My baby is almost 11 weeks old now, and we're still nowhere close to establishing a 3-nap-per-day schedule. Her naps are all over the place, and they are very rarely longer than 30 minutes in duration. So the only way for her to get enough daytime sleep is to take lots and lots of catnaps. I'm wondering when other babies started taking 3 longer naps each day. Do I just need to wait a little longer, or is my baby just destined to be a horrible napper?
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At 6 weeks he would take one 2-hour nap, and two shorter 30-45 minute naps. He is 15 weeks now and takes great naps, he will often take two 2-hour naps during the day, then a short catnap to get him to bedtime (20-30 min). BUT there is a tradeoff, he still wakes up ever 2-3 hours at night. He's a great napper, but a terrible night sleeper.
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Ah the 2-hour nap. I've heard rumors of it, but I've almost never seen my baby take one. Anyone else have any advice? She just woke up from yet another 25 minute nap... and the only way to even get her to go down for that nap was to take a walk with her in the Ergo carrier. Ugh.
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My LO is 16 weeks and not the greatest napper. We get 4 naps a day with 2 or 3 of them being 35-45 minute catnaps. I have scoured the Internet for info on naps and babies typically transition to 3 naps a day at 4-5 months and a predictable nap schedule might not develop until they are on 2 naps at 7-8 months. With that said, babies aren't robots so you can have a great napper who develops day sleep patterns early or a catnapper for life!
Do you put your LO in the crib to nap? We have successes with nap extensions. When DS wakes up between sleep cycles we go in, replace the paci, adjust his position a little and tell him to keep sleeping. We give it 15-20 minutes to re-settle and if he doesn't then we get him. If he falls back asleep...awesome! Maybe once a week or two he actually takes a 2 hour nap without our help! We have no schedule though and the length of each nap is totally unpredictable. I am a slave to my LO's lack of consistency but I do everything I can to make sure he goes down for a nap when he seems sleepy.
A great resource is the Teaching Your Baby and Toddler to Sleep board on babycenter.com.
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@Sammyfab: She does some crib napping... but often I just give in and take her for a walk to get her to nap... or take her to a loud restaurant (for some reason that usually works). I have tried nap extensions with very little success. When she wakes herself after a 20-30 minute nap she is usually well rested enough that she *really* wants to be awake... even though I can tell that she is still tired and grumpy.
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@skibobrown: trust me when I tell you I know what you are going through! When my friends ask me what I have been up to I usually tell them 'trying to get my baby to nap!' if you have surefire ways for LO to nap, you could always use them for your nap extensions.
I wish I had more advice for you but take a look at the babycenter board if you have a chance. I've learned a ton!
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Do you follow the "rules" for certain amounts of waketime per age? Once I started following these, it was magic.
I am sure someone on the boards has access to it, I had it as a google doc but I've since lost it.
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LO is 10 weeks and doesn't have one either. We have a super strict bedtime routine but naps are all over. I never know if she's going to sleep 30 minutes or 3 hours. *sigh* I just try to swaddle her and put her down whenever I see her start yawning.
I'm starting to kind of see a pattern though, so I'm hoping she'll start doing it on her own like she did with her bedtime.
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Here's the chart @looch is referring to!
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I didn't think my daughter would ever become a good napper. She is now 9 months old and for the past month we have finally gotten to 2 (at least 1-2hour) naps per day. Before that we were taking 5-6 cat naps (30 minutes) a day. It was horrible because I could never get anything done. But it's great now. I didn't do anything to help her beyond gradually introducing solids. We are now on 3 solids meals per day and 3 nursing/bottle of expressed milk per day.
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Here's the wake time per age chart I have: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X99fZTnH2Dy4gjkqjpaU_BFmwVFXMh4I3sw2Az5NyaI/edit?hl=en&authkey=CMf7gtwH&pli=1
LO is 8wks and is pretty much on par with the chart...but the downside is that her naps are usually in my arms or while using the carrier. Lately she's done some supervised naps on the Boppy or in the car seat.
About an hour and a half after a feeding I will rock her in my arms or car seat and get her to suck on her hand (she doesn't know how to use the paci!) and she'll fall asleep. I don't let her go over 3 hour naps during the day.
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@Sammyfab: you beat me to it!
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DS is 12 weeks and he takes 3-4 naps a day. We also struggle with the 30-45 minute naps, but if I can catch him right before he wakes up, I have a better chance of extending his naps. So at about 30 minutes after I lay him down, I hang out outside his door waiting for that first little noise. As soon as I hear him start to stir, I can usually get him back down with a few minutes of patting and shushing. Otherwise, it takes like half an hour of rocking to get him back to sleep. We're not on a solid schedule, but I do try to start putting him to sleep when he's been awake for 1.5 hours, and that seems to help. He also has a mandatory nap time at 1 pm (when DD takes her nap) so I have a few minutes to myself every day.
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@Sammyfab: @mrsjazz: Thanks! ...but this chart makes me laugh. Apparently my baby isn't supposed to be napping for more than 3 hours at a time. This is SO not a problem, since I often have a hard time getting her to nap for more than 20 minutes at a time. I do try to get her down for a nap once she's been up for 60-90 minutes, but it's often tough to get her to sleep, and it's almost always impossible to convince her to sleep for longer than 30 minutes before waking up all wild-eyed and ready to play (but still actually sleepy and cranky).
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@skibobrown: I just wanted to commiserate (again!) and let you know that catnapping is very common! I also wanted to mention that at around 7 weeks we really worked on putting LO down 'drowsy but awake' and getting him to fall asleep on hs own because rocking and soothing him to sleep for naps just wasn't working!
There have been many days (and there still are) when I texted DH to hurry home from work because we had an exhausting/disastrous nap day.
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@Sammyfab: Thanks! I've definitely heard that this is a common problem. I'm hoping she just needs to mature a little more and then will start taking longer naps on her own. Today she's already taken 4 of her short naps, so that is a good thing. I'll probably get her down for 1 or 2 more before bedtime. Some days she only gets 3 naps of 30 minutes or less, and those days are a disaster!
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My LO is 8 weeks and started getting on a bit of a schedule once I went back to work. Of course, he goes to work with me, but what really helped was going by the "he needs to start napping 45min-1.5 hrs after he wakes" theory. We get up between 7-8am, we play for about 30 minutes, then I nurse him and we leave for work. I think the car ride there gets him drowsy and he goes down fairly well once we get there. He has been napping for about 2 hours, then gets up, plays, nurses and then I try and get him back down again at 45 min- 1.5 hours. Going by that schedule has really helped.
That said, he sleeps like crap at night. Totally random and never as nicely as during the day.
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LO is 15 weeks and he is a terrible napper, he sleeps only 30 min top in the day time, about 3-5 times at random time...BUT he sleeps good at night! I guess that is the trade-off!
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@mooncici: Yep! My baby is exactly the same way. Last night she slept from 7:30 PM all the way until 9 AM with only one wakeup at 4 :30, and a dream feed around 11 PM. So yeah, nighttime is awesome. Daytime, not so much. I just feel bad for her b/c she gets so overtired during the day when she doesn't nap, and then she becomes all sad and cranky.
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@skibobrown: right? I have to hold him most of the time so he can get a good solid nap (more than 30 min), like right now, I am holding him while replying!
He also hates napping inside his crib but he sleeps fine there at night!
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