Baby Isn't Getting Enough Sleep!

I am just asking a question, okay? Have you ever been overtired and not been able to go to sleep? It happens to everyone. I noticed when my children were little the nap schedule changed a lot and at various ages. My first child would get up, have breakfast, play for about an hour and then go down for a two hour nap, repeat the schedule, repeat the schedule and then when we fed her at about 8:30 she was raring to go until about 2 or 3 in the morning. This was a tough schedule for us to break with her. We had to do it by getting her up from her naps earlier, making her stay awake longer and putting up with the overtired stuff for a couple of weeks until we could get it around to a much more reasonable schedule. My second child would get up at 5 A.m. eat, play for half and hour and then sleep until 8 A.m. and then have a meal and play for an hour or so before the next nap. He was easier because by 10 he was down for the night until 5ish the next morning. The third one we raised was getting him up at 6 feed him and then dress him etc., because I had to drop him at the sitters by 7:30 to get to work by 8. Sometimes he was awake when I picked him up at about 5:30 sometimes we had to get him up but I didn't let him nap after supper until it was bedtime at about 9 and he rarely woke up during the night so I guess I was lucky.
None of my children napped in the morning after they were one. All of them cut back on the length of their naps (even the two or three a day ones) before they were 6 months old. I don't remember anything longer than a two hour nap after that and then it was once a day. If they were really tired they went down earlier at night.
Good Luck

Hi there, I don't know what kind of curtains or blinds you have, but it really helped both of my kids (now 1 and 3) to have dark, blackout curtains to make the room dark for naps and it helped them sleep later in the morning. I got some at overstock.com. Pottery Barn Kids has some but they are more expensive. good luck!

My kids went through this around 4-5 months. It was like all of a sudden, they realized there was a world around them and they wouldn't sleep. It took a few weeks with each of them, but it did resolve itself.
I put a loud fan in for white noise to drown out everything else. I couldn't darken the room easily, so I put a big, dark piece of fabric over the cradle stand so it was almost totally dark for them. I'd go in about the time they tended to wake up and I would rock the cradle as soon as they started to stir. My first son used a pacifier and I would slip that back in his mouth at the first whimper.
They also went to bed much earlier than yours seems to. 9 is a little late, "they" say that children aged 5 and under should be in bed between 6:30 and 8. So, when he's tired after dinner, put him down. It sounds like you are reading his sleep cues well, just not responding to them. Keep him up just a little longer if you need to, but don't wait until 9 just to have him refuse to sleep for another hour or more.

Check out "The Baby Whisperer", it has a lot of good ideas to get babies to go back to sleep with compassion and response instead of heartless CIO advocation.

Good Luck! I promise, it does get better:) It may just take a few weeks of crankiness or 3 short naps each day before it goes back to "normal".

I have a 7 almost 8 month boy and some days he sleeps more than others. And a friend of mine with a younger one said that her doc told her to start cereal. A little more food basically. He may be also going through a growth spurt so try increasing some of the food a little bit. It is worth a try. Keep trying, some days one thing will work and the next it won't and vice-a-versa.
J.

JMHO, but I think he's just gotten to that age where he is sleeping less. My kids all did it around 6 mo...you think you are managing fine-- baby is napping and you can get stuff done, and wham bang- suddenly they're awake a whole lot more! I would personally COUNT MY BLESSINGS about the through the night sleeping and be glad of that, but I think your days of having baby sleeping long naps during the day are over.

He might evolve into even just taking ONE nap in the afternoon, and it may be longer...

Again- JMHO