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Night owl baby

valerie1132valerie1132 member
in Babies: 3 - 6 Months
Does anyone else have a night owl baby? My daughter is 16 weeks and doesn't get sleepy enough for bed until 10:30 or so, it's now 11:15 and we are still nursing before bed!

She sleeps from 10:30/11pm until 5am, feeds and then sleeps from 6-9am. Any advice? And the put to bed semi-awake thing is not in her vocabulary. That results in blood curdling screaming. I nurse her to sleep then transfer her to her crib. I can't co-sleep because my super heavy sleeping husband would squish her.

She naps for an hour around 11am and again sometime around 3-4pm.
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Re: Night owl baby

  • NurseRiegerNurseRieger member
    Mine has the exact same schedule. I'm trying to get him to bed earlier because it seems like everyone else's baby is down by 8. But I do like the 4-5 am feeding and back down until 9. I'm not a morning person at all and I worked nightshift all while pregnant and other night shifters say their kids stay up late and sleep in. The put down when drowsy but awake is a joke. He needs to be in a deep sleep and not realize he's not in my arms. I can't cosleep either, he spend a night or 2 with my mom every week and she is afraid of crushing him. I know I won't but couldn't get a good night sleep if I can't roll around.
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  • valerie1132valerie1132 member
    Ordinarily I wouldn't mind, but I'm a teacher and I go back to school in a month. I can't be up until 11 or later every night! Once in a while of course, but I'm going to have to get up at 4:30am to nurse before school and get her to daycare. Last night I had a dream that I forgot to bring my pump to my first day back!
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  • NurseRiegerNurseRieger member
    Yeah if I worked day shift I would have a 0430 wake up time. The whole schedule will get disrupted when you go back. All I can think is after the early am feeding get her dressed and start the day. That 6-9 nap is going to be changed 1st. So if an am nap gets pushed back maybe the evening nap can just get cut and start bedtime routine early. My LO is 17 weeks and we are in that 4 month wakefulness period. Hence the reason I'm on the forum at 0245. You have a whole month hopefully the evening nap becomes the bedtime by then. Good luck.
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  • NurseRiegerNurseRieger member
    Oh and I have been back to work 5 weeks and still scared of forgetting the pump and working a 12hr shift without it. Ouch!
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  • BigboobsmcgeeBigboobsmcgee member

    2 naps a day doesn't seem like enough at that age....

    The better she sleeps during the day, the better she will sleep at night. It seems strange she will take a nap at 3 or 4 and not be ready for bed until 10:30. That's a really long time to go between nap and bed for a baby that young. Is she really cranky at bedtime? Does she seem exhausted?

    I'd try to slowly adjust nap times and move bedtime a little earlier if possible. I know that won't be easy to do but that's my suggestion.

    I guess I'm lucky in the sense that both of my kids sort of fell into the same bedtime routine on their own and at 4 months old they were both going to bed at about 6pm. My 15 month old now goes to bed at 7pm which is still relatively early but works well for her.


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  • delujm0delujm0 member
    Hate to say it, but you may have to wake LO up earlier than 9 to start moving bedtime earlier. 11-12 hours at night is reasonable...so unless you can let them sleep until 9am once you go back to work, you should start working on that now. We go to bed at 7 and are up between 6-7 am (6 months). Naps total about 3 hours a day in 2-3 naps. The longest period she's ever awake is 4 hours and that only happens between her final nap and bed for the night, and only sometimes. Usually it's more like 2.5-3 hours max.

    Might make sense to read Ferber's book or another sleep training manual to figure out how best to do this. I also nurse to sleep. Don't see it as an issue.
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  • NurseRiegerNurseRieger member
    I got my LO up for the day at 0700 and tonight he went down at 2100! Random cat naps during the day. I did see the suggestion to buy Ferber's book on another thread and I've been reading it. Things are a little erratic in the 4 month phase. Weaning doesn't help...it is impossible for a baby to not nurse themselves to sleep...that would be fighting biology.
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  • valerie1132valerie1132 member
    Omg I would LOVE it if my daughter would take more than two naps. She sometimes only takes one! She will sometimes catnap when nursing, so that's a little sleep but not a true nap. She fights the sleep hardcore. You can bounce and rock her and she'll be fast asleep, the instant you go to transfer her, boom! Awake! It's like she's a Boy Scout, always prepared! Lately I have been getting about an hour nap in the swing, and sometimes she'll nap in the baby carrier.

    I am trying to get her down earlier. She just fell asleep at 10:30 after nursing, I still have to transfer her to the crib (could go either way) but much better than last night. I started trying to put her down at 10, and finally had a sleeping child in the crib at 12:15am! Yeah, so that's not sustainable. Provided that she actually stays asleep tonight I will try waking her up earlier in the am to help shift the sleep. Here's hoping!
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