My 4 month old has a good nighttime routine, and has been sleeping through the night for a few weeks. The problem is he isn't a good napper. Naps at home turn into him just screaming the whole time until I pick him up. If we leave the house he will nap in the stroller or the carseat. We leave the house most days, so I do want him to still be able to nap on the go. For days that we don't leave the house, I want to be able to put him down for a nap though. How do I go about doing that without him just screaming the whole time? Also, how much should he be napping? He sleeps at night from 10:30pm to 7 or 7:30am. Wakes for a bottle then goes back to sleep until 9 or 9:30am. Then he is up for the day. There's days where if we don't leave the house he will only nap for about 45 minutes or so. It just doesn't seem normal! He clearly doesn't need a ton of sleep, but it seems like he needs more than he's getting.
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I think we've already talked about this, but T is a cat napper. I think he probably sleeps 4 hours in total all day though and sleeps 11 hours overnight. I have no idea what is the norm, so that would be the blind leading the blind if I commented on that.
Maybe E likes the movement of the stroller? What about trying a swing / bouncy chair? I know that's not a long term solution, but maybe would at least get him accustomed to sleeping at the house? You could maybe even put it in his room with white noise?
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I've been posting about my own nap issues, but my LO will only sleep if I'm rocking her (the whole time).
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I don't have any great advice for you. We stay at home most of the time because I am scared of messing up nap times. Hoping this will bump your post so you can get some more answers from others.
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I think at that age my LO was napping after 1.5-2 hours awake time. Could he be overtired? Has he always done this? Because if not, it could very well be the 4 month sleep regression (which applies to naps too!). My DS was a 30 minute cat-napper for a LONG time, we just did so many naps until he finally started sleeping longer on his own. And at that age we still nursed and rocked to sleep (not that you should, it just worked at that point). At around 5 months we did cry it out just for going to sleep and that helped SO much. How does he go to bed at night? Do you have a night/bed time routine? I would do a shortened version of that for naps to signal him that it's time to sleep too! That helped us a lot too!!
Good luck!
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I also stay home most of the time. This site gives you info on what sleep averages and wake times are by age groups. http://www.mybabysleepguide.com/2013/02/average-sleep-charts-by-age.html?m=1
I hope it can point you in the right direction.
Naps are really hard so don't beat yourself up. -
@Emsmems: it's not the 4 month sleep regression. He's never been a good napper. He's also a 27 weeker preemie, so he doesn't hit milestones, wonder weeks, growth spurts etc at the right times. I wish I could predict stuff like that! We have a short and sweet bedtime routine. We've been laying him on our chest until he falls asleep, but we've been doing check and console this week to break the habit which is going really well. He's a seriously awesome nighttime sleeper. My family was talking on Thanksgiving and my mom told me I stopped napping all together at 6 months old. My grnanodther said my mom and aunt were never good nappers. And my aunt said my cousin never napped well. Maybe it just runs in the family?
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