Working Moms - What Time Does Your Infant Sleep?

At this age, I would just leave his schedule alone. As he gets older, he will sleep less and you can tinker with his nap schedule so that he naps in the afternoon (perhaps on the late side) and then is awake from the time you get home until he's ready to go down for the night.

My kids were all night owls, which was fine with us because DH and I both work FT so it gave us time to be together. As babies, our kids were generally up until 10 (and certainly didn't sleep through the night after that LOL). They would get up for the day at around 7. Our schedule skews a little late because we had infants and school-age kids and school here starts at 9 for the youngest kids, so I would work 10-6 and be home at 6:30, dinner at 7, etc. Our schedules are staggered due to the school start so DH works early and picks up the kids, cooks dinner etc. and I do the morning routine. He got time with them in the evening, I got time in the morning and we both have time before bed. It'll all work out - just go with the flow for now and when he needs less sleep, you can tinker with the schedule so that more of his awake time is when you're home.

We're "off" since my husband works evenings and I've never (normally) put my kids down before 11:30, even as babies. Normally they are awake later and as babies I would just snuggle them downstairs while they slept until my husband got home so he could have some more daddy time, too. It would be too depressing for him to come home and not see his kids at all after work five nights out of seven.

I do work full-time days and it does make it hard for me to get enough sleep, but he provides full-time child care during the days so the kids need to be on this schedule.

I would mostly leave things alone if I were you--it sounds like a good and working routine. If you are really too bothered, just snuggle your sleeping little one right after you've "decompressed." That is so nice that you have family around to care for him. :)

Leave it alone never disurb a sleeping pattern. I work full time also my son is 2.5 years old and if I keep him up real late to see him he gets overtired and pulls all nighters. Try going to work with no sleep. Spend time with him on the weekends. That is what we do.

I would work on trying to adjust his nap time. 6:30 pm is not a naptime and is too early to go down for the night if you want to spend time with him. I'd look at his overall nap schedule and try to fix it so that he's just waking up from a nap around 4pm. Also, if grandparents are watching him at THEIR house, the car ride home may be putting him to sleep. You might have better luck keeping him up longer if they can watch him at your house. It's been too long since I've had an infant to remember their naptimes and such, but I'd normally get to daycare by 5:30 and they were done napping and up til their bedtime, which as an infant would have probably been around 7:30-8:00.

At six-months old, his sleep pattern is still in flux. He will be adjusting to a fairly regular 2-nap/day schedule in another couple months or so, and then he should be awake when you get home. I would leave well-enough alone right now, knowing that things with babies change rapidly. You will miss those few minutes to decompress after work, so enjoy them now! In my experience (working full-time outside of home with my first and now a SAHM with two), children of SAHMs tend to go to sleep earlier than those who want to enjoy some nightly bonding time with their kids after work. You'll have to figure out what works for your family in the evenings and early mornings.

At that age, all 3 of my kids took an extra "nap" at about 6/6:30. Sometimes, they even went down for the night at that time. I think your current schedule sounds fine. It won't last very long (probably only a couple more months) that she needs that extra nap though and he will stay awake and then probably go down around 8/8:30 for the night. My 3rd is almost 8 months and she does it part of the time now. I just got done with that feeling of not getting enough time with her and it does make a big difference now that she doesn't take that 3rd nap all the time.

When DS was that age, he pretty much set his own schedule. It looked like this - wake screaming in hunger, eat, change diaper, play a while, sleep - repeat every 3 hours. This started at about 8 am (if we needed to get out of the house earlier we woke him, waited 30 seconds and then he started screaming as if he were starving). We put him to bed for the night between 11 pm and midnight (basically after his last feeding). He was in daycare from about 9 am until 5-6 pm Tues through Thursday and pretty much followed the same schedule. It did not matter to him where he slept.

Can you keep him up later and let him sleep later in the morning? For us the morning routine at that age was really brief - feeding & diaper, new onesie - so we only woke him about 15-20 minutes before we needed to leave the house.

when my girl was 6 months old, she was just getting into a great sleeping pattern and would sleep fomr 730p-7am and I had to wake her.

Working full time you are (at best) to see your kid for MAYBE 2 hours during the work week. Those little ones Need to sleep (it helps build their brain)
If you want to see him more, then I suggest you start at his naps...he should be takign 2 naps per day...one in the Am and one in the afternoon. Tell your parents to give him a bottle right before his 2pm afternoon nap..he should get up around 330 or 4 and should not be hungry...then when you or daddy go get him, he will be hungrier earlier and you can play with him when you get home vs him napping. Napping at 6pm never worked for our family..but every family is differnt..you may be just trading time if you shift his schedule and seeing him from 630-730 vs 8-9