u/Miserexa

My 6 month old’s sleep has become all chaotic lately and I have no clue what’s going on. Is he overtired? Undertired? Does anyone know what I should change?

He has always been a fantastic night sleeper and was sleeping ~8 hour stretches (10pm to 6am mostly) from around 2 months old. He sleeps in a pack and play in our bedroom. He has done that 8 hour stretch every single night without fail, which I’m incredibly grateful for.

But his naps? Forget it. They’re my full-time job.

He has never napped independently, strictly contact naps when at home, although he will nap in the car and stroller, but you absolutely cannot transfer him. It used to be easy to put him to sleep, he’d just fall asleep while nursing, and he’d nap for about an hour or more five times a day. Those were the days.

Now he wakes at 6, I nurse him in bed, he goes back to sleep until 7, then he reliably takes a nap on me at 8:50 to 9:30, and then the rest of the day is chaos.

He is a super happy and calm baby, but he gets increasingly fussy and complainy as he gets tired. I really don’t know how long his wake windows are now. He starts rubbing his eyes and acting tired after about an hour and a half, but God forbid I try to put him to sleep. As he gets drowsy he gets super mad and yells. Sometimes I can help him fall asleep eventually, but it’s getting increasingly hard. He just wants to be up playing. He has serious FOMO.

We generally manage two more naps, but they’re only about 30 minutes each, and it takes longer than that to put him down.

He gets really sleepy by 7:30pm so we go to the bedroom and I nurse him to sleep, which can be quick sometimes, and sometimes takes up to an hour because he keeps drifting off and waking back up. Then usually he wakes up twice and I nurse him back to sleep easily until we go to bed at 10, and then he does his usual 8 hour stretch.

I really don’t know what to make of this.

Does this sound like overtiredness? Undertiredness? A schedule issue? Some kind of developmental phase?

And does anyone have any ideas for how to transition him to nap independently? I’m not really interested in CIO methods, and honestly I’m scared of trying anything because I worry it’ll somehow make things even harder.

My MIL is driving me bonkers right now. I love her and she's very helpful in some ways and I look forward to her visits, but she does not understand how baby sleep works. It is currently 4pm and my 5mo hasn't napped ALL DAY because she keeps waking him when he's falling asleep, he is so overtired and stressed. He takes a long time to fall asleep, especially as he gets more overtired, and you really have to not talk to him, don't even make eye contact. Well he was falling asleep in the car, as he often does, after already being overtired, and she kept poking and prodding him, saying his name, yapping at him like "Ohhh you were about to fall asleep! You were soooo close!" like wtf, are you trying to torture my child? I was about to lose my fucking shit but I just said, with restraint "Are you trying to keep him awake?" because it literally seemed like she was. She said "No, he woke back up! He's looking at me." SO?! He's trying to go to sleep.

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She always says how my husband never napped when he was a baby and he screamed all the time. WELL I WONDER WHY 🙄

Edited for typo