How can you sleep train when LO is not on a schedule?

muchlove4ry

My LO is all over the place with naps. Sometimes he will take a two hour and sometimes a 45 min. one. I never know, which makes setting a bed time hard. Sometimes his afternoon nap he is up around 4 and cant make it much longer than 6pm. If he goes to sleep at 6pm then its a nap to him and after that will be up really late. Other days he wakes from the afternoon nap around 5 and then its easier to have a "bedtime." Any tips? Should I really try to get him a nap schedule regardless of how long his naps are? (He is 5.5 months) Thanks!!

bundymommy

I personally wouldn't try to sleep train with an inconsistent schedule. I don't feel it's fair to expect a baby to fall asleep by himself at different times from day to day. Do you have a consistent wake-up time? I would start with that. For us, we set 7:30 as DD's wake-up. We have a 30-minute window from 7:00-7:30, so if she wakes up before 7:00, she stays in bed, and if she's still sleeping at 7:30, we wake her up. But if she wakes up any time in there it's okay to get up. (Even if you don't believe in CIO, I found Ferber's book to have excellent advice in regards to sleep times.)

She also has consistent eating times, within the 30-minute window, although I feel that was more important when she was younger than it is now.

He naps start at the same time every day. Like you said, I'm never exactly sure how long she will sleep, but about 90% of the time it's exactly 1.5 hours. Since she's so consistent, if nap is a little longer or a little shorter, I don't worry about it. However, I try to get her to sleep for at least 1 hour, and will wake her up at the 2-hour point if she's still asleep. This helps us keep our day on track. Too much daytime sleep = not enough nighttime sleep, and vice versa. Not to tell you what to do, but if I were you, I would aim for routine/consistency first, and THEN work on sleep training. You might find that some routine will solve a lot of your sleep problems. DD has always sleep really well for a baby, and we started with a routine about two days after she came home from the hospital.

We dropped DD's 3rd nap just before six months, when she started having a hard time going to sleep for it. Previously it had been no big deal. We also found that if she did manage to nap in the evening, she had a harder time falling asleep at bedtime, which sounds like the problem you are having. We decided to drop the nap; she is a little crabbier in the evenings, but is content if she has my or DH's undivided attention. Anyway, her schedule looks like this:

7-7:30 - Wake up
7:30 - Breakfast (bottle and solids)
9:30-11 - Nap
11:30/12:00 - Lunch (bottle and solids)
1:30/2 - Nap (depending on how tired she is acting, the start of this nap time varies by 30 minutes)
3/3:30 - Wake up, sometimes a snack, depending on how lunch went and what time it is
4:30 - Dinner (bottle and solids)
6:45 - Bath
7:05/7:10 - Bottle
7:30 - Bed

DawnJM25

I agree with PP; I wouldn't sleep train unless your LO has a routine.  I'm reading Ferber right now, and I don't see how you could sleep train without a routine because you need to be consistent. 

DD's bedtime is right around 7PM and she's awake for the day between 7-7:30.  Her awake time is usually 2 1/2-3 hours.  Her first nap is around 9:30.  Sometimes she sleeps for 90+ minutes, in that case it's a 2-nap day, and she'll go down for her 2nd nap around 2:00.  If her first nap is only about 45 minutes, she'll have another short nap around 1, and again around 4.  Even with a late afternoon nap she's still ready for bed at 7. 

Just some advice for getting LO on a routine; what I did was write everything down for about 2-3 days.  I looked for a pattern in sleeping, eating, etc.  She actually had a pattern, but I hadn't noticed it.  I started to always put her in her crib for naps to be consistent with that.  Maybe if you notice a pattern in your LOs eating, you can manipulate his sleep schedule a bit. 

 

kas80

We aren't on a schedule and we did sleep training to get my LO out of our bed and into the crib.  I just follow her cues as to when she's tired and if it's after such and such point it's "for the night."  The thing I do is have a bedtime routine that is consistant even though the time is not.  We do stories/quiet playtime in her room, bath 3x a week, jammies, nurse in her rocker, bed.  The bedtime routine is her trigger that it's night night time.