep on his own) to try to get him into the habit of sleeping through this wakeup. He may still need a slightely later bedtime at this age. The short nap at night might be bc he thinks it is a nap or because he is overtired. So if you want to start at 7 am, if he wakes at 6:30 or later, that is the waketime, if he wakes before but close to this time put him right back to sleep and make 7:30 the waketime. You can just use hte wake up time method suggested above. So you would be getting him up to start his day, though that can mean just holding him and maybe singing a couple songs to him after his feed before putting him down to sleep. So only a tiny bit more than you have been doing now probably. And you are not doing things wrong! If you are loveing your baby and doing the best you can to take care of him, you are doing great!Īt his age, his waketime first thing in the morning may only be 1 hour so it will include a feed and just a short little waketime. With the short naps, just keep wokring at them and realize when it is time to give up for a while and just be ok with how things are. But you could always try adding a little wake time in the am (just a little!) to turn it more into a nap and see what happens. I doubt the short naps are due to this since they are so darn common at this age anyway.

Just be watchful of what is going on and make changes later if needed. So, if it is working, don't change anything. Some babies will end up sleeping too much at night so that they don't nap well during the day even though they need the sleep then, they just can't get it. Nigth wakings may happen, short naps may happen. But problems may end up occuring if you put him down early adn turn that sleep into night sleep. It may work for now since waketimes aren't too long anyway, especially the morning one. I have a feeling that sleep period after the 6/7 feed is actualy a nap. Morning Wake Time - The importance of consistency Another option with feedings would be to feed baby only a small amount during the early morning feeding so that he will eat more at the first official feeding of the day reducing the chance of having a short morning nap due to hunger. If this happened I simply reorganized the rest of my day a bit. This meant that sometimes he would not eat very much at this time and would then not be able to go as long as usual until his next feeding. Often baby will naturally extend the length of this nap to make up for this.Īlso, for those of you on a eat/activity/wake routine, I would also feed my baby when I woke him up again at 7:30, even if it had not been that long since he last ate. Using this method, the first nap of the day may need to be a bit earlier than usual since baby may have only slept a short time before getting up in the morning. So, if the wake time was suppose to be 7 am and baby woke up at 6 am, I'd feed him, put him right back to bed, and then wake him up again at 7:30 to start our day. If this waking was very close to the normal wake time, I'd move the morning wake time for that day back 30 minutes. With some babies it is even useful to keep baby up a little bit, but try to have him back down to sleep within an hour of waking. For those of you who hate mornings, this probably sounds a little too familiar to you :)Īnyway, what I decided to do was feed baby and put him right back down to sleep if he woke up any sooner than 30 minutes before his normal wake time. Since I hate mornings and I'm half delusional at that time anyway, I have to make a plan beforehand of what I will do depending on when baby wakes up otherwise I'll be tempted to wake up atġ1 am or something. Timing your morning wake time can get a little bit tricky when baby wakes close to when he would normally be getting up.

Time to wake up time to wake up baby