I tend to emphasize night sleep because it’s easier to sort things out at night (stop laughing, I’m totally serious). When everybody is sleeping better at night, improving naps is far more likely. And your efforts to improve your child’s night sleep is entirely dependent upon one thing. Bedtime. What happens at bedtime, when bedtime occurs, and how you approach bedtime will determine how well your child sleeps (and thus how you sleep) at night.
Bedtime is the linchpin of the entire night. Much of what happens during the 11-12 hours that makes up your child’s night is determined by bedtime. You can’t make a course correction at 3:00 AM, you committed yourself back at bedtime.
Imagine bedtime is like a path in a dense, bramble filled woods. You hear the howling of wolves behind you, there is no way to go but forward. Then you come upon a fork in the path: which way to go? You choose one way and hike on for a while and then decide, “Ugh, this path is the worst, it’s muddy and smells like possum pee. I should have taken the other path!” But it’s too late and you have no options but to trudge on.
This is bedtime, except generally wolf-free.
Everything starts with bedtime. If you conquer the how, when, and what of bedtime, you are officially a night sleep ninja master (and you get a sassy belt which is remarkably on-trend for this season).
Bedtime: How?
Bedtime begins with a lovely routine that is a set of relaxing activities that are enjoyed by all parties involved. Bath, massage, songs, books, prayers, hugs, kisses, feeding, and cuddles are all popular activities. Ideally your routine is:
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- Something that you can commit to doing on a consistent basis – every single night.
- Takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.
- Has decreasing levels of light and activity.
- Moves progressively towards the bedroom, with the last few steps occurring in the bedroom.
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Note on Light: Light is a powerful determinant of sleep, so you don’t want to have any bright, sunny, or outside playtime just prior to bedtime. Light hitting our retinas inhibits our body’s ability to produce melatonin, a crucial sleep hormone. Ideally everything prior to bedtime would happen in a dimly lit room, with only the minimum amount of light needed to conduct your bedtime activities.
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If you’re working to gently nightwean your child, then you want to remove all bottles, nursing, and pacifier use from your bedtime routine. So your last bottle/nursing session should be the first step in your 20-30 minute bedtime routine, ensuring there is a solid gap between that feeding and your baby falling to sleep.
Bedtime: When?
Figuring out the right time to put your child to bed can be a bit of a tricky wicket. If I had to put a stake in the ground, it would be 7:30 PM. Most kids between 3 months and age 10 should be going to bed around 7:30.
Ideally your bedtime is early. Early is not always easier for you however. Older siblings (who often have soccer practice, music recitals, etc.) can muck up your good intentions to be home on time. Most parents work which can make evenings feel like a mad dash to pick up baby, shovel some mashed peas into them, and get them washed up for bed. I fully understand why logistically an early bedtime is challenging or undesirable for most parents.
But you can’t change biology: early is better.
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Why is Early Better?
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Most kids wake up early.
We have an innate circadian rhythm and when we’re young, that rhythm sets us up to start the day early. If your child is going to start the day at 6:30 AM regardless of when they go to bed, a late bedtime just decreases the overall amount of sleep they’re getting. This pattern of “early rising” continues until they’re teens (anytime after 10-12 years) when their circadian rhythm shifts later and they have a hard time falling asleep before 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM. This isn’t just because they’re teenagers and would rather stay up texting their friends (although screen time doesn’t help), it’s a biological shift. At that point they’ll need to sleep later in the morning, something made almost entirely impossible due to early school start times.
This is why most American teenagers are chronically sleep deprived and are routinely falling asleep in school. It’s also why the AAP issued a public statement about the need to push school start times later. It’s probably hard to get riled up about this when you’re parenting a baby or toddler, but tah-rust me, when that baby is 14 years old and they’re sleeping through calculus, you might feel differently about it.
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Babies can’t happily stay awake that long.
Generally a “too late bedtime” comes part and parcel with an “awake too long.” Often the last nap ends around 3:00 PM, so if bedtime is late you end up with a loooong stretch of time awake. Being awake too long results in excess cortisol production (cortisol is a stress hormone and also a stimulant). Cortisol can make it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep. So your child may struggle to fall asleep at bedtime. Or they may fall asleep without issue but wake up later in the night, unable to easily fall back to sleep. In either case, a “awake too long” issue is no party and, like hungry tigers or my husband before coffee, something best avoided.
At the same time a bedtime that is too early can result in frustrating bedtime battles. Weissbluth (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child) is a staunch advocate that an early bedtime solves most sleep problems, and there is definitely a certain truth to that. Unless you overdo it in which case your early bedtime actually leads to sleep problems.
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Confused yet? Hopefully this will help.
How Long Should Your Child be Awake Before Bedtime?
At every age, the stretch of time between the last nap and bedtime should be the longest period of wakefulness during the day. Also the length of this time is almost always longer than the average time between naps during the rest of the day. While some babies fall outside the norm (there are definitely babies who need to go to bed by 6:30 PM or even 6:00 PM) these numbers hold true for the vast majority.
| Age | Time Awake Before Bedtime | Average Bedtime |
| 0-3 Months | 1-2 Hours | Variable – Late 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM |
| 3-6 Months | 2-3 Hours | Shifting Earlier – More Consistent – 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM |
| 6-9 Months | 3 Hours | Locked In – 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| 9-12 Months | 4 Hours | 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| 1+ Years | 4-5 Hours | 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
Also please note that when I say “bedtime” what I really mean is “the time at which your child falls asleep.” It’s great to have a delightfully elaborate bedtime routine involving yoga, lavender oil, and interpretative dance so that the whole thing takes a full hour, as long as you’ve allocated enough time for family drum circle. But bed time is the time at which your child falls asleep.
You know you’ve found the right bedtime when your child falls asleep relatively easily at that time. If your child is consistently awake and restlessly farting about in their bed for 30 minutes every night, bedtime might be too early. If you need to bounce your newborn on the yoga ball for a solid hour ever night, you have my sympathies. And also, you also are starting too early. On the other hand if your child is awake far longer than the span suggested in this table and is either a fussy mess in the evening, starts the day unreasonably early, or is waking up (and staying awake) in the middle of the night, you may have a bedtime that is too late.
Lock It Down
Somewhere between 3-6 months your baby should settle in to a consistent and early-ish bedtime. When that happens you want to lock it down so that bedtime happens:
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- At the same time.
- Every day.
- Without fail.
- For years to come.
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Sometimes this is a hassle. Sometimes this requires waking your child up from a long or late-afternoon nap so that napping doesn’t interfere with their ability to fall asleep at their regular bedtime. This often means missing out on fun evening activities because you have to be home early to start your bedtime routine. On the upside, you will never again have to wait for a table at a restaurant because there is almost always room when you show up at 5:00 PM.
Bedtime: What?
What happens as your child falls asleep establishes the basis for how well (or not) your child will sleep at night. If your 6+ month old child needs your help to fall asleep at bedtime, they’ll need your help to go back to sleep during the night. Maybe only 1-2 times. Or maybe 6. But ultimately if your child is sleeping poorly at night, the first step towards making things better is to change what happens at bedtime.
People often try to cheat the system by skipping this crucial step, only to find that their child gets very angry with them during the night, for example when they try to shorten the duration or number of night feeding sessions. Sometimes this can be interpreted as, “Well I guess they’re legit hungry so maybe they’re just not ready.” But it’s not about hunger. If your child falls asleep eating at bedtime or near bedtime, they’ll expect to fall asleep eating during the night. When you try to shorten the feeding and they’re not yet asleep they’ll yell at you, “Woman, do you not see that I’m still awake? Get back in here!”
The same pattern holds for rocking to sleep, cuddling to sleep, etc.
Teaching your child to fall asleep at bedtime is hard, and for many people, so scary they choose to avoid it and nursing, rocking, and cuddling their child to sleep. Which is totally fine, but if your goal is to reduce the number of night wakings or night feedings, you need to put on your fearless hat and change what happens at bedtime.
Nobody does fearless hat better than Raylan Givens. Except for maybe the Dowager Countess.
When you’re ready for solid sleep at night, consider the how, when, and what of bedtime. When you’ve mastered these three crucial elements, you’re well on your way sleeping through the night. Bedtime is the foundation for the rest of the night.
So…is your bedtime a solid foundation, or does it need a little work?
This is all well and good but my child will not sleep past 5-5:30 despite going to bed at 7:30 (falling asleep). We’ve tried going to bed earlier but she couldn’t fall asleep and sometimes she can’t fall asleep til 8 despite our best efforts. We’ve also tried moving the bedtime routine later but that didn’t work either. Unfortunately because of her own clock and daycare’s schedule her longest stretch of awake time is before her nap not after. Not sure if this contributes. Either way I’m starting to think my kid’s body only wants 9 or so hours of nighttime sleep. Alexis, thoughts?
How old is your baby?
K, how old is your baby? Mine is 18 months, and he does about the same thing. Asleep at 8 (sometimes a little earlier, maybe 7:45), and consistently awake at 5:30. He is also holding on to two naps a day, and his total naps are average 3 hours. So I figure 3 hours of naps + 9 hours of night time = 12 hours of sleep per day, which is spot on (I think!).
Amber, our 20-month-old kept waking up at 5 am too, and hanging on to that second nap. One day he miraculously slept in till 7:30 and didn’t need a second nap, and ever since he’s only napped once a day and wakes up at a more reasonable hour. Maybe if your guy drops a nap he will sleep in longer too. We think in hindsight that his daytime sleep was reducing his need for nap time sleep.
Thanks Trena, I’ve wondered about that. I just hate to force him down to 1 nap, so I’ve been waiting on him to do it himself … hopefully it happens soon! Today he was up at 4:50. Mommy is really grumpy if she has to drag out of bed before 5am!
My 12 month old is the same. We put her down every night around 7, she ususally takes about 30 mins to fall asleep, and then is up around 5:30 every morning. I’ve taken to going in and nursing her when she wakes up (she usually nurses about 30 mins before bed and not at all before naps so not worried about a bad association there) and about half the time she’ll go back to sleep for another 45 mins – 1 hour. We’re weaning soon though, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work.
How old is she? Where does she sleep? What do you do when she wakes at 5/5:30? Is she taking just one nap per day at this point?
When you say “that is all well and good” what I believe you mean is “Alexis I love you for taking a whole week to put together this stupendous post” 😉
As for what you REALLY want to talk about, I do indeed believe that her nap schedule contributes. Yes it’s true some kids only sleep 9 hours at night but it’s EXTREMELY rare. So I wouldn’t start with that assumption, especially given as you say – your longest stretch of awake time is before the nap. My guess is that THAT is in fact why she can’t easily fall asleep till 8 and why she can’t sleep longer than 5 AM 🙁
Hi Alexis-
Do you have any advice on toddler sleep? Refusing naps and all that fun stuff? I have a 2 1/2 year old who was sleeping like a champ all summer. (In bed by 7:30, asleep shortly after, up for day between 6 and 6:30, at least an hour and a half nap). When I went back to work (I am a teacher) it all went downhill. He refuses to nap 2 or 3 times a week (even at Grandma’s house). He takes forever to fall asleep at night. He doesn’t cry or even talk, just rolls around changing positions for hours. He is in bed between 7:15-7:30 every night, but is sometimes awake until 8:30 or later. He’s been waking up by 5:30 every morning. He is exhausted but stubborn. Today he even told me I’m not going to nap today. He is jumping up and down in his crib right now!
This too shall pass, yes?
I have TONS of toddler info…in the book 😛
It almost sounds like he’s ready to drop a nap. Sure it’s early but that’s what it sounds like. IF this pattern persists, you may want to consider it (see post below).
Another option is that you call it quiet time and it’s 1 hour. Whatever he does for that 1 hour is his business but at the end of 1 hour, you’re up and about your day. If he falls asleep after 45 minutes, at 1 hour you’re up. If he doesn’t fall asleep fine – it’s quiet time. Dim room, quiet, some simple books or quiet toys.
So maybe this shall not pass, or maybe it will ;P
Alexis,
Thank you for your reply. Part of me thinks you are right-he is getting ready to drop his nap. I also think he is trying to exert his will and control the situation. And, after being together all summer, he misses me. Kind of flattering, but kind of driving me up a wall! Today, when I picked him up from his nap, he was crying for me and said, I can’t sleep because I miss Mommy. He also was crying that he wanted to sleep with me (we never co-sIeep). I hope it passes or we settle into a every other/every few days cycle for a while, because it was a very unpleasant afternoon!
I thought sleep troubles and mom anxiety would pass once I was past night feedings and rocking to sleep. All I know is that child is never leaving his crib!
Thank again, and looking forward to your book!
Hi Jen,
Nice to hear I’m not the only one. I too teach and have a 2.5 year old who is doing the same thing after school started again!!
I will try the shorter nap thing, but I also hesitate because she acts cranky as it is now… Mine doesn’t wake at 5, but she does wake at 3 wanting to pee, and it takes her a while to fall back asleep on the longer nap days.
I think they do really miss us, and any change seems to have such an affect on their little minds…
I knew when I said bye to summer, I was saying bye to my happy, well rested toddler… However, I do like that picture promising we’ll get through it! Looking forward to fall break and Christmas vaca!!!!
Great post, thank you! After reading this it is apparent to me that there’s only one thing “wrong” with my 4.5 month old’s bedtime, and that is PACIFIER. She regularly wakes up to have it replaced, both at night and during naps. Just have to decide whether to hang in there for the next few months until we can teach her to replace it all by herself (she already can hold it and slobber on it while awake) OR get brave and try to get rid of it now. At this point she is still swaddled so obviously she’s helpless to even try getting it back in by herself. At this point I lean toward keeping it because it won’t be TOO long until she can do it herself? And I like the idea of having it as a nice sleep cue for car trips and travel when she’s older. Her big brother never wanted anything to do with it so I’m a bit at a loss here. Any advice would be welcome . . .
We toughed it out until our LO could get the paci himself. I put a few on his crib ledge at night, and when/if he wakes, he pulls himself up to grab one. It might be easier to wean from a paci at the same time you wean from swaddling. At his worst, I was doing a walk of shame to replace the paci up to 12 times a night. It was horrible. Now, he sleeps through the night, replacing it himself. I also like him using it in the car. Good luck!
Hmmm…well it’s a tough call because it could be another 4-6 months until she can replace it herself and this is a great time to get rid of it (meaning easier now than later). I’m not saying you can’t use it in the car or during the day, but just not have it be part of your bedtime/sleep routine.
Also now she’s still got swaddling – which is really helpful. So maybe swaddling + no paci > no swaddle + no paci.
Two questions: 1. Is it ok to keep paci for naps but NOT night, or should we remove it from the home sleeping routine entirely?
2. How to get rid of it at bedtime? I see three options: take it away and stand there shush-patting and otherwise helping soothe her, some sort of Pantley pull off type method, or CIO. I have attempted all three, sort of, but not really committed to any because she goes to sleep SO EASILY with the paci it’s like a miracle. Thanks to you her sleep is so much better than her brother was at this age and I think I’m kind of stuck on what’s working.
Except it’s not working anymore really–we had a 4 month sleep regression and now she’s up at least 4 times a night, sometimes hungry, sometimes needing paci, sometimes just apparently uncomfortable and unable to sleep. Sigh.
Yes you can keep paci for naps but not night.
Check this out: http://www.troublesometots.com/how-to-use-and-loose-the-pacifier/
Thanks Alexis! I have read that post a few times. (Along with, um, every single other word on this website like 5 times because it’s all so great and also I might have a problem. My husband says my two current hobbies are cloth diapers and baby sleep and he might not be wrong.)
Anyway, I think I was just hesitating because I had tried out a bit of the gradual weaning PPO method and I could tell it was going to take FOREVER, and maybe not work, and she’s too young for Ferber plus I wanted to avoid CIO entirely for her. Ultimately, though, I went with my gut and my gut said “look, you knew when you gave her this paci in the first place that there would be some crying at the end of Paci Land and probably the amount of crying will be less now than any other time so just do it.”
So I did a kind of revised-for-age-group Ferber method. Swaddle, somewhat shorter check intervals, and a little bit longer soothing visits, and monitored closely to make sure I thought she was ok. I committed to at least 45 minutes of serious effort the first night. Here’s what happened:
Night 1: SUPER MAD BABY. She screamed pretty loud but it wasn’t like “OMG I’VE BEEN ABANDONED” crying, it was “OMG MAMA YOU FORGOT TO GIVE ME MY PACI AND I CAN’T SLEEP” crying. She went to sleep at just under the 30 minute mark. I was actually in the room when she fell asleep, rubbing her cheeks with my hand and her little lovey blanket. She had her usual 2 night and one early morning feedings, but no other wakings!
Night 2: Not mad anymore. Just complaining. 22 minutes to go to sleep (2 checks in that time). This night she went 6 hours between feedings! Hasn’t done that since back in the 3 month range, like 7 or 8 weeks ago.
Night 3: Brief complaining. Asleep in 5 minutes!
Night 4: 2 minutes.
As we speak she just went to sleep without paci for the first nap of the day, in her crib. 5 minutes complaining.
So, we have made huge progress quickly! We’re keeping the swing and paci for later-in-the-day naps for now, maybe until we get to the 2 nap stage I think. Yesterday she was home alone with Daddy (whose hobbies unfortunately don’t include baby sleep) and it was a FIVE nap day. So we still have some catnapping going on, but all in all things are good. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I love love love how specific you are with your recommendations, Alexis! Thank you so much! A little over two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time and, planner that I was, I was desperately trying to sort out the CIO debate while my daughter was in my womb. I (thankfully) stumbled upon this site and after a lot of reading and laughing in between Game of Thrones episodes, I felt prepared to take on bedtime. Now, two years and two daughters (16 months apart) later, by the grace of God and the advice of this site, I have two girls, ages 2 years and 8 months, who happily sleep through the night, from 7:30p to 6:30-7am. Hooray! People still look at me sideways when I get panicky if it’s past 6pm and we’re not home yet, but that’s okay. Good sleep (for me, my husband, and my girls) is worth it!
My kids are older and we routinely leave soccer practice EARLY to get home in time for bed. Interestingly we are the ONLY people to do this – so most everybody else is looking at us sideways too. But they wake up at 6:00 AM regardless of bedtime, so as long as soccer practice is at 6:30, we’re going to be leaving early.
PS. My kids are still young and yes soccer practice is far too late 😛
It surprises me that there aren’t more of us “early leavers.” Or “bath-every-nighters.” I am reading a certain popular guru’s book on toddlers right now, and while reading her sleep chapter, I was thinking, “Check. check. check. check…I already know this because of Alexis.” So hopefully with your collective guru powers there will soon be a sea change and, for example, the far-too-late start time of 6:30p for my girls’ DAYCARE’s Halloween party will start at 5p next year instead so we won’t have to miss it! Thanks again for all you do!
Thanks for this post! My 20 month old naps from 12 til about 1:30. What time should she go to bed? We’ve been doing between 7 and 7:30, but she has been waking up progressively earlier in the morning, now waking around 5:15.
I’m not sure if this is a bedtime issue as it sounds like you’re schedule is right on target. I will say that lots of kids start having sleep issues right around 2. And she’s just getting old enough where a toddler alarm clock might work:
http://www.troublesometots.com/how-to-use-a-toddler-alarm-clock/
My son sounds EXACTLY like JJ’s daughter. Similar schedules, sleeping more restlessly at night than usual, and waking up earlier and earlier each day. I bought the toddler alarm clock yesterday and will be getting it (hopefully) tomorrow. My question is, what time should we start out setting it at? He isn’t consistent with his wake-up time at all right now. He used to be waking up around 5:45-6, but yesterday it was 5:15 and today it was 5. So….what time? Should we start at 5:30 and go from there? We’ve been leaving him in his crib until 6 regardless of what time he wakes up and he doesn’t cry when we do that. But he also doesn’t lay back down and fall asleep. I’m hoping the visual of the light will help him know to stay laying down, at least, until it goes on.
This is great! Thank you! We have a routine for our daughter (6mo) and she goes down easily between 630 and 7 but every night, without fail, she’s up 40 min later SCREAMING. She puts her paci in by herself but then yanks it out and keep screaming. It’s gone on for well over an hour most nights. I’m now breaking down and going in and holding her and sometimes nursing her to calm her down and get her to sleep again. After that, not a peep til 7 or 8 in the morning. Any thoughts as to what is going on and how to make it stop!?
My guess is that there is something about your bedtime routine that leads her to be “surprised” when she wakes up 40 minutes later. Is she falling asleep with you there (to wake up with you gone)? Is she falling asleep with the paci that falls out (which is a surprise to her)?
It sounds like there is a surprise happening there and thus the screaming. Thoughts?
Hmmmm, not really. 9 nights out of 10 I put her down awake and she rolls over and falls asleep. She uses the paci but can pop it in herself so other times during the night, she reaches around, finds it, and puts it back in her mouth without a peep. During these tantrums, she will put the paci in her mouth and then rip it out, throw it out of the crib, and scream her wild banshee scream. We have caved in the past few nights and gone in after 45 -60 minutes and held her. She’ll give a few screams and then scrunch in against us and settle down. The minute we then put her down, she usually starts screaming again. Last night, she finally quieted down and fell asleep around 8. Could we be putting her to bed too early? She woke up from her last nap at 3:30 and she was down by 6:30 (3 hrs awake time). Could she maybe need another nap around 5 and then be put down for bed around 8 instead? THANK YOU for replying!!
Well maybe I’m wrong but what about doing an experiment to see: no paci at bedtime for 5 days. See if the 45 minute later screaming thing stops. Report back.
Sound like a plan?
So update. Our Nighty Night Owl’s batteries died the other night so she went to sleep without it (note on the CloudB Nighty Night Owl – the sound sensitivity thing DOES NOT work. My kid could be screaming loud enough to hear her in the next town and it will remain silent). Voila! No waking 40 min later! (the timer’s max setting is 40 min). I have a feeling she was waking up wondering why it was so silent in her room. New problem: She was sleeping til 7 or 8am. Now we are waking up before 6. What’s up with that??
OK so there’s your surprise – the Night Owl was the culprit. You never want timed devices at bedtime (I hate that they put timers on stuff like this – Sleepy Sheep does the same thing).
Who knows why she’s waking up before 6. But honestly – 6:30 PM – 6 AM is FANTASTIC and above average. It could be that since her sleep quality is improving she has gotten her full load of 11+ hours and is ready to start the day earlier. An 11 hour night isn’t a problem it’s something to be celebrated 😉
For the past 2 months or so, my baby, now 12 months, had been taking a long time to settle to go to sleep. We have a solid bedtime routine (dim lights, nurse, change for bed, story, lullaby in the dark, crib) that’s been in place since she was around 4-5 months old that seems to work really well. Except where she used to fall asleep within 10-15 mins of being put in her crib at 7 pm (or sometimes even fell asleep in my arms) now she takes 30-40 mins to fall asleep every night and at most nap times. She usually doesn’t cry, she just talks to her bunny, sits up, and crawls around the crib for a while until she gets comfy and passes out.
Should we look into pushing bedtime back by another half an hour? I’m a little hesitant because 1) she wakes up between 5-6 every morning (usually closer to 5). If her set “wake” time is 5:30, then I don’t want to cut into her sleep time. 2) There have been a handful of times over the past 2 months where she’s gone to bed at 7:15 rather than 7:00 because, life, and she still takes 30-40 mins to settle so I’m wondering if that is just how long it takes for her to fall asleep? I know it usually takes me a long time to fall asleep and has since I was a little kid.
She’s generally a very happy baby, especially compared to the first 5 months when no on in the house had a handle on sleep at all, and doesn’t seem tired. Anyone have any thoughts?
Well you could experiment for 1 week – bedtime at 7:30. One week see what develops. But if she’s happy hanging out in there you could also consider that everything’s fine and she just needs a longer period of time to settle herself to sleep.
That being said, I think the 1 week experiment is worth a shot!
We were having a hell of a time with night wakings (daughter just turned one). Bed time was around 730. I finally worked hard to get her down an hour earlier 630 she is in her bed, and probably falls asleep between 5-10 minutes later. Bam! She started sleeping through the night. This has been going on for 2 weeks but she is still waking early. sometimes 4-430 so I usually feed her and put her back to bed….sometimes this will result in a 7am wake for the day but most times she is right back up at 545am! UGH!
Ugh indeed….BUT
If she’s going to bed at 6:30 PM and sleeping till almost 6:00 AM, that’s an 11.5 hour night which is PLENTY long! I mean no I don’t like starting the day then either but this is par for the course for babies.
Personally I would say she’s sleeping great. I know it doesn’t feel great when you’re up before the sun, but if she’s sleeping 11 hours at night, then yeah, pretty great!
So if my 6 month old baby has had 10.5 hours of sleep and is now ready to party at 5:30 a.m., do I allow her to get up? Then her first nap at 9 is WAY too late, and she only sleeps for 30 minutes then anyway…
I’m torn b/c my baby can sleep a long stretch, but she is pretty troubled by naps or sleeping after 5 a.m.
Thank you!
So glad you’ve wrote yet another great article! I’m a first time mom with a little guy who will be a year this month. Thanks to you, we have went to nursing and co-sleeping all night to him in his crib and no screaming when it’s nap and bed time. We have stuck to a routine and he now puts himself to sleep. Up at 7am and naps are 9:30 and 1:30 and about an hour each with bedtime at 7:30. The only problem is night wakings, he was awaking every two hours and wanting to nurse, I have weaned down to two feedings, midnight and 4am. But he still wakes at 10,2, and 6 then up for the day at 7. At those times, I simply walk in cover him up and he’s back to sleep. I have tried waiting 5-7 minutes, and doesn’t give it up. So how do I break him of wanting to see me (I guess that’s what it is) and even my husband can go in, and he’s back to sleep. Any suggestions?
What is your bedtime routine? Something needs to change on the front end (ie bedtime). Is your husband able to fully take over bedtime routine for you?
The bedtime routine is nurse, bath, pjs, books, and singing a song. My husband is normal involved in the whole routine and has done it alone a few times with luck but still waking at night.
I would:
1) Have Dad 100% do bedtime (if feasible)
2) Fully ignore the 10 PM wakeup. I think his you=sleep association is being reinforced here. Even if he cries for more than 10 minutes, don’t go in. If it helps – ask yourself does he have a real need or is this a want?
Want. He just wants you to come visit. But this pattern of visits is leading you to never sleep as between feedings and “visits” you’re up more often then the parent of a newborn.
Feedings are legit visits. The rest?
HELP! My 11 month old is doing this. She has NEVER consistently slept through the night. She is now night weaned and nurses 2-3 times during the day. Bedtime is 8, and she wakes at random and sometimes multiple intervals during the night. There is no timed device (I read the next post down) going off, she has a sound machine in her room that stays on all night. I tried simply not going in at all and she has stayed awake as long as 1 1/2 hours alternating between screaming and fussing. If I don’t go in she will likely stay awake 45-60 minutes when she wakes and this happens 1-3 times a night (not always a consistent time). I did not go into her room at all for 2 weeks straight and still this happens. The last couple of nights I have been going back in and trying to comfort and put back to bed and she doesn’t stay awake as long that way but the wakings still happen of course. Her typical schedule I try for is 8 pm bedtime (wake times are all over the place now because of her night wakings, any time from 6-8 am depending on when she woke up) and typically a nap around 10 and 2. Usually first nap is 45 min and second is 1 1/2-2 hours. She puts herself to sleep FABULOUSLY at naps and bedtime and has for months. But she cannot put herself back to sleep in the night it seems like. She sucks her thumb so no paci. What am I missing?? She has a 2 yo brother and I’m dying!! I haven’t slept a full night in over 2 years since I either have had a nursing infant or was pregnant and up peeing.
We have a consistent bedtime routine and my son falls asleep on his own like a champ but a 9 months he is still getting up in the middle of the night sometimes more than once. He’s gone to sleep on his own since he was 4 months but always had issues staying asleep. We’ve tried weaning and even CIO for these middle of the night wakings and nothing works. I’m hoping he’ll one night just grow out of it and sleep!
Hmmm…well if it helps here are the primary causes of night waking:
-> Sleep association, generally related to something happening at bedtime that he needs you to recreate during the night (this can happen even if he’s falling asleep on his own)
-> Hunger
-> Normal infant arousals
Kids wake up all night because that’s how they’re wired. The fact that he needs your help to navigate these night wakings however suggests that the issue is more of a bedtime sleep association type thing. SO maybe there is a small tweak in your bedtime routine that might help? The key is generally here – what does he need you to do to help him fall back to sleep at night?
Thanks for this post! I reeeeeeally need to stop nursing to sleep, I just don’t know how! My baby is 10 months old and I want to nurse her until she’s a year old…but, she is very distracted UNLESS she is nearly asleep! If I try nursing her before bath time (rather than after), I’m afraid she’ll be too distracted to get a good feeding in, and then if she wakes up crying during the night I won’t know if it’s from hunger…she’s pretty much night-weened, though some nights when she doesn’t stop crying for 30 minutes or so I nurse her back to sleep – never more than once a night, though, so I know she can get back to sleep on her own. She’s a champ eating solids and really is only nursing first thing in the morning and last thing before bed, both times when she’s drowsy. Even if she sleeps straight through the night (11 hours) some nights, does nursing her down to almost totally asleep mean that she definitely has a sleep-association problem? I know that she CAN put herself back to sleep because she usually does unless she’s sick or badly teething…any ideas on how to solve this issue?
Ah, and I forgot to say…nap times are all up in the air at this point since she started daycare. I live in Mexico, and apparently “babies (need to) sleep at these times during the day” has really not caught on here, or they just don’t think it’s important. When we put her in daycare they said they’d respect her nap times, but from what I can tell that is not happening…at daycare she usually takes just one nap from around 11 to 12:30 or so (the official nap time for all the babies – what a coincidence!), and then I have to get her a nap when she gets home around 3:30 which I feel is too late, but she just can’t make it to bedtime without that second nap. Changing daycares is futile – it would be the same story anywhere, here…do I just need to get through it? All that said, she sleeps at night surprisingly well under the circumstances, and on the weekends she takes her normal naps at around 9:30 and 1:30 or 2.
I’m confused – she’s sleeping through the night and not demanding you come feed her at night yes? So…why do you need to stop nursing to sleep?
You have a miracle baby. Some babies can nurse to sleep and successfully sleep. THIS IS RARE AND YOU SHOULDN’T COUNT ON IT WORKING FOREVER. But it’s working for now so, there’s no problem right?
It sounds like she’s not that interested in nursing (don’t sweat this – some babies just aren’t that into it while others are total BOOB babies who want BOOB ALL THE TIME, it is what it is). So you’re down to 2 feedings a day and she’s sleeping great, so why not wait 2 months to deal with this?
And if you can’t fix daycare, you can’t. No real advice there. The same thing happens in US daycare too. Keep the 3:30 nap short enough so that it doesn’t interfere with bedtime. That’s really all you can do, right?
Well, that was exactly my question! I read everywhere “stop nursing to sleep at night, or you’ll be sorry!” but could never find anything written about my particular case. Thanks for the response, and for calling her a “miracle baby”, lol! She cried about 100% of the time until she was about 6 months old, then 80% of the time until she was 8 months old…we’re finally seeing the light!
Hi Alexis, first of all thanks for your awesome website. It’s been a God send. At 10 weeks I tried to unswaddle (as he was already showing signs of rolling) and sleep my baby flat in the pack n play. Cue 2 weeks of absolute torturous sleep. That’s when I stumbled upon your site. I was already using the swing for naps based on a recommendation from a friend. So at 12 weeks old I started to swaddle again and use the swing for all sleep. Things much improved. At almost 17 weeks we are down to 1-2 wake ups (both a dreamfeed) and the typical early 5-6am wake up. The swing is also already located in his room near his crib for future transition purposes.
Bed time has also been well established for awhile now. We have our routine and he goes down between 7-7:30 every night. Based on all this I know I’m at putting baby down drowsy but awake stage. I’m starting with bedtime as naps are VERY unsuccessful with this. He fights naps much HARDER and right now I’m more concerned with him getting good naps. With bedtime, I find that 25% he’ll go down very easily based on how tired he is. The other 75% I find I have to come back into the room to either soothe or actually pick him back up and rock him. With the latter he usually falls right back asleep so I know he’s depending on me and that this is where things can fall apart in the future.
So my question is, at 17 weeks old how should drowsy but awake work when he fusses and cries? Do I not go in there? Do I wait for awhile and see what happens? Obviously I know we’re not at CIO at all but what if baby is doing more than just fussing and grumbling at this age?
I know he’s going to be a tummy sleeper as the few times I’ve had to sleep him in the pack n play while visiting family, he now rolls over and sleeps on his stomach. Though these naps are only 45 minutes long because he’s not swaddled nor is he accustomed to putting himself back to sleep this way. I can’t swaddle him during these times as he has been able to since 14 weeks old to fully roll over swaddled from back to tummy (I know, the motor skills on this kid!) so I know when I transition to crib it will also have to be without the swaddle (which is a bummer because I know he sleeps much better swaddled). So when he’s upset in the swing, he spends it crying aggressively trying to rolling over and smashing his face to one side (he’s strapped in so I’m not worried about him going anywhere). Also I know we are potentially knocking on the door of the 4 month sleep regression. (He had one at 6 weeks old so I know how they can be).
So I’m just trying to see what’s next. After working on drowsy but awake (with the above questions) is getting rid of the swaddle next?
I would nudge a bit on the “how awake is he” at bedtime. It’s totally OK to let him fidge about in there for a while. This is NOT CIO, it’s more of giving him a brief opportunity to sort it out. 25% of the time is fantastic at 4 months! But what if you give him 10-15 minutes alone in there, could that get you to 50-75%?
He wont’ be swaddled in the swing forever so now is the time to push on that.
And yes after you get farther down the drowsy but awake road, getting rid of the swaddle is next. Because soon-ish he’ll be coming out of the swing and that means bye-bye swaddle. Try a merlin sleep suit or zipadee – lots of people have great results with those as “better than no swaddle!”
Great article. I started doing a bedtime routine with my son almost immediately. Eventually we had a set time of 6:30 pm routine, 7 pm asleep. This has worked wonders (aside from regressions). My now 9 month old will take 10-15 minutes to fall asleep and stays asleep until 6/6:30, some times 7 am! As soon as I moved his bedtime up to 7 pm (around 4 months) he’s been great with his nighttime sleep. Couldn’t agree more with “early is better!”
Fantastic!
And yeah early is so much better. We’ve been force to cave to fireworks on July 4th which means bedtime is 11 PM (aaaaak!) and pay for that for DAYS. I hate to sound unpatriotic but I now dread the Forth of July 😛
She is 2. Sleeps in her own bed in own room. Still has a paci. Takes a1.5-2hr nap at school.
Yeah I would totally try this:
http://www.troublesometots.com/how-to-use-a-toddler-alarm-clock/
But I should add she sleeps with the paci on a clamp string and puts it back in herself. Always has. Usually when she gets up after 5:30 we just get up get up for the day. We have an early schedule anyway. When she gets up at 4:45 or earlier one of us lays down with her to get her back to sleep (she has a full mattress) and we tell her she has to wait til mommy and daddy get up. If she is really emphatic to get up for the day we bring her in our room and tell her she has to wait til she hears our alarm clock. Then she just sleeps on daddy for a bit. That works most times lately.
There is a post on this site about toddler alarm clocks–google and you’ll find it. She’s definitely old enough for that, and it worked great for my son. Give it a try! You’ll want to start with setting it for 5 or so since that’s when she’s waking, and then inch it later and later from there.
My 12 month old hates getting up in the morning and if he can he will sleep until 9:30, 10ish. I’m definitely not complaining about that, but I do think that he could benefit from an earlier bedtime. He generally goes to sleep at about 9:30-10:30pm, but it’s not on his own. He has to hold our hands in order to fall asleep and he is also still in my bed. My DH has been reluctant to put him in his own bed, but now it is time for him to go before we are bed sharing with a 10 year old.
Check this out: http://www.troublesometots.com/bedtime-what-time/
The answer to an earlier bedtime is ultimately waking him up earlier in the morning.
PS. You won’t be bed sharing when he’s 10 because his buddies will tease him about that WAY before then 😉
Perfect timing. I am trying to figure out if my 11 month old only needs ONE nap! I know it sounds too early but her 2nd nap is so late I think it’s interfering with BEDTIME! When she was a younger baby, her 2 naps were pushed up much earlier, she went to sleep quickly, and she was asleep for bed by 7 p.m. A dream.
NOW…
Wake Up at 6 a.m. ~ish
Put in crib for nap around 9:30, doesn’t fall ASLEEP until 10 a.m.
(If I put her in her crib BEFORE 9:30 sometimes it can take a full hour of screaming before she actually falls asleep. So I think she is frustrated and not tired enough)
I get her up around 11:45
Back down in crib at 3:15, doesn’t fall ASLEEP until 3:30-3:40
So I let her sleep until 5 p.m.
And because she naps so late we don’t put her in her crib until 8 p.m. and she doesn’t fall asleep until 8:30.
In the past, our routine worked beautifully and her 2 naps were earlier and she was out like a light at 7 p.m. Our routine is like you suggest … breast- jammies/diaper change – books – say night night to room and put in crib awake.
Our nap time is similar, but with shorter amount of time between breastfeeding. I nurse, diaper change, and read books and put her in crib. It used to work fine and she would crash in about 15 minutes. But now it’s consistently 30 minutes before she falls asleep, and if I try to push her nap earlier she just cries for LONGER and is MORE frustrated, sometimes a full hour before she crashes or I get her up.
I feel like she would be too tired to only have one nap per day. But the two nap thing is so hard because everything is getting majorly pushed back… We would LOVE bedtime to be at 7 p.m. but it’s not happening right now.
Do we stick it out like this for a few more months or go to one nap a bit early?
Thanks! Love this website so much.
Thinking, thinking, thinking…
Well I do think there’s a bit of a schedule issue going on. The things that jump out at me here are:
– It’s routinely taking her 30 minutes to fall asleep
– You’re needing to wake her up from nap #1 (that’s how I read this, yes?)
– Her night is short – only ~9 hours
It does sort of sound like she’s heading towards 1 nap a bit early (not THAT early). If she could take a huge nap – say 11 AM – 1:30 PM, that would be awesome. Then she would be totally ready for bed at 7:00 PM which creates a better potential for an 11 hour night.
IT does run the risk that she’s awake “too long” between nap and bedtime but it might be worth a 5 day experiment just to see what develops?
So much good info here! We’re pretty lax about bedtime in the summer, but the rest of the year, 7:30 seems like a great time for us. My kids (ages 4.5 and 22 months) are just like you said–it doesn’t matter what time they go to bed, they wake up at the same time regardless. And that can make for a very grouchy day after if they go to bed too late!
We do allow late nights on occasion for various activities, but I know I’ll usually be paying for it the next day!
Yeah we do “special event” evenings too but even though my kiddos are 5 & 7 we STILL PAY FOR THEM.
For example tonight our school has Lego night from 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM. For this reason I TOTALLY HATE LEGO NIGHT. My oldest hasn’t mentioned it and I’m hoping he has forgotten it in which case we’ll skip it. Otherwise we’ll go and deal with crabby kids all weekend. (Stupid lego night :P)
I’ve actually got a comment / question that relates somewhat to the two posts above from Laura and Rachel. I’ve got twin 4.5 year olds and a 2.5 year old. Their bedtime is later than I’d like due to my work hours (I get home at around 7-7:30). 2.5 year old is in her crib by 8pm (but with winding down, she falls asleep around 8:30pm or sometimes as late as 8:45-9). Twins in bed by 8:45-9pm. Falling asleep 9:15-9:45pm. Wake up is between 6:30-7pm. Once in a while they sleep in, but like Laura, it’s usually very consistent that they wake up at that time regardless of bedtime.
Bedtime sleep doesn’t feel like enough at all, but they all take 2.5-3 hour naps in the day (1:00/1:30-4:00 sleeping) So, total amount for entire day seems right (admittedly maybe still too little for 2.5 year old though). It’s unclear to me if it’s more beneficial to still have the nap or to get more sleep at night. Any thoughts?
Love the article as always. My 2 yo has a solid bedtime routine and is in the crib at 7:15. He happily talks to his stuffed animals and quietly lays there til 8 pm before falling asleep.
The thing is, if we get home late from an activity, or have guests over, and we don’t put him to bed til 8 or 9, he STILL does this for at least 45 min. So it seems like this is just him, and not a bedtime too early issue, right?
He sleeps all night and isn’t up before 7 am and he naps from 12:30-3ish, so I have no other sleep complaints, mostly thanks to Alexis 🙂
45 minutes is a long time to wind down but if he’s happily hanging out there then maybe he DOES just need to chill out for a while. If that 45 minutes starts to stretch out longer or if he starts grumping about it I would start eyeballing nap as potentially too long (or maybe dropping it in 9-12 months). Because he does take a healthy nap 🙂
In the meantime, enjoy the healthy nap!
Oh god, I love that nap. Don’t make me give it up! I am due with #2 in March and I am hoping to keep it until I survive the newborn phase 🙂
It’s funny because without a video monitor, sometimes we would have no clue he was awake. Just lays there, staring at the ceiling in the pitch black room. Then we will hear a random babble from his room as we watch grown up TV downstairs 😉
Can’t wait for the book!
My little girl is 9 months old and over the time we had struggled with many sleeping issues until we finally reached the point when she takes to solid naps and falls asleep by her own and sleeps trough the night….
I am very careful on putting her down for naps afer exactly 3 hours of being awake and it works like a charm.
For bedtime I don’t let her be awake more than 4 hours…moving bedtime wheen needed.
For the last week and a half she keeps waking up earlier and earlier, she started at 6:15 and today she woke up a few minutes before 5 am, last night she slept at 6:30 .
How can I correct this? I am sure that she does not get daylight or anything that can disturb her.
I don’t want her (or me) to wake up this early
Thanks
If she’s going to bed at 6:30 PM it could be that she’s simply gotten enough sleep (close to 11 hour) and is ready to start the day at 5:00/5:30 AM. Personally I would advocate less moving of bedtime and more “bedtime happens at X time all the time”. If you can comfortably get that bedtime to be just lightly later, say 7:00 PM, she may then use her 11 hours of sleep to sleep in until 6:00 AM.
So my husband and I keep trying to move our almost 6 month old’s bedtime a little earlier, but she is pretty stubborn about it. As of now her bed time is between 9:30 and 10pm. She does wake 1 or 2 times in the night (which I’m okay with), and is usually up for the day between 9:30am and 10:30am.
I’ll admit that we do not have a steady day time schedule, but she does consistently take 3 naps during the day. Usually the first is ~1 hr long, the second is longer ~1.5 – 2 hours (but requires some tending to, because she tends to wake herself up by rubbing her face) and the last is a short 30 minutes. The final nap tends to fall around 7pm. Sometimes if her long nap was slightly later than usual we will try to just put her down for the night earlier (as to avoid a nap at 8 or 8:30), but it never works. If we try to put her down for the night anytime before 9:30, she will go to sleep, but only sleep for about 45 minutes (or less), then she’ll be up for at least an hour (sometimes more). We have varied what we have done when this happens – sometimes we go in and pat her, sometimes we let her be (in which case she rolls around and plays in her crib), sometimes we pick her up – but it doesn’t really matter what we do, because the outcome is always the same, she does not go back to sleep for some time – at which point I am very tired (I usually go to bed around 10pm myself).
Our bedtime routine is diaper change, breastfeeding, some cuddle time with her dad (we decided it was easier to keep the boob away), then into her crib (awake). My husband lays next to her while she goes to sleep in her crib(we have a co-sleeper), and she is usually out within 10 minutes of going into her crib. We had been swaddling her all night, but she is starting to fight it, so we recently ditched it for the first segment of the night. Without being swaddled, she usually sleeps about 3 hours – which coincides with the time my husband goes to bed, so I give her a quick feed, then my husband changes her diaper and swaddles her before the both go to sleep. She still sleeps better swaddled, but since she is fighting it when she is a bit more awake (i.e. before going to bed for the night), I figured it would be good to start working on not using it at night.
Sorry this comment is all over the place – we also do not swaddle her during the day (and haven’t for about 2 months now). She does have a pacifier, but usually loses it before going back to sleep and she does put it back in her mouth as long as she is not swaddled.
She is not at all a cranky baby and does not appear to be overtired (she is happy).
So I guess my question is, do we just have one of those odd babies who is a night owl? Everything says she should be going to sleep earlier, but she isn’t waking up early, so maybe that just isn’t for her. Would love to hear your thoughts.
You need to wake her up earlier in the AM if you want to shift bedtime up. Most babies start the day at 6:30 AM. Yours is sleeping till 10:30 AM. Given that there’s no way she’s going to be ready to go to bed at 7:30 PM! Start waking her up slightly earlier: 10:15, 10:00, 9:45…and then shifting everything else up by 15 minutes (naps, bedtime, etc.)
This will work and you’ll all be a lot happier when you aren’t parenting a baby at 10:00 PM at night. Yes you’ll need to start the day far earlier but on net, it’s worth it. Good luck!
Hello,
My six month old goes to bed at 830 and wakes up at 730. I tried to move it to 730 but that makes him very playful at the middle of the night.
I dream feed him at 10PM and go to bed. He will for sure wake up between 11pm to 12PM. I tried to offer him a bottle at that time but he refuses.Then he will wake up at 1 and take a bottle.
He will again wake up around 5AM and then finally wake up between 7 to 730.
Any suggestion on how to prevent him from waking up between 11pm to 12Pm?
My goal is to make him sleep 5 hours without any feeding.
I would really appreciate your suggestion
Tracy
Hey Tracy,
That’s potentially a complicated question that could be dependent upon lots of things but broad brush:
– Make sure you aren’t nursing/feeding just prior to bedtime
– Skip the dream feed at 10 PM (it doesn’t seem to be doing anything for you anyway right?)
– Sounds like the 10 PM thing is about a nursing=sleep association and not food (which is why he refuses the bottle but wakes hungry 1 hour later) so once you change up bedtime, I would consider ignoring this waking.
He may cry but he’s not starving. But you have to change up what’s happening at bedtime first OK?
Love this site – but my 6mo doesn’t fit the pattern! Her bedtime is 6.30 (half bottle at 6, bath, pjs and sleeping bag (often yelling for the rest of the bottle as we dress her!) then rest of bottle and in cot by 6.30, usually asleep within 10 minutes after a little chat with herself. She has a dream feed at 11 and wakes anywhere between 6.45 and 7. Ok I know you all hate me now but such an early bedtime is difficult now I’m returning to work and she’s at daycare (childminder) until 5.45. She absolutely cannot manage 3 hours between the last nap and bedtime – she is an eye-rubbing wreck after an hour and a half and bedtime becomes a disaster with her screaming when we leave the room, taking up to 45 minutes to go down and sometimes waking up again yelling a couple of times before midnight. Normally at home she’ll nap for an hour-ish at 8.30, an hour to an hour and a half at 11.30-12ish (often she wakes after 40 minutes but if I leave her for 15 minutes she’ll have another 45mins) and half an hour or so at about 4pm. At the childminder she’s been getting 35 minutes in the morning in the buggy whilst taking older kids to school; second nap in the travel cot but invariably up after 45 minutes, and another school run catnap at about 3.30, so waking about 4. A few meltdown bedtimes have ensued. Does she just need a lot of sleep? Any way to encourage her to stay up maybe half an hour later?
Some babies need more sleep & an early bedtime. I know it sucks as you never get to hang out with her but it won’t always be like this and keeping her up later just make things ugly 🙁 So for now, keep with the early bedtime.
It is what it is. By 9-12 months she’ll likely be able to stay awake longer and you’ll get some fun baby time in the evenings!
Thanks so much Alexis for taking the time to reply. It’s nice to hear we’re not doing anything “wrong” by putting her to bed so early – we get some strange looks. But we have a pretty great sleeper right now – partly I am sure thanks to this site. I’m a bit worried about what’ll happen in a couple of weeks when the clocks go back, mind you. I’m hoping when her feeds shift the rest will fall into place!
Your blog is so helpful. I could weep. Thank you. I am not sure where to start. Re: putting them down sleepy,but not asleep, and having them fall asleep (the holy grail), what is the difference between grumbling/complaining and full on upset? My 17 week old’s grumbling/upset always (always always) culminates into full on upset. He has cried himself to sleep in the car a few times, and once at home, and it took about 5-10 minutes.
We are really in the woods at night lately. He is maybe sleeping 3-4 hours for the first stretch, then spotty and every 2 hours after that. (For a while he was sleeping 6-8 hours at night. He was swaddled. This stopped. We have no idea what shifted.) We have a bassinet I can’t decide was a blessing or a curse, because it bounces. Which is wonderful. He can get to sleep predictably and reliably by putting him down sleepy and then bouncing him for anywhere from 10 seconds – a minute. If it isn’t working, I let him cry for a minute or two, then bounce again. Fifteen percent of the time, I have been able to stop bouncing and watch him go to sleep on his own. This takes about 5 minutes, but he isn’t moving at all, just looks kind of hypnotized. So I wonder if I have effectively done most of the work for him, and he hasn’t really snuggled down and figured it out himself.
It is time for us to get him out of the bassinet, but I am worried that it will be a total game changer. No more bouncing! Do you have any thoughts on the bouncing?
Thank you immensely, in advance.
I think he’s little and the bouncing works which is FANTASTIC! Keep doing what you’re doing! Bounce until he starts the “sleepy blink” and then stop. Leave the room. Set a timer for 15 minutes. See what happens.
And I’m serious about the timer – you’ll want to go rescue him after 3 (because 3 minutes seems like FOREVER). Use a timer. Commit. See what he can do.
Because what I hear is that he is really REALLY close. You just need to give him a little chance I think.Even if he gets full on upset – see what develops.
As for night sleep you could use swaddling + white noise. Or if you want to try to get longer stretches, a swing. I can tell you want him in the crib but he’s still pretty little and clearly loves motion – so a swing might help.
I think you’re right around the corner from things getting better 🙂
OK–we are rallying–thank you for the encouragement! I’m not particularly attached to the idea of his moving to the crib right now, was just worried that we are setting ourselves up for trouble transitioning into one (sooner or later) by setting up a dependance upon bouncing to get to sleep. And was worried that what feels like more interrupted sleep lately is a sign that he is needing us to bounce him every time he drifts up out of deep sleep into lighter sleep….but very excited to try leaving him alone to see what happens. I just want to be clear: you think it’s OK to leave him to cry, even if the crying starts after the first minute alone? Full throttle upset for up to 15 minutes?
I am going to try to reign myself in now–I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your time and insight.
Welcome back Alexis! I am excited for the book but missed your posts. This is great, as always. I’m pretty sure my problem is with insufficient naps, not bedtime, but now that I am back to work I’ve lost control in that department. So sad, after all the crying it took to get those two hour without a peep blissful naps. But my parents are taking care of my son now (he’s 14 months) and they are mostly not willing to deal with the crying or putting him down for naps when he needs them. Sigh. So now he gets a couple short naps, or often just one hour long nap in the middle of the day, and is predictably having a hard time going down/waking at four wakeful and not able to sleep. Maybe I can talk them into reading your blog … 🙂
I wish I had grandparents to babysit and always wonder if I would have gone back to work if that had been an option (our closest grandparent lives 8 hours away – blerg). The upside of grandparents is that you have babysitters who love your child almost as much as you do and that’s FANTASTIC.
The downside about grandparents is that they aren’t “hired help” so you don’t get to boss them around like you could a nanny. So yeah, crappy naps are sabotaging your night sleep and you can’t bully grandma into letting her precious peanut cry for even a few minutes 🙁
You’re right – it’s totally worth it. So good to be able to leave him with them and know he feels secure and will be well loved and cared for. It does make being at work a lot easier. I’m crossing my fingers that as winter sets in they may get more on board with the crib … We’ll see. He’s going down sweetly at bedtime anyway and that’s something.
Thank you for your always excellent advice. We would not be in anywhere near as good a place without you!
Your page has been a lifesaver for me and my just over 6 month old.
I am lucky to have an adaptable baby who has been falling asleep on his own since just over 3 mo old. We built a bedtime routine VERY early that starts between 7-7:30 involved a bath, nursing while in his diaper, PJs, swaddle w/paci and singing. Done & asleep before 8PM. We’re working on getting him out of the swaddle right now but he seems happy so we’re not in a hurry.
Also…our sample size of 1 experience on the important of daytime napping: My little guy is taken care of by his grandparents, with my MIL and my parents alternating weeks. My MIL has taken care of many babies over the years, and also listens to our instructions on the best way to get our little guy to fall asleep. My mother, who hasn’t looked after a baby since my now 29 year old sister was born, has the “I raised babies you know” attitude and does what she wants. My MIL get the typical 2 chunky naps and cat nap out of him. My mother is lucky is he sleeps more than 1 catnap. The difference between in nighttime sleep is PRONOUNCED. When little guy sleeps well during the day, after the nighttime routine MAYBE he wakes up 1x during the night for a “paci protest” and then at 5:30AM-6AM for booby breakfast (which works for me because its when the hubs & I need to get ready for work so we’re not in a place to wean this anytime soon) When my mother watches him we’re looking at 2-3 wake ups, usually a paci will get him back down, but my poor hub has had several nights where he sits with the little guy in the rocker because little guy has woken up thinking its breakfast time at 3:30AM and if I go into the room it’s a disaster.
So yes! Naps are important! Bedtime is important! Can’t wait for the book and please keep doing what you do 🙂
I don’t understand how this happens. I can hardly remember how to do things I did 10 years ago. Like 10 years ago I took guitar lessons but if you handed me a guitar and asked me to play Stairway to Heaven I would be at a total loss. Why?
BECAUSE A DECADE HAS PASSED. Forget about 30 years. I hope I still don’t think I’m the Zen Baby Master 3 decades from now. By then they’ll probably figure out that toilet paper use is related to SIDS and that all babies need to sleep in webs crafted by handy robot spiders.
When I try swaddling my grandbabies my kids will look at me like I’m a cromagnon and simply hand their baby off to the robot spider.
You exactly described our 2 sets of parents! I have actually gone so far as to write a (single page) Baby Operating Manual which is pinned to the refrigerator, but my mother thinks she knows best and all this obsession with sleep is just newfangled nonsense.
At least I’m not alone! What can you do. Free loving daycare is super sweet. Can’t have something that good without a hitch! I do love the idea of a baby operating manual … There’s no way my mom would follow it but it would be fun to write 🙂
Hi Alexis. This is a super informative article, that has me thinking about our bedtime routine. The problem is that our 16 month old wakes during the night about half the time. 2-3 times. We wait a few minutes, and sometimes he settles himself, but if his crying escalates, we go in and ‘reset’ him by just laying him down with a quick tummy rub. He also wakes up before 6:00 am about half the time. There isn’t consistency about when he sleeps good and when he doesn’t, but a short night of sleep usually messes up his nap schedule. For example, he went to bed later than usual last night, because he took a late nap. He still woke up at 5:45 this morning, and made up for it with a nearly 3 hour nap earlier today. I don’t know when he’ll need to go to bed. He still takes 2 naps, and his bedtime is usually between 6:45 and 7:00. Ok, the routine. It’s been getting shorter and shorter the older he gets. He used to like books and listening to calm music, but he’s too active for that now, and wriggles out of my lap if we try books before bed. So now we’re down to a 5 minute routine, short but consistent. Brush teeth, zip into sleepsack, turn on noise machine, give paci and lovey. He falls asleep on his own, and within 5-10 minutes at the most. But what’s with his waking!? He can put his paci in, we have breathable bumpers so he doesn’t lose them. Some nights, he sleeps from 7 pm to 6 am, and it’s wonderful! But then the next night can be crappy with him waking up 3 times at night, and up for the day at 5:30 am. He also doesn’t have a longer wake time before bed – he’s usually rubbing his eyes and laying on the couch pillows after being awake for 3 1/2 hours no matter when. Is it a problem that our routine is too short? What else should we try?
Hey Alexis
This is SUCH helpful info! I had a quick question about my soon to be 1 year old. He was sleeping from 6:45pm-5:45am every night for a few months, which was fine. I’m trying to get him to sleep in a little later (6:00-6:15am)because we do a nanny share and the other kid wakes up later so it throws off the schedule of my son gets too tired earlier in the morning. He takes 2 naps per day (9:30 and 2:30) and each is about an hour. But lately he’s been waking up at 5am!! and he’s so tired that he sleeps for almost 2 hours at each nap. Any advice on how to get him to sleep later and have the shorter naps back? I tried making his bedtime at 7 but that doesn’t seem to be helping – it has only been a few days though.
any thoughts would be super helpful!
thanks!
Hi Alexis!
I’ve got to tell you, you’re website is my go to with any sleep questions I have for my 8 month old daughter. Of everything I have read, your website has been by far the most on point and effective resource! Thank you, thank you, thank you! My 8 month old sleeps through the night. Naps about 1 hr-1.5 hrs in hrs in the a.m. And 1.5-2.5 hrs in the afternoon from about 1-3. She goes down most night around 7:30-7:45. She was sleeping until about 6-6:20 am and now for the past two weeks or so has started her day at 5:30 am. My question for you is, any advice for handling the time change for Daylight Savings Time in November? 🙂 thanks so much!
My question is… which is more important, having bedtime at the exact same time every night, or having it after the exact same amount of awake time? We have been doing sleep training with my 3.5-month-old daughter for the past few days, and naps are still a nightmare and all over the map. Sometimes she wakes up from her last nap at 4:45, sometimes from a stroller-induced emergency catnap (after a day of nap disasters) at 5:45. Should I be aiming for a sleep time of 7:30 every night, or a sleep time of 2 hours past the last wake-up time?
Also… any tips on how to navigate the upcoming daylight savings time change in the midst of sleep training?? Or is it best just to accept a very early bedtime?
Thanks for your help!! Much appreciated.
My 3.5 yr old, usually stays up and plays in his room until he’s tired and will put himself to bed. The problem is he will not sleep with the light off. We put Christmas lights up to make it “more” fun night light, but he will every time turn the light on. We’ve bought the smallest watt bulbs but still refuses.
He sleeps about 9-10hrs usually, though sometimes I can’t really tell exactly when he falls asleep. I can get my 14 month to sleep by 8 but is mostly awake at 6. Is giving him toys and or milk in his crib a bad idea or just take him out. Sometimes I can tell is he’s still tired but other days it’s hard to tell.
Dear Alexis,
I have a wonderful, happy, endlessly cheerful 18 month old girl who apparently believes sleep is her mortal enemy, and refuses to succumb to it. It has been a year and a half of at best spotty, at worst terrible sleep.
For the first year of her life, she slept ok sometimes … she’d sleep through the night for a couple of weeks, then scream at all hours for the following month. We actually sleep trained using first the sleep shuffle and then ferber at 9 and 11 months, and it worked well for a short period. The problem is that my husband and I have a relatively unconventional schedule and travel for 2-3 weeks at a time frequently (both internationally and domestically), and our daughter travels with us, so nothing ever stuck.
Since her first birthday, however, things have been a mess. Some nights she wakes up 6+ times, some nights she wakes up once or twice for 2+ hours, some (good) nights she wakes up briefly a couple of times. She hasn’t slept through the night in months. To make matters worse, I am currently pregnant and completely exhausted. My work productivity is at an all-time low, I feel completely overwhelmed and depressed from a lack of sleep. Some days I can’t drive because I don’t feel safe being on the road. We tried sleep training using Ferber at 13.5 months and it did.not.work. She yelled at bedtime, she yelled in the middle of the night. Her sleep didn’t improve at all, and we stopped after a couple of weeks. Now she goes to sleep in her own bed but with me in the room, and generally ends up in bed with us at some point during the night — which would be fine if she actually slept. But instead she tosses and turns and crawls all over me and wants to play. She’s not at all clingy during the day, but at night she wants me and me alone.
We finally have a period when we will be at home for 2+ months, and we need to figure out a way to get her to sleep better. But there really isn’t that much information out there on toddler sleep. She’s too young for a reward system, but I fear she is too big and stubborn for CIO. I think her resolve might be stronger than ours, and I can’t imagine letting her cry on her own for hours on end. What approach do we take?
My daughter is nine months old. She used to sleep from six pm till five am straight! But that all has changed.
She now goes to sleep around six still, is nursed to sleep, and then wakes up on average four times a night. The only way to console her is to nurse her. My husband has tried going in but she freaks out. She freaks out with me too unless I nurse her.
I realize one thing you suggest for this is to move nursing her twenty minutes prior to bedtime. Like nurse, then do a bath, a massage, a book and then bed.
But how do I move that nursing earlier, and expect her to just start falling asleep on her own. Seems this way would only allow for the cry it out method?
Hello!! Thank you so much for giving me my sleep back 😉 I have a 5.5 month old who falls asleep independently for naps/night since we CIO a few weeks ago. She still ALWAYS wakes 30-45 minutes into her naps, and a Binky plug sends Ber back off 75% of the time. We do not use a Binky EVER to initially fall asleep. My question is about nights. She had been waking between 3-4 am each night. She is happy for the first 30 minutes alone then squaks for me. And cries. A Binky sends her back off, so I don’t think the girl is hungry. She is over 20 lbs…fat girl! Any idea why she is waking and not resettling herself? She is also very restless the rest of the night, requiring a few plugs til morn. We were going to bed at six, having read weissbluth. Now it’s 7:00-7:30 because of Ferber’s “in bed too long”. Routine: Bath, boob, baby Merlin, book, bed. Sound machine all night. Minimal fussing before sleep. Any ideas? It’s not a giant problem but it would be nice to resolve it!!!
Ooooo…and she wakes again around 5:30…with a replug to get her until at least 6:30. My mothering skills are best at 6:30 🙂 taking 3 naps a day, all requiring intervention
Hi Alexis,
Long-time reader, first-time poster (ha!)…like everyone else, have found your blog super helpful, so thank you!!
I’ve never seen anyone ask/answer related to my particular scenario, so am at a bit of a loss! My 7-month-old is recently sleep-trained and doing great, except that he’s been waking up in the 4am hour and not going back to sleep! He’ll babble, lay his head down and just lay there for a while and do that several times until around 5:15, when he finally starts to fuss/cry until we go in and get him around 5:45 (following Weissbluth’s advice to not go in until 6am but the poor kid’s been up for almost 2 hours at this point so cave a little early!).
I know most people say to first try putting them down to sleep earlier, but we put in his crib b/n 5:30-6 already, and he falls asleep easily at that time. When I’ve tried to put him down for a third nap instead instead a bit sooner, he’s just cried hard and not gone to sleep like he does when he’s tired. He wakes from his second nap b/n 2 and 3pm, and is definitely ready for bed by the 5:30/6 time.
This early wake also really messes with his wake period, b/c once I’ve gotten him out of the crib at 5:45am, I still try to get him as close to a 9am nap time as possible, so he usually falls asleep for his first nap just before 8, but that means he’s been up for almost 3-4 hours (since he woke up 4-something in the first place). Thankfully, he’s still able to take 2 ~1 1/2 hour naps
We do a consistent night/nap routine, he falls asleep easily on his own for all of them, he’s got sound machines and room darkening curtains, etc. I’m sure he needs more than 10 hours of sleep, but I really don’t know what to do to get him there – any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Dear Alexis,
I have been reading your blog assiduously and it has provided the best instructions out there regarding baby sleep! Thank you for helping us all exhausting parents out there. We are still at a loss as to how to tackle our 6 months old baby sleep issues now. More exactly we don’t know exactly where to start…
We have done a bedtime routine but the bedtime routine involves me nursing our baby to sleep as a last step and putting her asleep in the cot with a pacifier. I know it is the source of all evil but it is very hard to change. Moreover, we are concerned as she seems to be breastfeeding mostly at night, as she is very easily distracted during the day. Now nursing to sleep doesn’t even work any more as she is often overtired and when she gets upset it is really hard to calm her down. When she falls asleep in my arms, I need to keep her there sometimes the whole time of the nap as she wakes up and screams if I put her in the cot (at least I need to keep her sleeping there for the first 20 minutes). She wakes up very frequently during the night screaming (from 3-4 up to 6 times a night) and has a very erratic pattern. When she wakes up, it takes at least an hour to put her back into the cot and sometimes she wakes up fully in which case it can take up to 3 hours. She sometimes wakes up very soon after bedtime (say an hour) and her sleep is very light. Her bedtime is 6.30 pm.
We have tried putting her drowsy but awake but she gets very upset and then we try to do it again but sometimes we just have to rock her to sleep or nurse her to sleep as she would not fall asleep on her own when she gets into this overtired screaming stage. We are worried she might not be able to learn to self-soothe if she is overtired. And she is now beginning to resist rocking/nursing when she is upset, so it’s hard to even get her to a drowsy state.
I don’t see how to tackle the problem otherwise but to let her cry it out but my husband is against that idea as he thinks she is sensitive because she is so difficult to soothe. So we try to shush pat and nurse /rock to a drowsy state and then put her in the cot drowsy but awake. We have tried so far only at bedtime (and not during night wakings or during naps as we are afraid she will get overtired if we do it systematically as she might just not fall asleep at all). But she screams and screams and it more or less worked a few times but not when she is too tired.
My questions are the following: do you think we can avoid the cry it out? Do you think we should only tackle the bedtime first or does that create inconsistency? Shall we get rid of the pacifier and the nursing to sleep at the same time? What would you suggest we do; we know we are not supposed to rock/nurse to sleep but how do we actually get to put her down drowsy but awake if she is overtired/so resistant to it?
Hey John and Alex,
Yes, yes, yes. There is that helpful? No?
Here’s what I’m hearing:
– She’s sleep deprived and getting her to sleep is challenging and likely frustrating/stressful for all involved.
– She’s become hypervigillent – so nursing to sleep at bedtime isn’t working well and it’s also leading everybody to waking frequently and staying awake for long stretches during the night.
– She might be sensitive because she is just “difficult to soothe” but I’m wondering if she isn’t sensitive because she’s sleep deprived.
So you’re stuck in a bit of a vicious cycle. I suspect your baby is a screamer. Some babies have a variety of cries (quiet, complaining, all the way up to screaming). Others just SCREAM. So they’re either content or SCREAMING and it can be really challenging for parents.
CIO would definitely work. No nursing, no paci at bedtime. And given what you describe (being awake for hours at night) it’s not an unreasonable tactic. And it may in fact be the only workable one given that you’re now in a hypervigillent/overtired funk.
If that’s not an option or doesn’t feel right the backup plan would be – more soothing. Like newborn levels of soothing. White noise, swaddle, swing. This may feel like a step back because you want her in the crib but I would see anything that fosters more sleep as a positive at this point. Same for naps – maybe she would sleep better in a stroller/car ride. If pushing her in the stroller for 1 hour gets you a long nap (vs. 20 minutes) I would see that as a positive change also. Sensitive kids often need TONS of soothing longer than their more mellow counterparts so I see the goal as “more sleep” being more important than “sleeps in crib” (which frankly isn’t working anyway right).
So one option would be to try for 1 full week to get her to fall asleep in the swing AT bedtime. This may not be a smooth process and requires full commitment. I would swaddle her, turn on loud white noise, and put her in the swing to see if you can get her to fall asleep there. Using a paci (short-term) is also OK if it helps you achieve that goal.
Does that sound like something you would be willing to try? Report back after a solid 7 day go?
Thanks so much for the quick response and sorry for being late in replying (we had no wifi for the last few days and then I got sick and then we decided to change tactic radically and opt for your first suggestion so I wanted to wait before updating you on our progress).
We originally opted for soothing to get out of the overtired phase before reading your reply (it is when you NEED wifi that you don’t have it). The only thing that worked for naps was co-sleeping after her nursing and falling asleep in my arms with a pacifier and white noise in the background (I know, sleep props overkill). It worked great to the extent that she went for decent naps (for the times and amount of time recommended by Weissbluth for her age) and every time she woke up during these naps, seeing me led her to go back to sleep. I tried then co-sleeping one night and it went great the first night but the subsequent nights were so bad (so many wakings) that we had to give up on that too. Rocking and being awake all night was really getting too hard (she is also about to turn 7 months).
We wanted to try your suggestion but we don’t own a swing. We got a swing before moving (three weeks ago), a portable fisher price one but our daughter didn’t like to stay in it. To be fair this kind of portable one might not be at all comparable to the kind of swing you are talking about and might feel very different but if we had waited to order one it would have just postponed the whole thing again…
The swaddling: when we last tried (a few months ago), she hated it and I suspect she is not going to like it now. She is a doer, she really dislikes being hampered or restricted in her movements. Besides, she always got her arms out of the swaddle me blanket I got for her. But maybe we should have persevered more with it? The white noise however we use all the time since I read your post on it and I think it really helps!
Anyway back to updating you in our progress, we were hoping to soothe her but after five not so bad days, she seemed to have become overtired despite the great naps just because of the number of times she woke up at night so we thought that we had exhausted the softer methods.
We decided to try Ferber without paci and nursing long 30 minutes before bedtime as you suggested, we left only the white noise in the background. The first night she cried for 1 hour and a half at bedtime which was agonizing, as she is, as you spotted it, a SCREAMER, not a little whine kind of girl. During the night, she woke up as many times as usual (around 6) and cried for 10 to 20 minutes every time. The second night she cried a few minutes at bedtime but woke up as many times as usual and cried every time for around 10 to 15 minutes. The third night she cried for 10 minutes at bedtime. The first night waking she cried for 8 minutes and went back to sleep. The second time I went to feed her and she screamed when I left for 10 minutes. Then she woke up again at 2, I fed her and she cried again for a while. But more importantly, she woke up again at 3.30 and cried for half an hour and again at 5 am, at which point I decided to start the day with her. (The day after, she slept three hours during the first nap and then 2 hours during the second nap to recover from this night.)
As you recommended in one of your posts, I keep on feeding her (in a slightly more structured fashion than before as she used to snack a bit all night long). I feed her at 10-11 and at 2-3 am. During the naps, I co-sleep with her with the pacifier, nursing and all, because in one of your blogs you recommend tackling naps at a different time (but maybe I am exaggerating with all the sleep props present during day and none at night).
Since you have been so kind as to give us some advice on what to do last time I have a few questions (and I realize you might not have time to respond to each, but I will ask them anyway):
It seems that she is not yet improving in terms of the number of times she wakes up at night, although the bedtime amounts to less crying consistently. Of course we will wait for a week before drawing conclusions but do you think that this is normal and will improve? Is the combination of different treatment at naps and feedings at night combined with cio is confusing?
What do you suggest we do for naps (if we want to avoid cry it out for naps)? Shall we buy a swing and try to do what you suggest for naps with the swing? Or shall I stop with the pacifier at least and try to wean her off every prop (co-sleeping, nursing, paci) that I still use during the day gradually? And if we do want to do cry it out for naps, how shall we do it?
Looking forward to hearing any of your wise words on any of these questions….
Hi alexis
Great info thanks for sharing! Have a couple of questions/
What happens when my 8 month old daughter wakes from her afternoon nap at 230pm? Do I need to put her to bed for the night so that she’s asleep by 530pm?! That seems ludicrously early! She’s still not in a solid routine for naps (start times and also duration) but mostly I feel because her wake up time for the day is different every day.
And any ideas why she is starting to wake earlier and earlier in the mornings?
Hubby and I have been doing a kind of gradual retreat sleep training with her which has worked wonders (she’ll now wake once or not at all at night) and she’s now self settling for naps in her cot (she’s a screamer!) but will not at bedtime. We always leave the room (for naps and bedtime) and allow her to scream for a short period and we then go in if the screaming hasn’t changed to her shouty going to sleep kind of cry. Any ideas why she does this?
Hi Alexis, thanks for this article – there’s lots of information in it. I’m a bit at a loss with my baby though! She’s just turned 7 months old and has only “slept through the night” (6 hours? 7 hours once?) a handful of times since she’s been born. The amount of times she wakes during the night varies and I do believe that teething disrupts much of her sleep right before teeth break through.
She naps fine during the day. She typically was napping every 2/2.5 hours for about 40-60 mins and now she’s stretching that to about every 3/3.5 hours for about the same time.
Her bedtime routine is consistent and has been for months. It takes no more than 20 mins, involves a bedtime story, getting into her growbag and being put into her crib. I don’t nurse her to sleep. She is a natural thumbsucker. I leave the room while she’s awake and 99.9% of the time, she drifts off on her own within 5 minutes. She’s usually asleep by 6.30pm, sometimes 7pm (depending on naps that day).
We’ve started solids, I know it’s not hunger. I know she’s capable since she’s done it the aforementioned handful of times. I just don’t understand why she won’t! She wakes up, I nurse her and she goes back to sleep. If she wakes up and I don’t nurse her, but I soothe her instead, she will go back to sleep but invariably wake up less than an hour later upset again.
I genuinely don’t know what to do. She puts herself to sleep, she goes to bed at the same time with the same routine. She has a full belly. She wakes up the same time every morning (around 7am). WHYYYYYY doesn’t she sleep through the night?? What am I missing???
THANK YOU!
Hi Alexis,
My son is 20 months old, we put him to bed at 730 pm and he is normally awake by 5 and wakes up multiple times throughout the night. He doesnt fully wake up but quietly cries in his bed every few hrs. he naps at 10 30-12 30 am. he wont go for second nap. so i ve tried quiet time around 3-330. how can i get him to sleep longer in the morning? i dropped his second nap because he would just scream.. even for an hour..and than he really was sleeping horrible at night.
Yeah it sounds like he’s ready for just 1 nap. I wouldn’t even push the quiet time in the afternoon. What is happening at bedtime? Does he fall asleep all by himself? Use a paci?
I am not really sure where to post this 2 part question. Pre-time change, my little guy was sleeping from roughly 7-6am with one night feed. He was waking every morning with a poopy diaper. He was taking naps with the 3rd being short. In other words, life seemed pretty good. Now, he is up with a poopy diaper around 5 am. I change him in the dark and feed him and put him back to bed. He will not fall back to sleep or if he does, it takes forever. In addition, he has gone from decent naps to 1 good nap, 1 40 minute nap and usually refuses 3rd nap. The good nap and crap nap are not nessesarly in that order. I have had to shift bedtime earlier to try to preserve night sleep. For example , if last nap is at 3rd and he refuses, we have him in bed by 6pm. He is almost 6pm months and has a 2 hour gap between naps. My thoughts are a) if he wakes at 5 with a poop I should just treat it as morning for now until it passes.b) I should also start to extend wake times between naps as he may be dropping a nap. Thoughts?
Just noticed the auto corrections in my post.darn cell phones. Ugh.
Dear Alexis,
thank you for the great website with a lot of helpful and practical ideas.
Our 5 and a half months old boy has been a terrible, terrible sleeper ever since the day he was born (actually, the third day). Up until the end of the 4th month, the only way he fell asleep was by rocking him for at least 15 min (swaddled +white noise; refused the pacifier). Then, I don’t know what happened (may be our determination after my wrist and my husband’s back were of no use anymore or may be the two times that we left him fuss and scream for 40 min for naptime, he didn’t settle by himself, but maybe got the idea) he learned to fall asleep in his bed with us singing and accepted the pacifier.
Naps are still terrible (4x a day, each 20 to 40 min), he still wakes up at night (4+ times), but he managed sometimes to fall asleep by himself after 15-20 min (at night). We have a solid bedtime routine (bath, bottle and songs, still white noise, sometimes swaddled (only one arm)) and he is sleeping between 7 and 7:30 p.m. We can’t leave him cry it out at bedtime, because he is so tired, he’s asleep almost directly after putting him down (doesn’t fall asleep in our arms). For some reason, for a month now, he’s awake every night for at least an hour, but more often for 2 to 2 and a half hours and I see, he tries to fall back to sleep, but he can’t. I’m singing (like bedtime) or giving him the pacifier (or bottle), but nothing helps, he fall asleep only after the determined time has passed (no teething!). So on total, he sleeps like 9 h every night, although he is 11h in bed (+ 2 h naps in total).
It is really, really not enough sleep for a baby, but he seems happy when the night is over (between 5 and 6, depending on how long he’s been awake). We, on the other hand, are exhausted. Do you have any idea, how we can change the situation and is there any chance to get him to sleep more at night? Is there any hope for the naps too? He’s getting the bottle 2x at night (11 and 2 o’clock) and we are about to wean the second time (doesn’t really need it).
Thank you very much!
Hi Alexis,
I’ve been following your advice with my almost 12 month old pretty much since the beginning. He’s honestly been a great night sleeper for a while (give or take a couple nights) but lately things have gone downhill somewhat and I’m not sure why. He’s had a consistent bedtime of 7:30 for a while and his routine hasn’t changed either. We read scriptures as a family and then every other night he gets a bath, we diaper him and put jammies on, his dad reads him a story and then I feed him a bottle of formula while dad turns off the lights and turns the white noise on (no timer– it goes all night), sing to him then I put him in his crib awake with his pacifier and he pots himself to sleep without a peep. For a long time he didn’t wake up at all until 7. Sometimes we still get that but more lately he wakes up crying several times a night or at least ends up waking up super early (5:45-6 and I try to wait until 6:15 at least to get him) and sometimes it’s both things. I don’t go in to him in the night unless his cries are truly desperate (he has a scream-cry) and keep happening a lot. I’d like to blame it on daylight savings time and I do think that contributed to further messing things up but he had been doing it for a week or so before. He also was teething but I’m pretty sure that’s done now too. He also has, on a few occasions, refused to go down for bed or a nap by scream-crying– usually for naps. He will cry as soon as I start lowering him into his crib and then scream cries for a long time. That happens rarely but I still have no idea what its about. Anyway, he’s never been a consistent napper. He’s still on two naps a day. I try to wait until ten to put him down in the morning to try to encourage him to get on his schedule again. His naps are anywhere from 45 minutes-2 hours and I could deal with that if he just slept better at night again. Anyway, I’ve tried to include every detail I can think of and hopefully we can figure out the solution. Any advice would be so so appreciated!
Well it could simply be the 1 year sleep regression in which case you just power through it and hope it’s brief. It also could be the paci and bottle at/near bedtime starting to back up on you. Typically IF that was going to be an issue, it would have become an issue before now. But if things don’t get better (or get worse) within ~2 weeks that’s what I would start to consider. Hopefully it’s just a rough blip though.
Good luck!
Thanks Alexis, we’ll try that. Right now we are also dealing with some more consistent difficult nap go downs. In the morning I put him down at ten but the past couple of days he has really fought it (and is fighting it right now). These are also both days where he’s actually slept until 7 (this morning he cried for a bit around 5:45 then back to sleep) and I wonder if I should wait even later to put him down and he’s just not ready exactly three hours from waking but needs a little more time. He won’t be 12 months until Dec 1 and I’m really doubting he’s ready to drop his morning nap but I just reread your article on dropping naps and he can put himself to sleep at night just fine… Sigh. He finally put himself down and it took like 45 minutes. I did go in after about 15-20 minutes of scream crying and rocked him and stated to fall asleep in my arms so I put him down and then he was up scream crying until just now. Do you have any idea what’s up?
Aaaaand he’s up. Half an hour. Sigh.
I would like to thank this article for convincing my skeptical husband that rushing home for bedtime was actually important and not just me hating my inlaws 🙂
Alexis I love you for taking a whole week to put together this stupendous post!! 🙂 🙂
Some thoughts on my daughter’s sleep who is 4 months old today.
She gets up every morning at 8.30. Her nap schedule is not very consistent, but she usually takes 2 naps, 10.30- 12.30 and 14.30-16.30. If she wakes up before 16.30 she sometimes take a short nap, 19.00-19.30. Either way, I can NEVER get her to sleep before 21.30 or even 22.00, no matter what I do! She only wakes up twice in the night, her longer stretch being around 7-8 hours. However, I do not like the fact that she only gets 9-10 hours at night instead of 12 and that she only takes 2 naps, even though they are long.
I am in the process of teaching her to fall asleep on her own, she usually succeeds during the day, but not at bedtime.
Overall she is a happy and calm baby. I just don’t know if this schedule is right for her. What do you think?
My 10 week old is a champion napper but is far from consistent! Some naps are 30 minutes, others are 2hrs. What I’m not sure about is what to do at night time. Lately the last nap of the day has been getting harder, it is taking longer to get him to sleep which is pushing his bedtime to later… Or is it? We have had a bed time routine in place from 6 weeks (thanks to this amazing blog!!!) but it doesnt have a strict start time. I start it 1.5hrs after he wakes up from the last nap (on average he is awake for periods of 1hr 15mins during the day). Should I pick a time and stick to it regardless of the last nap or continue with the 1.5hrs? Normally he is asleep by 845pm but since the last nap is getting harder it’s starting to be 930 -10pm. Any ideas what I should be aiming for?
I love everything about this site, but I’m so jumbled up about where to start and what to focus on first!
Our little guy is 4 months old and sleeps fairly decent during the night (usually a good 6 hour stretch, followed by anywhere from a 2-4 hour), but I know it could be better. Admittedly we’re not consistent with bedtime and it can range anywhere from 7-9 depending on how naps went during the day (he used to nap like a champ but is now a chronic 45 minute napper). He is usually awake twice in the night (the first time I definitely feel is a hunger thing around 2:00 a.m., and the second…well, sometimes he won’t go back down after nursing and we end up starting the day anywhere from 5-6:30).
We are loosely following Babywise (eat, wake, sleep cycle) and that has been working well in terms of helping us plan our day, but with his wake up time in the morning being inconsistent and his naps being so terrible we can’t really plan too much…all we know is that he can handle 2 hours of being awake before things go sideways.
He goes down awake for naps during the day when my husband is at home with him (he’s a full time stay at home dad, which I LOVE) and it rarely takes him more than 10 minutes of fussing/crying to fall asleep. He isn’t so great doing that at bed time though. For what it’s worth, he moved from his cradle to his crib when he was a little over 2 months old and has never slept in anything else.
So…I guess after all of that, my question is, what do we focus on first? I have three things I’d like to happen and just need to know where to start. I’d like to drop the middle of the night feeding if we could (I’m supposed to be at work at 6:00 a.m. and waking up at 2:30 to feed him has just made me a wreck), get him going to bed at a more consistent time, and improve his naps.
Hi Alexis! I just have a quick question regarding my 20 month old and wasn’t sure where to post it. He has been sleeping pretty great for a long time now (thanks to you and this site), I am just wondering about the timing of things, especially because according to Weissbluth he should be napping much later than he does now.
He has been a consistent early morning riser for most of his life. No matter when he goes to bed, he is up between 5-6 am. Since he has dropped to one nap, his bedtime has been fairly early. Because he wakes so early in the morning, he is ready for a nap by 10 am. He normally sleeps about a couple hours and then he’s up until bedtime. Weissbluth says when they drop to one nap it should be an afternoon nap (between 12 and 2), however if I kept my little guy up until then he would be awake for 6-7 hours minimum before his nap, and then the awake time before bedtime would be very short. I’ve tried moving his bedtime later but it doesn’t matter – he still wakes at the same early time. The last week or two I have been able to keep him up until closer to 11 for his nap but nothing has changed with his morning wake up time. Is he just destined to nap super early versus most toddlers his age or should I really be moving his nap back to noon or later? I figured the longest awake time should be before bedtime, not before nap time, correct?
Thank you as always for your help and this site – what a lifesaver!
Hi Alexis,
I love your website and recommend it to all my mummy friends! I used your advice for my last baby and now I need some for this one!
I have a very cute 4 and a half month old baby boy who was born 7 weeks premature so developmentally more like a 3 month old. He is generally a pretty good sleeper so feel a little guilty complaining as he goes to sleep by himself the majority of the time with white noise and previously swaddling (although has just figured out how to escape the swaddle) and naps well in the day 1.5hours -2hours at a time and sleeps at least 6-8 hours in a row at night. All sounds good hey and I should stop there, however evenings are tricky. I generally start feeding about 6/6.30ish and put him down awake at around 7/7.30 an hour and a half -2hours after waking (he struggles to be awake much longer than this and then struggles to go to sleep by himself). I get him into his sleep suit/nappy change etc and he often has a story with his big sister at the time too. However for the last 14 weeks he then always wakes up 45 mins later. I can actually set my watch to it! He then just cries and wakes himself up fully if left. We have tried holding him in the eves too to see if we can ‘transition’ him through the unsettled 45 min mark but he still wakes and no amount of jiggling and rocking works. He then either just cries in the eve and is really unsettled or just awake. Sometimes we can get him back to sleep but it is usually after being awake 1.5 hours. He will then resettle after I feed him at around 10-10.30pm where again i put him down awake and he goes off happily to sleep. It is almost like he goes to bed at 7/7.30pm but this is just a nap for him and his shortest nap of the day!
So my question is – is this just a baby thing which (hopefully) he will grow out of and we just go with it for now and not complain as he is a good sleeper the rest of the time or am I doing something wrong? Im just worried about creating a habit? I think he’s too young for CIO though so don’t want to leave him to cry for too long to see if he resettles himself so is there anything else we could try?
Thanks for your baby sleep guru-ness!
Alexis,
I am hoping you can help me. My now 16 month old has kept a steady routine of two naps a day and a bedtime of about 7 to 7:30 pm. About the last two to three weeks….he WILL NOT go to bed. I mean it takes about an hour and a half to get him to sleep. So about 8:30 is when he is falling asleep now. So the last three days I have been trying one afternoon nap and really no change to night time sleep. Our routine is bath bottle ( because he won’t give it up so he gets one at night) books and I was rocking him but he won’t let me do it anymore so now I just say goodnight and put him in his crib and walk out the door. He has a night light a sound machine and a fan. He usually sleeps til 7 am. He has been getting his first year molars and has had a cold. What do you think the problem could be? I am one stressed out momma. I miss my “me” time at night and I think he’s missing sleep. What went wrong?
Hi Alexis,
I appreciated reading your page and the advice on getting our babies to sleep. I will be honest, we have made so many mistakes with our baby girl that I don’t even know where to begin.
Our daughter is almost 10 months old, and she has never been a good sleeper. We used to put her down awake when she was a few months old, but over time she now only falls asleep if you nurse her or give her a bottle. We tried switching back to putting her asleep awake and she will cry, for hours. Now granted, we don’t just leave her I there crying. However, we tried the cry it out method where we come in after longer intervals and she cries the whole time, not even stopping when we enter the room. If you don’t pick her up, it never ends.
Regardless of how she falls asleep, she wakes up multiple times a night, pretty much every 2 hours. She normally is not hungry, but wakes up and either needs a new diaper or just wakes up wanting us.
To make matters worse, since she never stops crying, my husband now let’s get fall asleep on him in the middle of the night so that we all get some semblance of sleep. So all in all, we have created a situation where she can’t fall back asleep with out us.
I know people say cry it out is a method, but she will not stop, and I worry about letting herself get that worked up. At this point I am pretty confident she will cry for hours if we don’t pick her up. I’m sure that’s not the answer either. I get we created the problem and she now needs us as her “pillow”, but I now have no clue where to begin :(. Do you have any advice?
What I forgot to add is we have a bedtime routine – bath, book, bottle and we shoot for 7-730 every night. She is a very inconsistent napped but typically naps around 9 and 2 for anywhere between 30min and an hour and a half. I’ve thought about switching the routine to bottle, bath, bed…but her never ending crying worried me….I feel lost.
Jen,
Will cry it out work? Absolutely. Do you need to go that route? Not necessarily, but I wouldn’t out of hand convince yourself that it’s impossible.
But if you want from a different perspective I would remove the bottle from bedtime and cuddle her to sleep. Ideally this happens in HER bed – meaning you crawl in there with her. I KID! No she’s in her bed and you have your hands on her, patting her back, rubbing her belly, whatever works. Even if she complains you sit there (or stand there more likely) and rub her back till she’s asleep.
The you gradually work on less touching. Maybe within a few days you sit next to her crib and hold her hand. Then you move on to sitting next to the crib but not touching. Then you start to move the chair away from the crib and out towards the door.
This will take longer and you need to commit 100% to not going backwards (meaning you’re always moving away from her personal space on each subsequent day). But if you feel you can commit to a ~3 week process, it’s totally worth making a change!
Thanks, I feel like there is some piece I’m failing on that I just can’t seem to get right :(. Maybe my tolerance level is too low. Three nights in a row we tried this method and she sits/stands up and just cries. The first two nights I sat next to the crib rubbing her back for an hour to no avail. She cried and screamed the whole time. If I lay her down again she screams louder and sits back up. I feel like a failure :(. Is it normal to let them cry for hours? When I talk to friends who have tried different methods including cry it out, they said their babies didn’t cry for more than 30 min.
Hi Alexis,
First of all, you’re blog had made the most sense out of the million sleep approaches I’ve read about, so thank you for making sense! Alas, at 10 months I went all CIO, and got my little nugget to sleep (she’s 1yr tomorrow). We are sleeping 830 – 6 right now, but I’ve made a crucial mistake. She nurses down at night and anytime I’m lucky enough to get her to nap (she does not nap consistently). I’m actually ready to stay the weaning process now and freaking out about how to separate sleep and feeding. Any advice would be very very VERY welcome!
Alexis – or anyone who may have some insight – I don’t know what’s going on with my little one. He’s 5 months old, and he used to take good naps, though never great. For the past 6-8 weeks, naps have become a battle. First wake up is 22 mins, then 36 mins, then 42. If (IF) I can get him back to sleep through those, he’ll sleep for about 90 minutes. Most of the time, he’s just up.
He has a cosleeper, and is getting really good at falling asleep on his own with just a binky and a lovey. The binky doesn’t usually fall out, and if it does, it doesn’t seem to bother him. Here’s the kicker – he wakes up at those times even if I’m HOLDING HIM THE WHOLE TIME. It seriously makes no difference. What the devil is happening? His bedtime is set – bath, boob, book, song, bed by 8:15. He won’t sleep earlier, later makes him cranky. He’s sleeping better at night, but no improvements with nap time 🙁 I abhor these naps – I work from home, so I really need him to sleep!
Any suggestions for breaking the survival habits we picked up during colic? Our daughter is 11 weeks old and has slept through the night (6-10 hours) since about 7.5 weeks consistently. However, she has been a screamer all day long (after being a screamer all night long). I am glad we no longer are up all night, but she still needs loud white noise, swaddling, and absolutely cannot fall asleep on her own. I’ve tried the drowsy, but awake thing, I’ve tried to just shush=pat, I’ve done “the pause,” but she often goes straight to the PURPLE FACE CRY if i put her down without being ASLEEP. In addition, still working on getting her out of the rock-n-play as she does sleep through the night in there.
I keep reminding myself it’s all just a phase, but the entire thing stresses me out so badly. We are consistent in our bedtime routine with nightly bath.
ugh, it sucks.
Is she too young to try to break these habits? My biggest worry is her never falling asleep on her own, and transitioning to the crib where she won’t sleep through the night!
She needs to be rocked, swayed, and bounced to sleep.
Hi Alexis,
I have a 15 month old who is consistently an early riser. He usually gets around 4:30am, however, he has been waking up at 3:30 for the last 2 weeks. This is not the first time we have experienced the 3:30 wake-ups either. It seems to happened every couple months. We have tried everything to get him to go back to sleep (CIO, feeding, bringing him to our bed, etc). He is definitely not hungry…he just believes that it is morning. Circadian clock seems to be out.
His bedtime is between 6:30-7:00. I couldn’t imagine a much earlier bedtime and a later bedtime still results in a 3:30 wake up. This is only 8.5h of sleep at night. He refuses a nap at home until 9am but will fall asleep in the car on the way to day care immediately.
We did sleep training with a consultant at 6months and he is excellent at putting himself to sleep. Usually asleep within 2-5 minutes for both nap and bedtime. He still needs to naps because of such an early wake up but at daycare he is only allowed one nap at daycare. His 5-10 minute catnap in the car seems to give him enough relief to keep him going till noon. We tried following the same routine at home (catnap around 9am and nap at 12). With the 3:30 wake ups though we have gone back to two naps at home.
Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. We are completely exhausted and at a total loss. The 4:00-4:30 start to our day has been occurring since 4 months old. Even as a newborn he refused to sleep between the hours of 4-6. I read all these posts of parents wantif their babies to sleep past 6. I would do anything to be able to sleep until 5am again. Thanks.
I should also have said that he is very happy and rarely cranky because of over tiredness. If he wants a nap he will let us know by getting his sleep sack or going upstairs to his room. If we ask if he wants a nap he will reply with yes (or no).
Hi – just wondering if you received any valuable advice/feedback to your 4.30am query. Our 4.5mth old wakes between 3.30-5am each morning and it’s incrediblly difficult to settle her without a fed which has now created a habit. Any pointers are appreciated!
My son is almost 16 months old. For the past week and a half now he has been sleeping from 7:30p until about 10:30a he may wake up periodically throughout the night for about an hour or so he prefers to go to bed at 6:30 but unfortunately my work schedule does not allow for that. If he wakes up at 8:30 like he was just over a week ago he’ll want to nap around 11a which is fine but I have to take him to work at 12:40 this does not allow for his maximum sleep that he truly needs it’s starting to concern me because of how late he wakes up… With his new schedule his nap starts at about 1 p.m. Until about 3 p.m. give or take. My son would not want to wait longer than 2 hours before his nap during the day. My son loves to sleep now but never used to while he was an infant every time I put him down he’d wake up and cry and because he would cry so much I decided that I would co-sleep with him until he was 6 weeks old. This worked perfectly now he was able to sleep in his swing alone at 6 weeks. Once he turns 6 months I started to give him 5-10-15 -20 mins before I would respond to his cry a gradual increase in time. This allowed for him to decide if it was worth it to loose sleep over. I started my weaning process with him from breastfeeding I initially fed him two to three times a night every night I had enough pumped milk that I was able to give him a bottle for him to feed himself by 9 months once the milk was almost gone I gave him a mix of half pumped milk and half cow’s milk then eventually only cow’s milk and then a mix of cow’s milk and water and now he just drinks water at night. There were several nights when I would stay up late researching on the internet and making sure that what I was doing was the right thing for my baby in the end I concluded that some babies are more resilient than others some babies like sleep than others and some need to be taught how to like sleep. My son was never truly resilient he just needed to be taught how to sleep now he knows it all too well.
I can’t actually find your question in this post, BUT if you are wondering whether it’s okay that your son sleeps so long at night, I thought I’d let you know that my daughter slept from 6:30pm-10/11am (yes, seriously!) from the age of 14 months until just recently (she is 2 years and 2 months), and would also nap for 2-3 hours a day. She often woke in the middle of the night for a small solo party but would fall back asleep on her own. The doctor told me to enjoy it and that she’s totally healthy. Some kids just like sleep! Hopefully that helps.
THANK YOU! This article has been one of about 378 that I have read today. We are struggling getting our (almost) 6 month old to sleep. I’m thinking I have been doing bedtime ALL wrong. I will be trying these tips for the next few nights and see what happens. It definitely won’t make it worse!
THANK YOU for supporting me during a tough crappy few nights. Your sense of humor really hit home with me (I’m South African, we get through all darkness with humor). My six month old didn’t mean to but she was starting to drive me insane. She was turning into a pint sized little dictator of note. I finally said “enough”. I am a career girl with a family to support. So off to the races (picture us facing each other like two Cowboys in an old town square. Her being the fastest gun in town by far). I trained my son (six now) right from day one and he slept through the night at seven weeks. I know it can be done.
With her…I was older., softer. Waited five years for her. A king sized bed is so big. And it’s so cute to wake up to her fat sleepy little face between us. Fast forward six months, and my angel turned into a terror. Going to bed at eleven…latching on and off every 20 seconds…and preventing any type of intimacy between my husband and me.
I read in some places that it shouldn’t harm them. Other sites said I am a devil mom for even considering it. However…we are entering night four and it is better. And last night…drum roll…she slept eight hours STRAIGHT. I say, if babies like attachment parenting, they ought to not abuse it so much. Perhaps they can form a union and we can bring it all to the table and discuss a better solution for all involved. For now however, I will hold fast to the knowledge that no one loves her more than her daddy and me, that she knows that, and that her tiny growing brain and body NEEDS quality sleep. Thank you again for helping us through the last three days.
Hi! OMG your story could be mine, except my lo is 9 mo, not 6, and I may just BE insane. The fact that things are better for you after 4-5 nights is so encouraging to hear, especially cz I’ve almost lost all hope and I don’t wanna try CIO! So just to be clear, could you plz tell me what changes you made to your routine that helped so much?
I would be so grateful to hear the steps you put in place as well. My lil man just turned 9mos and nothing and I mean nothing has worked. I have given a week and half to each method. PU/Pd, Fading Chair, shush pat and even CIO. All were to no lasting sleep assistants. I am a military wife doing this solo and with no extra income to put towards a consultant any help would be great!
What specific steps/routine did you make to get your baby to sleep through the night?
Hi. My now 7.5 month old baby was an excellent sleeper. She would sleep about 7 hours, eat, and then back to sleep for another 3-4 hours. She caught RSV in December and since then has not been able to sleep more than 2 hours at a time. I have blacked out her room, play soft music throughout the night, have a bedtime routine and she is in her crib no later than 8 pm each night (if she’s showing signs of needing bed earlier, then she goes down then). I’ve tried a chiropractor, her pediatrician, and what seems like everything under the sun and yet, she still won’t sleep through that 2 hour mark. Here is out routine: 630/7: dinner of solids and a bottle. After that, we change her to her pajamas (bath time riles her up). Then we play calmly until 730/745 and then we cuddle and slow down a bit more. she finishes whatever bottle she has left and then goes down awake. Soft music plays 24 hours a day in her room and she has just enough light from her night light so that I can navigate my way through her room. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
My 6 month old goes down great at night time. We do bath time, nurse, read books, sing a song then lay him down awake around 7pm. He usually falls asleep right away, sometimes he fusses for a few minutes. He then wakes up anytime from 9:30-10:30pm, I go in check his diaper because usually he is poopy. Change him in lay him back down. He cries anywhere from 10mins-45mins before falling back asleep. He then wakes up crying anytime from 12:30-1:30am I nurse him and lay him back down. He’s back up again crying around 3-3:30am, I nurse him again. And then he wakes up around 4:45-5:30am every day and doesn’t go back to sleep. He was doing good with naps (only napping on me during the day 1-3 hours at a time) but i started laying him down for naps which he then cries for 1-2hours and only sleeps half the time with 2-3 30min naps a day. I know naps play a huge part in sleeping at night. Do I let him sleep on me and have great naps during the day so he sleeps better at night, or should I let him CRI for naps?
my 6mth old also self settles all the time (we have worked on this for some time), has a bed time of 7 and is on solids. He drinks his milk just fine too. He also wakes at night randomly between 12-3 for one feed and then often wakes from 5-5:30 and won’t go back to sleep. He also naps very erratically even though I follow his sleep cues/awake times. He wakes between 20min and maximum naps are 1.5 hours. Sometimes he cries for a very long before napping. When he wakes from a nap, he almost never resettles with or without help. I’ve tried cio consistently for 2 weeks before he got sick recently and it didn’t improve naps or early morning wakes
My 15 week old sleeps 11-12 hours at night but fights pretty hard to get her to sleep. Started a bedtime routine at about 9 weeks old and have been consistent. It was starting off great but now she knows bedtime is coming and starts fussing earlier and earlier into routine. Will at some point she accept it? I hear over and over again routine is critical but it seems to backfire for me.
I’m having a tough time figuring out when to put my 19 week old down for bed after her last nap. It takes her anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour to fall asleep. I can put her down after 1 1/2 hours or 2 1/2 hours and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. The amount of time it takes her to fall asleep is anyone’s guess. It’s making it difficult for me to know if I can dial down the speed on the swing (using it to conquer Mt. Put-down-awake) because I have no clue if the lower speed is making it more difficult for her. She might just be taking forever to fall asleep that night, but I give up after a certain amount of time and turn it back up so she’s not awake longer than 3 hours. She doesn’t fuss while falling asleep, just flops around and sucks her thumb. Should I even be worrying about how long it takes her to fall asleep? Should I pick an awake time and make it consistent? Should I pick a set bedtime and be consistent regardless of awake time? Watching her sleepy cues in the evening just doesn’t seem to be working. For reference, she gets between 3-4 hours of sleep a day in 3 naps and sleeps 10 1/2 to 12 hours a night with 2-3 feedings. Anyone have advice?
Well, here I am again with the solution to my own problem. I tried testing the waters one day and put her down awake in her crib for a nap. She talked for 10 minutes, fussed for 10 minutes, and then slept. She’s been going down peacefully (and wide awake!) since then for naps and bedtime and falling asleep much faster. I guess she was just done with motion! This from the baby who would only sleep ON ME for the first 2 1/2 months. Yay! Putting a big ole check mark next to “put down awake.”
HELP! We did the CIO method with our 16th month old son, based on your flawless advice. Now he is 22 months, and very tall for his age (98% percentile). A month ago he started climbing out of his crib. We actually lowered the crib BELOW the factory notch, by drilling our own lower notches, and he still climbed out. It was too unsafe, so we moved him to his Toddler bed. Once he’s asleep, he stays in his bed. He even remembers some of his earlier CIO training, and usually soothes himself and puts himself back to sleep. He has never woken in the middle of the night and gotten out of his bed. HOWEVER, putting him to sleep has now become a constant struggle. We started out completely throwing your wise words out the window, and we laid with him, we cuddled with him, we rocked him and completely got him used to all this amazing attention again. Now he will not go to sleep on his own. If we leave him in his bed, he’s up in less than a minute, standing at the door. The doorknob (for some unknown reason) is unusually high, and he can’t turn it. But he stands there and cries until we come and get him. How do we get the magic back? It was so amazing to be able to say good night and then have him go right to sleep. I want it back, Alexis. But how do we do that if he’s able to crawl out of his bed?
Hey Kevin,
Check article below (staying in bed) for a start. Also if you are open to it you might want to experiment with putting him BACk in the crib with a sleep sack which often makes it all but impossible to crawl out.
If he can’t go back however, and the toddler bed is a MUST, then you do need to stop cuddling and rocking him at bedtime because as you say, who wouldn’t want all this AMAZING attention? If he wants to stand at the door that’s his choice. He’s young but talk to him about what happens at bedtime. What if he can’t sleep? What can he do? What are the steps in your bedtime routine – maybe make a chart and check them off? Talk about consequences – door stays open if he stays in bed?
I have a 30 month old peanut who does the same as Kevin’s 22 month old. The only difference is that he stays in his crib and cries for as long as 30 minutes unless we walk in and pick him up for another 15 to 25 minutes. This routine goes on for 2 hours until he finally falls asleep in our arms at 9:30 pm . He will then sleep thru the night until I wake him at 8am. I have a 7 yo I am neglecting from 7:30 to 9:30 pm while I put the little man to bed. Our 2 1/2 yo trained by 4 month after just 2 nights of CIO. He sleeps well overnight, naps between 2 to 3 hours per day in one nap. But has only recently (last 2 months ) started giving us a real hard time only at bedtime. I think he’s in the transition of dropping to no naps. He knocks out in 5 min when he misses his nap. I think he is getting used our rocking and holding him for extended time. Should we let him CIO for a night without going in at all. Not sure what to do to get him back on track for bedtime. please help!! Thanks
First off, love this site! I have a 5 month old, who for the 1st few months slept great, but she has been going through a sleep regression, and has been waking up 3-4 times a night. Naps are a hit or miss question is though, if I am able to get her to take 3 good naps a day, is it ok to be putting her down to bed around 9pm? I am a working mom, and am not able to get her down any earlier. Her last nap ending at 6pm, would mean she is only up 3hrs before bedtime.
Hi Alexis
My daughter is 6.5 months and I feel like we are going around in this big long never ending overtired loop, which is affecting her napping, night sleeping and even her feeding (breastfed).
My daughter has self settled since about 8-10 weeks. She takes naps in a sleep sack in her cot, following stories/cuddles and a song, before going into the cot awake and generally talks to herself for about 10 mins before going to sleep.
Bedtime is very similar, but includes a couple of extra stories, picking up toys and cleaning teeth.
We have always had very short naps (45 mins) and consistently would leave her for up to an hour to resettle with very little success. In the last month her naps have gone down to about 30 mins, but even with leaving her in there for another 30mins she will just talk and play happily (even though she is crazy overtired).
She wakes for the day at about 7, so I aim to have her down for her first nap at 9. But most days (this has been going on for month) she wakes between 4-6am with a dirty nappy and is also hungry. As she feeds not long before she gets up she then refuses to fed until she is tired and ready for her first nap. She is not fed to sleep, and if she does fall asleep on me I will always wake her before doing her song and putting her to bed.
Because she is so tired by the end of the day I think she needs to go to bed by 5.30pm, and while she can ‘happily’ make it until 7 I can tell she is so overtired (she is one of those hard to read nearly always happy kids, that are even happy when overtired).
It now seems that all her day feeds are happening immediately before a nap and she doesn’t seem to be eating enough – my milk supply fluctuates wildly, when she is having catch up sleep days (seem to happen fortnightly) my milk supply will go up as she is feeding better, but we soon get back to the overtired feeding before bed routine.
Where she used to just wake once at night to feed, she now wakes 2-3 times, and this could also include her talking to herself happily for an hour before shouting or crying for me to come in.
I had been trying to get her to nap at 9, 12 and 4 but this is not helping her with being overtired with such short naps. I have tried wake to sleep (it just wakes her up) and bore to sleep – nothing seems to be working.
Any extra suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks, Viv
Alexis,
IS A 5:45pm-6pm SlEEPTIME TO EARLY?
I have one child, a boy, who just turned 6 months.
Sleep Stats:
Wake: between 5:30-6:30am talks to himself until is bored of that and I get him out for the day, usually 20 minutes.
Nap 1: 8am-10am in crib
Nap 2: Between 12pm & 1pm for no less than 1 hour; sometimes 1.5 hrs. (in crib or travel crib)
Nap 3: 3pm- 45mins (in crib or travel crib)
Bed:
By 5pm he gets noticeably tired (yawning, rubbing eyes, red eye lids and slower movements) and we begin to prepare for bed. Our routine is eat, diaper change, PJs, books, song, crib. He gets white noise and grumbles for 5 minutes and then is sleeping.
He wakes up between 11pm-12am and again between 3am-4am and eats 4oz each time and is back to sleep with no issue after 20 minutes of waking. Night weaning is something that we have to work out (probably should have already); we will start solids within the week.
QUESTION:
Everything I read states that a 7-7:30 bed/sleeptime is optimal. Should I begin to slowly push our naps and bed/sleeptime out to reach 7 or 7:30pm or should I not worry about it and leave it be. He wasn’t always a good sleeper we followed your instructions about three weeks ago for sleep training. When he was 4 months old sleep regression hit like a bomb and he was waking up almost every 4 times between 12am and 6am. After 6 weeks we decided it was time for some educated sleep training and he is now only up the 2x described above. The training also made his naps longer. I hesitate to mess with anything but would like to ensure that I am giving him the best possible sleep he can get.
Any insight would be appreciated.
Margaret
Truthfully I suspect he needs to be awake closer to 2-3 hours prior to bedtime so if he’s waking up from a nap at 3:45 he wouldn’t be ready for bed until closer to 7. Experiment with that and see how it goes!
Thank you for your reply! I will keep him up for a longer length of time after nap number 3. I’d like to let you know how we fare in a few days.
Thank you again!
Margaret
Hi Alexis,
I hope you get to read this, my 7 month old also usually gets tired and doesn’t seem to last longer than 2 hrs before bed time which makes his bed time about 5:30pm! His last nap usually wakes up anywhere between 3 to 4pm, usually on the earlier side.
Do you think I should be pushing a longer wake time before bed time? I am afraid he might get overtired.
Thanks,
Jane
I often read that bath and massage are suggested for part of the bedtime routine, but it is my understanding that bathing too often causes dry skin. How often should babies 3-6 months of age be bathing each week?
Typically soap results in dry skin but a bath without soap (really just a soak) is fine. If you find that even the water-only option results in dry skin it may not be for you but typically it’s fine for skin and a relaxing activity enjoyed by all (personally I’m a fan of cute little babies in the bathtub so I’m biased on this one).
I think our bedtime needs some work and I KNOW I need some help! Our little guy, Lucas, is only 6 weeks old so I may be setting myself up for failure simply because he is too young. We have a pretty consistent bedtime routine nurse, bath, jammies, cuddles and a small bottle from dad (we started doing this to tank him up and to get him used to bottles for when I go back to work). He consistently falls asleep at the bottle and doesn’t require any other “help” to fall asleep. He is asleep around 8 every night. We regularly get 3.5 hours during the first stretch of sleep and feed again between 11:30 and midnight. Its after this feeding where things tend to go downhill. He falls mostly asleep at the breast and doesn’t require any help going back to sleep. He is “up” for about 20 minutes or so. He SEEMS truly out again. During this stretch we get between 2h15m and 2h45m of sleep. Not as good as our first stretch but I’ll still take it. Now things REALLY go downhill. After his 2:30am feeding we are only getting like 90 minute or one hour stretches. He goes down again about 3 and it’s a party again no later than 4:30 and then if we can get him down at all its for an hour tops.
Is he waking up looking for us? Should we rouse him a little bit before putting him back down? (like pulling teeth…) Is he hungry from not getting great feedings from being sleepy at the breast during the first two night feedings? Are we putting him to bed too early? We’re following his tired cues and he goes down so well at the beginning I can’t imagine keeping him up much later. We really struggle with drowsy but awake because he fights his swaddle like a fiend. He sleeps SOOOO much better swaddled so we’re sticking with it but when he’s conscious of it, he tries to break loose and ends up flailing and screaming – there’s no calming him down again.
I know we’re asking a lot of a 6-week old but I can’t do this 4am wakeup call anymore. Especially when he still seems to be so tired but is fighting it so hard. ANY help or advice from anyone would be appreciated!!!
Hi Alexis,
I’ve been reading through basically every comment and post on this whole website and every time I think I have the answers I need, I still have a terrible night of sleep! 🙁 Please help!!!!
My daughter is 4 months, 9 days. I know, I know, the dreaded 4 month regression. BUT this has been going on since day 1 and I think we are past the regression now (just recently had 2 weeks of EVEN WORSE sleep than normal, which I didn’t think possible) and now we are back to the usual. I put my daughter to bed usually at 7:45-8:00. I am using the swing method from your posts. We are now at a point where she will fall asleep in the swing without me in the room some nights, and some nights needs me to swing her fast and “SHHH” her loudly. I swaddle her tight, use an old radio for loud white noise and have blackout curtains. She usually will go to sleep very easily, but most nights she wakes up an hour after going to bed and I have to pick her up and practically get her 100% asleep again or else she continuously cries/screams. Sometimes I can get her back to sleep with just shushing and swinging her very fast. After that she will usually sleep until somewhere between 12-2, at which point I feed her and lay her back down. She usually nurses back to sleep at that point. Then the fun begins where she wakes up every 30-45 minutes for the rest of the night. SOMETIMES she will sleep a few more hours and we will have a tolerable night. For the rest of the night I try to just shush her and swing her fast, when that doesn’t work I pick her up and pat her, when that doesn’t work I nurse her back to sleep. It seems completely random for what works and what doesn’t at any given time. She wakes up for the day at 7 AM. Naps during the day are very difficult also. Usually they are 25-32 minutes in the swing. I usually just do whatever I have to do to make nap sleep happen during the day to prevent getting over-tired, usually holding and rocking and pacifier. No pacifier at night. Any advice on more I can do?? Do I need to be more consistent and ONLY use the swing for naps also? Maybe this is normal for her age still but very little progress has been made, and the progress that has been made seems small. SO TIRED!!!
This is exactly our little 4.5MO right now. Not sure how to gently transition to less swing and fewer night wakings.
Alexis;
Great name, my sister is Alexis too. So my 3.5 month old goes to bed at 10:30-11:30 pm most nights, I’ve tried getting him down earlier but no luck. We wake up at 7 am, I feed, change and play with him a bit, then we have a nap usually from 9-10:30 ( this nap only seems possible next to me while nursing) then usually at about 1 pm we/ he has another long nap, about 1.5 hours, then he has mini nursing naps at about 5 and 7, we start our bedtime routine at 8-8:30, I do it bath, books, boob and bed. He is up for an hour to 2 hours, he usually falls asleep at 9:30 but won’t stay asleep. My question is which I advent seen anywhere is HOW to force him to sleep earlier.
Hi Alexis,
We’ve just started sleep training with our 5 and a bit month old, so far it seems to be going fairly well (touch wood). However I’m a bit confused about timing naps and bed time. This morning I caught him rubbing his eyes after only 90 mins awake time, so I tried to put him down despite thinking it wasn’t long enough. He fought me for 40 minutes before I ended up feeding him, waking him up from the boob with a little chat and then putting him down again, he then slept for 40 mins (pretty good for us at the moment, we’ll work on tackling short naps after we get going to sleep sorted). Last night he was rubbing his eyes at 5pm, (bed time is fairly consistently 7-7.30, and we try not to let him nap past 3.30 unless he really needs it).
So am I right to be trying to put him down at first tired signs, or should I try and stretch it out a bit if it’s only been a short period of awake time? Which is more important to get right?
Hi Alexis!
I have been following your swing and bedtime advice from 3 months to now 5 month old baby girl. The swing worked great to teach her to fall asleep on her own, we gradually weaned her from the motion and then to her bassinet next to my bed. It worked great for about a week for bedtime and naptime then BAM, now she screams and cries as soon as I lay her down. If I walk out of the room and try to let her work it out on her own for 10 minutes, she will work herself up to a hysterical cry. I usually try to do the pick up, put down thing until she will finally let me put her down awake and walk out of the room. At this point, it has only gotten worse and worse to the point where it takes 30 plus minutes for her to fall asleep and then she will only sleep for 25-32 minutes (which has always been the norm actually) She will go back to sleep for another hour for naps if I hold her, and that has been the only thing that works so far. Should I stop doing that and just let the nap be 32 minutes?
At night, things have always been bad. She would go to sleep on her own yes, but then would wake up maybe 5-10 times during the night. Usually wakes 2 times before going to sleep for 2-5 hours. I would first let her try to get back to sleep on her own, then when that doesn’t work I pat her, then when that doesn’t work I pick her up, then when that doesn’t work i either hand her off to my husband or I nurse her. I try to only nurse her 2 times during the night but after 4 a.m. that is definitely the only thing that will put her back to sleep. She did great for that one week when we transitioned to the bassinet, sleeping in long chunks, sometimes 7-8 hours, and only nursing 1-2 times. Now if I don’t hold/nurse her every time she wakes, she screams and cries. Which was the norm before when we used the swing also. I’m not sure how to break out of these sleep associations of needing to be held and nursed. We do a solid bedtime routine of nurse, bath, book bed. The initial bedtime part was going great for months! Now it’s like she fears bedtime and starts crying with a scared look on her face as soon as I swaddle her.
I have her take a nap every 2 hours during the day, She is usually awake for about 3 hours before bedtime at 9-9:30. When I put her to bed any earlier and try to take away that last nap, she just wakes up every 30-60 minutes so I went away from that.
Currently I swaddle in a halo sleepsack, white noise, pacifier for daytime, no paci at night. Should I start back at square one teaching her to sleep on her own again with the swing? I’m not sure where we went wrong, I thought since bedtime was nailed down that the rest would follow, and it did, for a week. I didn’t do anything different! 🙁 Do you think she could be having a growth spurt or trying to switch gears toward an earlier bedtime?
Also, I have tried disrupting the sleep cycle only once at naptime, her eyes flickered and she turned her head and went back to sleep, then woke up at the normal 32 minutes. I got discouraged and annoyed and didn’t try that again. Maybe I should? All I know is making my baby sleep well is literally sucking every last bit of sanity/energy from me. Any advice soon would be greatly appreciated! Can’t wait for your book to come out!!
Hi! I’m new to your posts and I feel like they are very informative yet I’m still confused. 🙂 first time mom here! My LO is 4 months old. I’m pretty sure she just went thru a sleep regression cycle plus I think she’s teething. But it’s back to getting better I think (hope!). Here’s the deal, I’m a stay at home mom right now and I feel like I let her run the schedule and I want to change this. what I’m really concerned about is night time. we start our routine around 7:30 and she’s usually down between 8-9pm. I read that I need to work to an earlier bedtime which is fine and I will. BUT I basically nurse her to sleep. Then she wakes up after about 3-4 hour stretch, I feed her and she falls back asleep. How do I get her to go to bed without nursing to sleep?? When is the last time I should feed her?? Sometimes when I nurse her to sleep, she wakes up after an hour and I go back in. Do I let her CIO then? I guess I’m just confused on how to start all this. Any help is appreciated. Thank you so much!!
Hi I have a nearly 10 months old that will go to sleep on her own in the morning, sometimes do it in the afternoon without assistance but never go to sleep without me holding my hand on her back at night . I have the same bedtime routine at night as I do for the day except I also add in a bath. why would she be able to self settle in the morning but not at bedtime? She sleeps through the night without waking once she is asleep but it can take over an hour to get her to sleep. Any suggestions?
Dear Alexis,
I’m at why wits end with my 3 year old twins and after reading blog I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask your opinion.
My girls are on the spectrum though high functioning so am not sure if the information you’ve written holds for them. They were also born prematurely and while in hospital fed every 90 minutes because that’s all their tiny stomachs could take. They both had reflux so establishing good sleeping habits during the early months was very hard if not impossible for me. I’m a single mum and because of space they have always shared my room.
At the moment I am finding it impossible to get them to sleep before 10pm though it’s more often than not that they sleep at midnight and we’ve had the occasional terrible night were they were up till 3am. They tend to fall asleep about 8 hours after their nap. I have tried to stop their nap which generally occurs about 4 to 5 hours after they first wake up for the day but this usually backfires spectacularly. They become whiny and eventually drop to sleep wherever they are at some completely inappropriate time like 5pm and then wake up at about 8pm and you can imagine the rest.
The best I have ever managed to achieve is the following:
Wake up 7am
Nap noon till 2pm
Sleep 10pm till about 6am
They never ever sleep before the 8 hours are up (have sometimes resisted to 12 hours+) and they never ever sleep more than 8 hours at a stretch. Because of this the sleeping waking shifts forwards and forwards until we eventually get a 2am waking and then a 6am nap or something ridiculous like that.
Do you have any advice please? I need to sort out their sleeping before they start kinder in October!
Thanks a lot
Tanya
Hi Tanya, what happened? How did you manage? I have a 2 year old who’s the same. She used to sleep very well as a baby though!
Hi Alexis –
PLEASE HELP! Our son had been sleeping through the night (11-12 hours) since he was about 3 months old. It was glorious, we loved our lives. At around 9 months he started waking earlier and earlier (5AM, 4AM) until we decided these were night wakings. Now they are all over the place, 12, 3, 4, 5, but usually one 1 a night (although it’s getting worse and worse). We used to go through his bedtime routine and he would go into his crib happy and fall asleep on his own, usually within 15 minutes. Now he screams bloody murder when we put him in his crib at night (naps are fine) and screams the same way in the night. Is this a simple case of needing to let him cry it out, even if it takes hours? He usually cries so hard he vomits. Super fun. He is now almost 11 months and my husband and I are slowly dying. I should also mention that he has been formula fed since about 4/5 months and I went back to work at 7.5 months.
Any and all (positive) advice welcome, please and thank you!
Hi there! I know you get hundreds of comments so I don’t know if you have time to answer much but here goes….up until a week ago my 4 month old only napped in a Moby and coslept at night with me. He’s my 5th and I didn’t mind it, until it wasn’t working anymore. And I was losing my mind. I put him in the Arms Reach co-sleeper in his room and he’s sleeping much better than expected. Here’s the dilemmas: he uses a pacifier but constantly pulls it out, he doesn’t always fall asleep real easy so I keep going back in replacing paci and patting his back, he wakes up A LOT in the night and I nurse him, sometimes he wakes up 10 minutes or so after I lay him down. If I read correctly, you say they should be able to put themselves to sleep by 6 months? Should I continue nursing him and helping him fall asleep? Should I take his paci away at some point? Do I wait until 6 months to really give cio a shot? I really appreciate your website, I was starting to feel very hopeless until I started getting small breaks throughout the day and at night while he sleeps. Thank you!
i’ve been doing the 2-3-4 sleep/nap schedule, but my twins don’t wake up until 8-9 (sometimes 10!) am, so their bedtime isn’t until 10pm. they do wake up around 6-7, but they fall back asleep as i’m nursing them. should i keep them awake at 6-7 (please tell me no)?
we have trouble getting them to fall asleep by themselves and they wake up 2-3 times a night (around 1a, 3a and 6a). they’re 9 months old.
Please help! My 5 (almost 6) month old, for the past 2-3 nights, has woken up at 1/2am and not been able to fall back asleep for the night…literally she is in the crib trying to settle herself back to sleep for HOURS. Nothing I have done works – I tried feeding her, holding her, doing a mini version of the bedtime routine, talking to her, turning on the light, etc. I cannot tell if she is overtired, under-tired, or if there is something else going on. She goes to bed around 7pm and takes 3 pretty good naps/day (although she missed the last nap of the day a few days ago which kicked off this whole disaster). Generally we try to have her last nap end by 5pm and leave 2.5-3 hours before bedtime.
Hi
My baby is 18 months old and we used to have her sleep around 2-3 pm and wake up 2 hours later..usually after she was waking up she was in a bad mood and she could not sleep before 11:30pm-12am! We then tried to have her sleep only for 1 hour but again she falling asleep very late..her wake up time was around 8-8:30 since we had to take her to kindergarden…the last few days we keep her awake all day and she sleeps around 8:30-9:30 and wakes up at 8:00am-8:30 ..however i see her that she is really sleepy during the day time and i feel sorry for her..what should i do? should i keep her awake or have her take a day nap even though that leads to late bedtime and much less hours of overall sleep from the recommended hours according to her age?Thanks in advance
My daughter just turned 7 months. We had been lying down for bed around 9 pm for a few weeks and she would wake to nurse a couple times and go back to sleep. She has been awake until midnight or even 2 am the last week! She usually takes 2, 2 hours naps during the day. Should I be putting her down for bed sooner? We can’t handle this much longer. She sleeps in until 9 or 10 and goes back to sleep around noon for a nap.
I have a 4.5 month old who we have been sleep training/swing weaning for about a month now. He started sleeping long stretches so we started sleep training a little early to establish a bed time routine and falling asleep on his own. We are at the point where his swing is off and I just give it a push before leaving. We’ve had a few regressions because of family or outings. Here is the main issue we have right now: it seems like he falls asleep much easier when I put him down versus dad. We wanted to share this because 1) my husband works and I am at home so we want him to have this time with baby as well. 2) we don’t want baby only going down for me in the event I’m not able to. We have talked about how to do everything exactly the same, I have watched and shared my observations….my husband has asked specifically how/what to do so that we can successfully and consistantly sleep train him. BUT, we both agree that when my husband puts him down we feel like we are setting up baby to fail. He cries harder and longer. We agreed last night that after a bath I would take him and complete the remaining bedtime routine going forward. Is this a problem? Does anyone else have differences between parents? We really wanted both of us to be able to do this but it’s just not working. If we make me the only one will he grow out of some of this later as he gets older or are we setting up a bad habit for the future?
Hi! Can a 10 week-old take too many naps? Currently my daughter is taking 5 naps and so she is not even close to sleeping through the night. I think I’ve figured out what I’m doing wrong which is waking her to feed. Anyways, thought I’d ask in case someone else is making the same mistake that I am. Thanks for all the insight you provide! It’s been a great help for us newbie parents!
5 naps per day and feeding during the night are perfectly normal for a 10 week old. Nothing to worry about. (But you’re right – don’t wake her to feed unless your doctor has instructed you to do so!)
Hi all,
My 3.5 month old is struggling with bedtime. He naturally falls asleep on his own in his crib at about 10-11pm. Last feed is around 9pm. He then wakes at 2am-3am then 5.30-6.30am. He occasionally goes back to sleep for an hour but I’d often awake until 10am, then crashes out for 2 hours. He then has a nap in the afternoon anytime between 12pm-3pm for between 1 and 3 hours. He then catnaps on and off until 11pm. Naps are either in his bouncer, on us or in the car. We’ve tried bath, stories white noise etc on a night, to no avail. We’re exhausted, he’s exhausted. He’s combination fed, and he’s very greedy! Any tips on sorting this so we can get a better routine, we’d like to move towards him sleeping from 7.30pm til 7.30am (we can but hope!) thanks 🙂
Ok Alexis I need your advice desperately. I have a 5 month old that I’m struggling with sleep issues. The biggest problem no joke is gas pains waking her up. On top of that I nurse her to sleep which has now turned into comfort nursing for the gas pains. I don’t mind nursing her to sleep but the fact that I’m the only one that can get her to go back to sleep in the middle of the night is exhausting. It ranges from 3/4 times to 20ish times a night. I don’t want to let her cry it out either. I tried to let her fall asleep in her swing but she’ll cry but she’ll fall asleep in someone’s arms (other than mine, she wants a noon only with me). I know she can go longer bc on the nights that she’s good she’ll go 6+ hours no problem. I just don’t know about the night nursing for comfort and how to adjust at this point as well as to get her to fall asleep on her own. Please help!
I have a 3 MO who we have taught to fall asleep on his own, thank goodness! The confusion I am having is to do with the last nap of the day and bedtime. If the last nap usually ends around 3, and a baby this age should only be awake 2-3 hours before bedtime, wouldn’t that put bedtime around 5-6pm? I have been struggling with either putting him to bed at 5-6 or giving him a catnap around 4:30 this making bedtime between 7-8pm. Which one is it?
Help! My son is 3 month and 3 days old. He was from 0-3 months, sleeping very consistently-going down at 10ish sleeping till 3 am then back to sleep no problem and up at 7:30am ish.
I changed one thing at 11weels, I moved him from rock n play to a bassinet. He was fine for a few days in this new sleep situation.
Now for the past 5/6 nights he still goes to bed at 10/10:30, is waking at 1:30am/2 ;4/4:30 am and 7/7:30
He is taking naps during the day-I usually put him down for napping after 90 mins of awake time. He sleeps 1-2 hours. He does take his last nap at 7/7:30.( total naps 3-4)
I nurse him( because he really wants me to) before naps and bed time.
Also, my so is drooling a lot, eating his hands, and growing. He’s a big guy( 17.5 lbs@ 3months)
So, back to the issue. He is waking now every three hours, his legs are up in the air a lot, it’s like he’s all the sudden developed gas only at bedtime; and he tosses and turns. Oh, I still swaddle him, because he wake himself with his arms( Moro reflex). I was using the swaddle me, he has grown out of that.niw I use swaddle up. He alwaysfrom birth has had one arm free-but swaddled nonetheless.
So-after all that background-what am I doing wrong? Why is he all the sudden squirming all night and not sleeping longer. As he is older. Is this a phase. What Can I do to help him?
Thank you!
My almost 9 month old is a pretty awesome night sleeper. The problem(well, not a problem now but will be when I go back to work in a few months) she insists on a 6pm bedtime. If she goes to bed any later, she is not a happy girl. She is also Still a catnapper and is down to 2, 30 minute naps a day which I know is why her bedtime is so early. She falls asleep well for both naps and bedtime and is generally a happy baby. She uses a pacifier but can reinsert it herself if it falls out. Before I go back to work, I really want her bedtime to be 7pm as I won’t be home from work until 6 and want to see my daughter before she goes to bed. Will her wake times extend by 1 year or is she always going to need this 6pm bedtime until her naps extend?
Hi Alexis! This was a very informative article. I have a 6.5 month old who has always bounced back and forth between either taking great naps or sleeping great at night. Never both. Right now we are having great naps. Our days have been looking like this:
7:30am-8am Wake up
10am-11:30am Nap
2pm-3:30pm Nap
*At this point we decided to drop the 3rd nap since that meant the earliest we could get her down for it would be 5:30pm. Wouldn’t this be too late for a nap?
Since she was consistently napping so long and her awake times were so long, we decided to move bedtime to 7:30pm instead of 8pm. She will always wake up around 1-2am. Usually to eat 4oz since we also struggle to feed her during the day. Her weight is great (75% percentile and growing appropriately) but if it was up to her, she would only have 21 oz formula during the day and wake up for her 4oz in the middle of the night. Then she’ll wake up and stir and fuss at around 5am, 6am and 7am. She goes back to sleep when I give her the pacifier.
My questions are:
-should we wake her up from naps in order to back to 3 naps instead of 2?
-Or should we let her be awake for 4 hours prior to bedtime (maybe this is what’s causing the frequent night wakings)?
-we have tried an earlier bedtime-7pm. And she just ends up waking up around 8 or 9pm. Treating it like a nap.
-should we try to wean her off the night feeding? Even though she only eats 21 oz during the day (plus solids are hit or miss) but her weight is normal.
I would appreciate hearing your thoughts and advice. Thank you!!!
-B
I am in serious need of help with our 4 month old girl. She was going to bed super late – like 11pm or later since she was born because I did not know better. I feel awful that I did not put her down earlier. I would just let her sleep whenever she wanted and after 11-12am she would sleep through the night. The doctor said it was fine and we were the lucky ones but now I think I should have been waking her to eat? She is 4 months and only 11 pounds but started out small (5lbs) and then developed bad colic and reflux issues that still persist today. She has been sleeping in her rock n play because it elevates her and even still wakes up coughing at times which is scary for us. This week we have tried to put her to bed around 8 as she has been doing great with 2 – 2hr naps each day and then is ready for bed at 8pm. Only problem is she wakes up around 3am and wants to be up for hours. She cries and fusses for what feels like an eternity and we are so sleep deprived that we resort to feeding her, rocking her or putting a soother in to calm her. I know the 4 month sleep regression is a real thing but what should I be doing to make bedtime better? She won’t stay asleep and when we finally do get her back to sleep it is 5 or 6 am and I wake her at 8 am and she is a zombie. Will this straighten itself out if I keep the routine or should I keep her up later? Strange that she got better sleep when she was up late. Help would be appreciated!
Eh…so moving bedtime early by 3 hours in one lump is a challenge (you can read more about how this ideally would have gone here: https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/bedtime-what-time/). She basically has jet lag. But now you’re in the mix so I would probably just push through. Stick with the 8 pm bedtime, keep the lights low and activity dim when she’s awake in the MOTN, and don’t let her sleep past 7 am. Will it get better? Yes eventually.
Basically by shifting her night so abruptly it…sorta cracked in the middle. Consistency and shortening the night from 12 to 11 hours will help. It’ll get better!
Hi Alexis. Thanks for the post!
My 5month old daughter slept great dor rhe first couple of months and sowly got difficult. Since she was 3 months old she started waking up earlier every night until she started waking up 2-3 or even 6 times a night. She did great 2-3 hour naps. I hired a sleep consultant that suggested a 6pm bedtime (we did 8pm before) and it resulted in just 1 wake up at night (but still up for the day at 5am) but very poor 30 min naps. We then traveled and it seems it destructed everything!
Right now she napos for 20-30 min 3 times a day in her crin. If i hold her and rock her then she sleeps for an hour more. Naps ares 8am – 11 am and 3 pm. I am holding her so she completes the naps for an hour. So she wakes up from the last nap at 4pm and usually falls asleep by 6:30om. I bathe her, read a book and feed her. Si try so har to make her sleep on her own. Somedays after a lomg time she falls sleep crying (with me
In the room) and sometimes when crying seems to be going on forever, I hold her and she dalls sleep in a minute! Also, she cries A LOT when im putting her pijamas on and only calms down when i feed her. She then wakes up al 11pm and i feed her again. She then wakes up 2 mores times and only falls back asleep being held or nursed. Then she wakes up for the day earlier each day. She used to wake up by 6:30 and last night ahe woke up at 5:15! Is bedtime ok or should i change the time?? Please any advice would be great!
Hi Alexis,
I have twin 3 yo boys who share a room. They wake very early (5-5:30am, usually, and one often wakes the other). They nap around 1-2:30/3 (typically) and lately they haven’t been falling asleep too well before 8/8:20, despite being in their room, with lights out, by 7pm. I feel like I’m missing the sweet spot or that the schedule is off. They tend to do worse the later they go to bed, unfortunately. They’ll often wake even earlier than 5:30 and I really prefer that they get as much sleep as they possibly can. Though we use an okay to wake clock they’re usually out of their room by around 6:15/6:30 each morning. I’ve worked with a a variety of sleep consultants ober time but nothing has ever really helped (minus a bit of an earlier bedtime). Please let me know any suggestions you might help. I’m getting a little frustrated and feel like I’m failing, despite so so much effort and lots of reading/research every day for 3 + years. Twin boys certainly feed off one another and are very active. Thanks!!
Excuse my typos!
*over
*have
Etc
Hi Alexis! I’m in your Facebook group and I keep being told to give my 8 month old 4 hours of awake time before bed but this chart says 3 for her age max but I’m confused if by listening to the advice of 4 hours that I’m actually making her over tired lately. We’ve had these random wake ups around 4 hours after she goes down where she has her eyes closed and is yell screaming in her sleep it seems (no idea how to explain it bc she’s not crying yet). we don’t go to her but then eventually she full on cries and really wakes up. Previously to her haveinf an ear infection and teething she was sleeping through the night with one or no feedings. She doesn’t seem happy to be awake at this time and she’s not easily soothed when it does happen (it doesn’t happen every night) please please help! I want my good sleeper back! And I know it could be related to 8 month regression but I hate not knowing what’s wrong. Some of the days she genuinely woke up gassy at those times (on amoxicillin currently for ear infection) and others not so much. I just feel helpless and frustrated bc she was such a good sleeper!
Please help! I’m getting tripped up by this and I suspect the added waketime is contributing to some nightstime probs we are having with our previously STTN babe. Or it could be the regression but I would really like to know what to trust — what you put in the chart and what the admins of the PLS book are saying.
Hi Alexis
Somehow I hit the baby sleep jackpot… my 10 month old has been sleeping through the night (10-11 hours without waking, and if he does he puts himself back to sleep) since he was 8 months old. Yes, months 4-7 were ROUGH but I soldiered on. Get this – I’m still rocking and singing him to sleep. Am I playing with fire? I often wonder when this is going to bite me in the ass. Or do you think that since he’s figured out how to sleep through he will continue to do so? Hoping I don’t have to deal with the bad rocking habit!!!
The one struggle we have is he used to sleep for 11 hours, then 10.5 hours and now 10hours. It’s an early start to the day, 5:30 or sometimes even 4:45am. I run a tight ship for his 2 naps (max 3 hours total daysleep) , and he goes to bed 4 hours after the last nap (between 7& 7:30pm). What gives?! I want to go back to 11 hour nights!
Thanks,
Stef
Big picture I think it’s likely that the rock to sleep thing will blow up on you eventually. BUT maybe not. (But very likely) AND it’s working today. So I would argue eh – cross that bridge when you get there. I’ve worked with families who successfully nursed or rocked to sleep for far longer than average and then were shocked that it stopped working at 12 or even 18 months. Will that happen to you? Probably, but at least you won’t be shocked right? 😉
13 hours of sleep a day is not a crisis but I hear where you’re wondering “what happened!” Well it could be that he needs a later bedtime so you could start there. It’s also possible that this is the beginning of the “rocking no longer working” thing we just discussed.
Hi Alexis
My two month old baby likes to stay awake for about 2- 2.5 hrs
Between naps during the day. When we try to put him down for bedtime at 7:30pm it’s take an hour of holding him and comforting him. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
Lisa
We have a 4 month old who is having 3 to 4 45min naps per day. Recently he wakes from his last nap around 4pm. We have been putting him to bed 2 to 2.5hrs after this and he makes it the 4th nap of the day napping for 30 mins.. I attempt for about 30 mins to resettle but hes awake and ready to party. He then stays awake close 3 hours and is grumpy!
My question is how and can I make that 4th nap bedtime?
He wil also sleep till 9 am? Usually getting 12 hrs of night sleep. With wakings at either midnight or 2am. 5 am and again at 715. At both these earlier times his eyes are closed and he doesn’t seem ready for the day and is easily resettled. Should I be waking him up at 715? Or letting him sleep in?
I know early is better. My first child is an awesome sleeper because of training we’ve done at home. I recently had a baby and wanted to start with healthy sleep habits right away, so when day/night confusion was figured out, I started with early to bed based on wake times. What was weird is I found that my baby did better with a late bedtime. I read on various sleep guru sites that this is actually a thing- that a small percentage of babies 0-3 months do better with a later bedtime. Anytime I put my baby to bed before 9, there are multiple wake ups that night. Anything after 9, leads to just 1-2 night wake ups. Generally, he sleeps 9-9 with those wake ups. Although he’s getting his 11-12 hours, this schedule doesn’t work for a sahm with another child. How do I deal with moving up his bedtime and the night wake ups? Would you suggest a gradual moving up of bedtime? And how should I deal with the constant wakings when I know my son has gone 8 hours or more without waking?
hello
I read another article on this site ” what is normal sleep and for an 11 month old it suggests 3 hours between naps.
is there a particular reason in this article about bed time that its moved to 4hours.
so basic question 3 hours between naps but 4 hours after last nap is bed time?
How are we to implement all these things when our baby is at daycare and they won’t wake a baby, and it takes baby a lot longer to fall asleep for naps due to the chaos.
My boy is woken everyday from last nap when I pick him up at 4:10pm because the teachers legally can’t, so into bed time is 7:30pm because 8pm is too late, but then he wakes early everyday! Even at home, to get enough day sleep with appropriate wake times, we wake him at 4. He’s almost 12 months old. It seems impossible to get this sleep pattern right with wake time vs nap length vs bed time with appropriate prior wake time information
We’ve tried every method in your book to get our son to sleep thru the night. He successfully puts himself to sleep at night time and nap time no issues, but he routinely wakes up between 3-3:30 every night and needs to be held to go back to sleep. We’ve tried to adjust his bedtime schedule earlier and it hasn’t seemed to help. We’ve also tried CIO and he will scream for 1.5+ hrs every night with no improvement. We definitely notice he wakes up several times a night when he’s overtired (poor naps, teething), but have not had one night where he’s successfully slept thru the night. With both our busy jobs we are struggling to get by without more sleep and are not sure what else to do. He seems to be very strong willed and are looking for any advice.
Hi there, I have a 19 month old that has slept beautifully up until about a month ago. He now struggles/resists day time nap and bedtime. I have adjusted his day sleeps a bit to see if time has a difference but seems like he won’t go down before 1pm on his own. But then I feel like I have to wake him at 2pm so that he has enough awake time before 7pmish bedtime. Do you think I should let him sleep until 3pm if he doesn’t wake and push his bedtime to 7.30ish? Just feel like I will struggle to put him to bed if he has a later afternoon nap. (I keep him super busy at parks, beach outside time and feel like he should be super exhausted by 11.30 (which is when he was going down like a dream but not so much anymore). Please help
Seems like 11:30 is too early if he’s fighting it consistently every day. Maybe try moving the nap back a bit, you may only need a wake window from 3-7, or you could try 3-7:30. I find that naps and wake windows are always changing and you have to experiment with them to get it right!
We are struggling with our 4.5 month old’s naps. I know short naps are still developmentally normal – she is typically taking 4-5 30 minute naps unless in the stroller where she can usually nap for a long time. Our biggest issue right now is the last nap. We aim for a 7-730 bedtime with last nap ending by 5-530 (so a 100-120 min wake window before bed depending on how crappy the day’s naps were). She has started to absolutely refuse the last nap – either fussing or a full blown meltdown. We can sometimes get her to sleep if we rock her vigorously in the stroller, but that doesn’t seem sustainable. She goes down ok for other sleep aside from being a paci addict (several replacements before she falls asleep so we may sleep train without it). She needs this last nap to avoid a 4+ hour wake window before bed. Any tips? Thank you!!!
Our baby is the same age and same way. How did you get through it?
Hi! I honestly don’t remember how we got through it, but we did! Naps still aren’t perfect but she’s 8 months and we’re transitioning to 2 naps. Her latest trick is waking up for the day between 5-6 every day! She ends up going to bed super early vs. having that last nap. I know it’s so stressful but it really is just a phase! As wake windows extend, you naturally drop naps and they really do start to get longer (well, a lot of them do!). Good luck!!
Hi! We are struggling with bedtime with our 11 month old. No wake window seems to work anymore. Should we just pick a set bedtime and try it for a week no matter when he gets up? He used to sleep so beautifully and usually hit the crib at about the same time. Now it’s all over the place it seems.
Hi,
I have a 7 month old who is on a two nap schedule but I feel like this may be actually causing her early morning wakings. She is consistently waking up at like 5:30am (whether she sleeps at 6pm, 6:30pm, 7pm or even 8 pm!) she has no issue putting herself to sleep, she has been doing that since she was 4 months. We don’t rock her, or feed her right before it’s time to sleep.
How can I help her wake later in the mornings? Even by just an hour? 5:30Am is way too early. Side note, when she wakes up at 5:30i don’t immediately take her out. I leave her in her crib until 6am and then we start our day.