Before I gave birth I imagined a halcyon future where my baby would take 2-hour naps all day during which I would blissfully spend exercising, assembling a Pinterest-worthy baby book, binge-watching Outlander.
You know, all the stuff you guys probably do all day.
So you can imagine my surprise when my first nugget was born, and instead of 2-hour naps, he would take super short naps. Worse? Those micro naps were hard to come by AND he was a huge crank for 20 minutes after those naps. So my entire day was spent trying to get him to nap, desperately wishing he wouldn’t immediately wake up from his nap, calming him down during his post-nap fuss, and generally obsessing over the fact that short crap naps had become the bane of my existence.
Sound familiar?
Short Naps: A Plague on Your House
Persistently short naps are common, frustrating, and exhausting because:
- Short naps (and sleep deprivation) generally lead to more disrupted night sleep, which leads to short naps. It’s a vicious circle.
- You never get any breathing room during the day.
- Short naps = frequent naps = challenging to leave the house because it’s almost always “time for the next nap” = isolating.
- Short naps tends to result in a lot of sleep obsession (furiously tracking everything, looking for patterns, trying to recreate the magic juju of that one time he took a long nap, self-flagellation, etc.).
Getting babies to take long naps is challenging which is why it’s unsurprising to hear some people come to the conclusion, “My baby must not need that much sleep!” Which while technically this could be true, it’s highly unlikely. So let’s assume your baby does in fact need sleep and focus instead on how much nap sleep they should be getting and how you can ensure they get it.
The Ideal Nap Duration
How long should naps actually be? It’s a hard question as never in the history of time has the medical community agreed on the ideal amount of sleep for children. And the reality is that there is huge variability in the actual amount of nap sleep kids are getting. According to Weissbluth the nap range for babies is wide, anywhere from 1.5 – 4.5 hours a day, shrinking just slightly to 0-2.5 hours per day by age 3.
But the problem inherent with any survey of infant sleep is that you’re simply capturing how much they actually sleep vs. how much they should sleep. So the low-end numbers in these ranges invariably include some pretty sleep-deprived kiddos whose parents are likely first-timers who have been convinced “babies will sleep when they’re tired” (not true BTW) and thus have 3 month olds who are awake all day long.
But I digress…so what is an appropriate amount of nap sleep aka how do you know if you have a short nap problem?
Babies are born with an undeveloped intrinsic sleep regulation system, so instead of structured “day and night” sleep, they sleep for random durations scattered somewhat evenly throughout the day. As a result, newborns naps range anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours so by definition, however long/short your newborn naps are, it’s totally normal. Despite the oft-quoted (and entirely terrible) advice to “keep them up during the day so they’ll sleep better at night” the reality is that this sleep maturation process is largely developmental and resolves without or despite your interventions by the time they are 2-4 months old. Exposing newborns to bright light when they’re awake during the day and keeping the lights very dim when they’re awake in the middle of the night may help (and certainly won’t hurt, although the research isn’t entirely clear).
However, for most babies older than 2-4 months, normal naps fall within the ranges of normal baby sleep outlined here. By approximately 4-5 months babies have a somewhat mature sleep cycle of about 50 minutes (this gradually lengthens to adult levels of 90-110 minutes by school age).
Thus anything over ~50 minutes is a pretty solid nap as they’re successfully getting through one complete sleep cycle. If they nap longer (1.5-2 hour naps are grand) that’s even better, but ~50 minutes is a respectable length. Unfortunately many of us are stuck with 20-40 minute naps (which occur when your child transitions out of slow-wave sleep) that are often amazingly predictable (ex. 32.5 minute duration). So for older babies, typically anything shorter than ~50 minutes is officially a “crap nap”.
Top 10 Causes Of and Solutions For Short Naps
As mentioned, occasional crap naps are an unavoidable part of life and are not something to worry about. However chronically short crappy naps are problematic and something you want to do what you reasonably can to improve. A strategy to lengthen short naps starts by identifying why your child takes short naps. Also it’s likely that there are multiple reasons your baby takes short naps, so there may be 2-4 issues from this list that are locking you into persistent crap naps.
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Sleep Association – Object Permanence Issues
If your baby is older than 4-6 months and isn’t falling asleep independently, the same sleep associations that leads to frequent night waking also leads to crap naps. This is by far the #1 reason babies take short naps.
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Baby is Overtired or Undertired
When babies are overtired, their bodies produce excess cortisol (a stress hormone and stimulant so being awake too long between naps can result in a short or nonexistent naps. Alternatively, as babies get older the amount of time they can and need to be awake between naps gradually extends. This additional time is necessary to accrue sufficient sleep pressure so that they can successfully fall asleep.
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Environmental Issues
This is rare because most parents are almost obsessively careful about ensuring that their child’s sleep environment is more luxurious than a Turkish Spa, but anything that might make your child uncomfortable (itchy jammies, ambient light, loud noise) could undermine nap duration.
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Hunger
Also fairly rare, but some babies take short naps because they go to sleep almost hungry. The “eat play sleep” method frequently leads to hunger-induced short naps.
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Maturation of Intrinsic Bioregulatory Processes
Here’s some fancy science talk you can drop at playgroup to impress the other parents with your mad sleep knowledge. Simply put, it just means your newborn baby hasn’t yet matured enough to nap longer. A 9-month-old who takes 20-minute nap has a nap problem. A newborn who takes 20-minute naps is “a regular newborn.”
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Mirco Naps
The pressure to sleep (aka sleep drive) builds up while your child is awake so they can fall asleep and stay asleep at naptime and bedtime. Unfortunately, sleep pressure quickly dissipates when they get even a tiny bit of sleep, so a 5 minute catnap while nursing, in the car, etc. let’s all the sleep air out of your nap balloon.
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Not Enough Soothing
The biological compulsion to sleep is very strong at night but relatively wimpy during the day. Thus it’s harder for babies to fall asleep at naptime which is why so many people feel their “baby fights naps.” And most babies would prefer to party with you anyway so fighting sleep seems like a winning strategy. However you can bolster the sleep drive at naptime by using layering on more soothing than you use (or need) at bedtime. For babies under 6 months this often includes some combination of swaddle, swing, white noise, and possibly a pacifier.
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Inconsistency
Newborns are amazingly flexible and can often nap almost anywhere and under any circumstance. However as they get older (3+ months), they need to nap in the same place/environment throughout the day. Sure the occasional “on the go” nap is fine but consistency is like gardening: no matter how hard you try, bugs will eat all your tomatoes. No wait, wrong analogy. Consistency is like gardening: the more effort you put into it, the better your pumpkins grow.
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Pre-nap routine
Newborns don’t need help to transition from play to sleep time, older babies do. By 3 months you’ll want to have a brief, consistent, soothing pre-nap routine that both signals to your child that “it’s time to sleep” and enables them to successfully transition from play-mode to sleep-mode.
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It’s Habitual
What if you’ve got an older baby and have done all the right things and have a shiny gold star next to all the potential issues I’ve listed here and you’re still locked in on 32.5 minute naps? The answer is that your child may have simply habituated to a shorter nap duration. Which is a bit more challenging, but not impossible to remedy. However the answer is a bit long so let’s dig into it further below.
Breaking the Short Nap Habit
Sleep Myth #573 – if you do all the right things, the result will be long consolidated and predictable naps.
If you are actually doing everything right (see list above) and there is no underlying medical issue (reflux, food allergies, etc.), you may still be stuck with crap naps. Babies are creatures of habit and so even after all the root causes of napletts have been removed, they can remain entrenched in their short nap sleep-wake cycle. And remember, the sleep drive for naps is relatively weak and (most assuredly) most babies would prefer to not be sleeping. So as soon as they slide out of the deep sleep phase their eyes POP and they’re calling for you to come get them.
There are two essential strategies to try to break out of this pattern:
Disrupt the Sleep Cycle
Usually the nap duration is military-precision predictable: you know exactly when your child is going to wake up. Which is helpful, because you’re going to set a timer for ~5-10 minutes prior to the time your child will be waking up. Wake them just slightly by jostling them while they’re still in the crib (not enough so that they’re standing there waiting for you to pick them up but enough so that you see a bit of eye fluttering). Often this will disrupt their sleep/wake pattern just enough so that they navigate back into deep sleep, thus extending the duration of the nap. Continue this pattern for 5-7 days, after which your child should have RE-habituated to the new longer nap sleep pattern and voila no more short naps for you.
People are often resistant to this strategy because they fear simply waking their child up resulting in even shorter naps. But it’s often extremely effective and, worst-case, if you do inadvertently wake them up fully, you’ve only shaved a few minutes off an already short nap so really, it’s not a big deal.
Bore to Sleep
Read a few chapters of my sleep book aloud, your child will quickly become bored and fall back to sleep. I KID.
It’s not easy to fall back to sleep after a short nap (even a micronap can relieve the sleep pressure) and even harder when the alternative to doing so is “play with you.”
“I would much rather nap than play with my most awesome parent,” – said no child ever
Sometimes you need to remove “play with you” from the list of options. So for 2 weeks, naptime is 1 hour. If they wake before 1 hour is up, you leave them to chill in the crib until 1 hour after the start of their nap. If they fall back to sleep – great! If not – OK naptime is over after 1 hour. Initially there will be some tears: this is new, they’re used to you coming to play, and won’t be happy about the change in plans. However if you stick with this for ~10 days, you’ll find most babies will get bored (the ideal sleep space is safe and dull) and with no viable alternative, will fall back to sleep.
“But elsewhere you say post-nap CIO is a bad idea, right?”
Right. And the reason is that you have to be doing all the right things for post-nap CIO (which we’re going to call Bore to Sleep) to work and 87.3% of people aren’t doing all the right things. Because doing all the right things is hard and frankly, a little confusing at times. But in this scenario (older, healthy baby, and naps have been otherwise perfected) Bore to Sleep may well be the right idea.
Short but Not Crappy Naps: The Exception to the Rule
Are naplettes always a problem? No! The last nap of the day is almost always short. Most babies should be awake for a long-ish period of time before bedtime as they need this longer stretch to accrue a significant enough sleep debt that they can fall asleep and stay asleep at night. So you don’t want your child taking a mammoth late nap as this interferes with the bedtime process. Typically the last nap of the day is short, ranging from 30-45 minutes for younger babies, dwindling to 10-20 minutes as they reach 6-9 months in age.
So that’s it, all the tools you need to go forth and vanquish the specter of short naps forever. Or at least until your child decides to stop napping altogether. Good luck and tally ho!
What about an older baby who just won’t nap, ever? Well, almost ever. My daughter is 10 months old and I’ve never been able to “break” her as far as naps go. She’s my third, and I felt like a pro going into this, but none of my strategies with my others work with her. When she was old enough for CIO, I felt like that was foolproof because it worked for my other two, but she will cry endlessly and refuse to nap. At night, she lays down, no problem and puts herself to sleep, with no sleep aids. She wakes up once or twice still, but that’s light years better than where we once were. The naps, though, are a battle I can not win. She’ll wake up at 7:30, won’t wind down and willingly sleep until 1 or so and then is only asleep for 30 min. Then will be awake and cranky until bedtime. Sometimes she sleeps in the car, for my husband she’ll sleep for hours at nap time if he holds her (which I can not do all day, even if she’d let me… I’ve tried) Mommy = food to her and she wants to nurse to sleep with me, which I try not to fall back on. Any ideas? Almost a year with no break during the day and I’m desperate!
Well that’s for a different post “what to do when baby never sleeps ever.” Truthfully at this age you don’t have a lot of options. I would probably see a pediatric sleep specialist just to rule out any underlying condition (restless leg syndrome, apnea) – it’s HIGHLY UNLIKELY but best to know for sure. Because essentially you’re stuck with a chronically sleep deprived kiddo. She sleeps great when held which makes me think that it’s not that she doesn’t NEED sleep, she’s just not getting the conditions under which she WILL sleep. Am assuming paci isn’t an issue? It would meet her need to suck and she’s old enough to self-serve on that front.
The only other thought is that you didn’t give sleep training enough of a go. For naps it’s HAAAARD and takes far longer than for bedtime. So you might need to wait 3 weeks to see what’s doing in really hard cases.
Hope that helps a little – good luck!
Thanks for taking the time to reply. She hasn’t had a pacifier since 5 months or so, but maybe we should go back to it? Anything’s worth a shot! Maybe we’ll try nap sleep training again in the summer when we don’t have school dro offs/pick ups to contend with. Poor 3rd baby! 😉
Hi Alexis,
I love your site and you’ve got a great sarcasm I identify with 🙂
I have a 10 month old boy who is still sleeping in my room, nurses to sleep at bedtime and for his first nap. The last 2 naps are in a sling walking the whole time and usually outside (his favorite). He takes short crappy naps 40-50 min, sometimes 30 and is night waking every 1 1/2-2 hours rocking or nursing to sleep. It’s awful! He has had tummy issues since he was about 4 weeks old, I’ve been on elimination diets where I dropped so much weight and he was categorized as failure to thrive and wasn’t absorbing nutrients. No medical issues have been found after seeing 2 different Gastro docs. He is absorbing nutrients now and gaining ok, but still small, but I have been told he’s ok. He is on reflex meds but still gets bad gas and tummy problems. Oh, and he has 7 teeth already and each one was a rough experience. I am so sleep deprived, but have no idea how to get him more sleep with his tummy issues? Any advice you have I would love to try. Thanks 🙂
Kim
Ooofa…that’s a lot of sleep deprivation and stress all around!
There is no scarier phrase for new parents than “failure to thrive” and I can totally see how you got to where you are. If he’s still got reflux (sounds like things are better but not perfect) – what about using a swing for sleep? Him being slightly upright should help, and the swing enables you to give him motion (which he loves) and to safely swaddle (which I would totally do even though he’s almost 1). He’s still small which means he’s likely within the 25 lb weight limit. I would START there at bedtime – rock to sleep, sneak him in swing. Try for 3-5 days before you give up. If you can make that happen you could reduce a lot of your night wakings right there.
Sending positive thoughts!
Hi Alexis,
My baby is turning 3 months old next week. He sleeps almost through the night. Goes down around 8, wakes up at about 4:45-5, has a 12 min breast feed and goes back down until 6:10 am.
However, during the day when he was tiny he would have nice long naps. Now for about 2-3 weeks it’s been 35-45 min naps only. I’ve tried to put him down drowsy but not asleep. I’ve also tried putting him down fully asleep. Rocking, singing, shushing. Pacifier, no pacifier and walking into the room making a bit of noice before sleep cycle ends. Nothing is making his naps longer….unless i hold him
What do I do? Please help 🙁
Hi Sasha! Was wondering how this worked out for you. Your babies schedule seems to be identical to mine. I’m having the same nap issues. Was hoping for any advice…
I too have this SAME BABY!! Almost identical schedule!! Have either of you figured out what to do?????
My 4 months LO does the same, but I‘m starting wondering if short naps are her problem or mine. She’s content during the day and sleeps fine at night. Sure her short naps make my life more difficult but what if it’s just that? Thoughts?
It’s your third and you don’t know what to do?! That’s scary… I thought by the third one would have no problem! But I guess it really shows that kids are all different. Good luck!
No the 3rd one just makes you feel like a huge failure because you THOUGHT you would have it all figured out by then 😉
Wow, that’s a bit harsh. I’m on my third baby and have never, ever had good sleepers until they were about 12 months. We have battled with reflux and they were never able to get through a sleep cycle until they were older. I think by the third it gets harder, because you can’t stop your life and hang out at home for nap times. You have to take your kid to and from school and doctor’s appointments etc. Baby just has to deal with it and sleep where and when they can, and sometimes that’s at home, and other times it’s in the car. I don’t know why people think that a mum can spend ages trying to get a 3 month old baby to sleep, in a dark and quiet room, when they have a toddler elsewhere in the house.
What changed at 12 months? Did they just fall into a better napping pattern on their own?
To be honest, I don’t quite know. I lost it a bit with the first and ended up doing controlled crying around 10/11mo, and after a few days there was improvement, and after a couple of months he was excellent. My second had (and still has) congenital bowel issues. She went onto a tube feed and because she was fed constantly and comfortable, I think she just learned to sleep. I definitely can’t take any credit for it at all. I wish I had an answer that would be helpful for you (and for me!) My third will be 5mo next week and is still a crappy napper and takes hours to settle in the evenings, no matter what I try. I’m sort of just hoping that she follows her siblings along, but it’d be nice if there was something I could do to help her now. She’s so unhappy and it’s really sad, and can be quite stressful and exhausting at times, with late nights, overnight feeds (I’m not worried so much about those) and having to be up early for the others. I think that’s just how it is when you’ve got more than one kid, but it’s just hard to help her as nothing really seems to work consistently with her (just like my others).
Regarding the baby falling asleep independently, does a bottle or nursing need to be separated by at least 20-30 minutes as you’ve suggested for bed time? Because the “sleep pressure” is lower, I have found it helpful to nurse up to the point of putting my baby in his crib – so that he’s much drowsier than when we put him down at night. He’s definitely awake and goes to sleep by himself, but I’m wondering if that could also be an issue (as far as I know I’m implementing all the other pieces as best I can!)
The answer is, “It depends on how he’s napping.”
🙂 Generally it’s NOT a problem to have it be close-ish to naptime. However if you’ve got super short naps then I would definitely experiment with spacing it out to see how things develop for you. Try putting some space in there for 5 days and see if things extend!
What happens when my 10 month old is able to fall asleep independently, sleeps through the night and has amazing naps ranging from 1.5-2 hours 2x/day at home but at work (I’m lucky enough for him to come to work with me) he will only take a 45 min nap (tops!) and he still cries for 10-20 mins before falling asleep. At first I thought it was because it was my caregiver putting him down vs. me but she watched him at my house last week and he did great. At work we have sheets from home, same lovies, same books, same routine just a different space. What else could it be?!?! Thank you for all of your advice!!!!!!!
Who knows! I can only guess there is some small environmental difference in the space (temperature, light?) that makes it hard for him to sleep. Either that or the work environment is MORE stimulating so that perchance he is slightly OVER tired and thus the schedule needs to be tweaked? I would experiment with that possibility and see if things improve. Good luck!
Alexis, thank you so much for this post. I gobbled it down in two seconds flat. However, I wondering what to do about the “between naps” napper.
I put my (2nd) baby down every three hours for an hour (9AM, 12PM, and 3PM), just like my pediatrician told me to do. However, usually he does not sleep during these mandated times. Then, when I go in to get him, THAT’S often when the little tyke decides to go to sleep (for a 10-20 minute crap nap, always). Problem is, this butts up against the next supposed nap, whereupon it seems too soon to put him down yet again.
What do I do?? Not let him go to sleep in between mandated naptimes, and tolerate Mr. Cranky until the next one? Or let him sleep in between supposed naps and still put him down at the next one, even if it comes not long after the between-naps nap? Any thoughts – most appreciated!! Thank you!!!!
I’m not sure how old this baby is but every 3 hours may not be the right schedule (schedules are tricky, am not trying to throw your pediatrician under the bus!). If you’re trying to get him to fall asleep on his own and he DOESN’T (this is what’s happening yes?) then it’s critical that you not let him sleep at other times. If he DOES fall asleep while you’re nursing or what have you, then the “three hour till next nap” starts when that catnap ends.
EX. It’s 9 AM and he doesn’t sleep at all. At 10:15 you nurse him and he konks out for 10 minutes (so now it’s 10:30 AM). If you want him to take a nap every 3 hours then his NEXT naptime would be at 1:30 PM.
My newly minted 4 month old is, I suspect, going through a sleep regression. The only thing getting her to sleep for naps is the breast.
She also takes 35-40 minute naps. I don’t think its hunger related, cause nursing != longer nap.
Once we are done with this regression (I’m working on replacing the breast with a paci), what should I tackle first – nap length or putting her down awake, without something in her mouth. Is the pacifier a completely different issue on its own? Thanks!
D) All of the above.
😉
Truthfully this is a GREAT age to really double down on “independent sleep” (no paci, no nurse to sleep). I’m not sure if focusing on the paci vs. breast is really that valuable, so if it were ME would skip the paci and work on not nursing to sleep. Why?
– Because ultimately boob or paci – both can upset your goal of longer naps.
– It’s only going to get harder as she gets older, so this is really a great time to make this a priority.
– She’s young enough you still have many soothing tools to work with – swaddle, swing, etc.
– It’s all but impossible to get longer naps with an older baby who is nursed to sleep so really the two goals are the SAME goal.
Good luck!
My husband has been gone for work since the beginning of March. Since she is the Ali of nap fighting and her screaming for long periods of time turns me into a puddle of tears myself, I will take your advice when he gets home in 2 weeks. I need him to fight the good fight with me, or at least pet my hair when he gets home from work lol! Thank you for your response!
Wait – nobody is talking about CIO! Have you tried the varsity swing method? You don’t need to be a puddle of tears – give her MORE soothing for naptime, make sure she’s not awake too long, see what happens. She may fuss a bit (10 minutes) but it shouldn’t be something that requires hair petting!
Sadly, the crying was happening with a swaddled, snuggled, rocked or swinging baby, which is why I resorted to nursing. I wasn’t CIOing at all, cause I looked at your checklist and she’s too young. We got home from a trip and she hit 4 months at the same time. Who knows what was causing it, but there was nothing I could do to soothe her except nurse. It was awful, even moreso to manage alone. So I’m loathe to have a repeat of it without the mister giving in-person moral support. 13 more days!
OK so a good intermediate step would be to nurse to sleep THEN sneak into the swing. It’s a beginning anyway. Good luck!
My four month old is the same. Four to Five 40min naps with about 1.5 awaken time hours in between and 2-3 night feedings in a 10-11 hour period, BUT I already got him used to falling asleep swaddled with a paci. I currently rock until he’s half awake and put him in his crib with a fan on. What should I tackle first? The swaddle or the paci?
How long should the space be between last nap and bedtime?
Check the chart by age in the post I’ve linked too here (Bedtime – below)
So I feel like I need to give some history before going into my question. My LO is 5 months old now. For the first 3 months he was a TERRIBLE napper, but slept through the night starting at 1 month. Then I went back to work and our sleep issues started. I have finally (I think) figured out a nighttime bed routine and routine for when he wakes up in the middle of the night that is returning him to longer stretches and more sleep at night, but naps are still a problem.
At daycare, he typically takes 2 naps, ranging from 1-3 hours typically, but occasionally he sleeps 4 (Crazy I know). On the weekends though, it’s a 30 minute nap on me or a nap when we are running errans but I can not seem to get him to nap in his bed. We have tried replicating our night time routine, bottle instead of breast feeding, letting him sit quietly until he falls asleep, the swing, the rock and play, etc. etc. etc. I just am stuck and I could really use some hands free time on the weekends!
For starters, that is a TON of nap sleep. I don’t often say this, but if you don’t see the night sleep improving, one possible culprit of the night waking could be that he’s napping TOO much. I wouldn’t rush to cut back on nap sleep, but consider it for the future, yes?
So the reason he takes crap naps with you is that YOU ARE BABY CRACK. Daycare people are cool, but they aren’t you. So he fights sleep to spend time with YOU. I sometimes call this the power of #notmom.
So my first suggestion is to have somebody else put him down for naps on weekends, ALL the time. Also I would definitely commit to putting him awake in the swing for naptimes (no bottle or boob, ideally). Swaddling may also be helpful. For now, I would forget about him napping in his bed. I would also consider the “bore to sleep” strategy for when he wakes up after a 30 minute nap – ESPECIALLY if you bump up the soothing with the swaddle/swing/not nursing to sleep combo.
Hope that helps – good luck!
Thanks so much for replying! I will definitely try those suggestions and if his night sleep doesn’t stay good I will talk to daycare about decreasing those naps!! I really appreciate you taking the time to help out!
Hi,
So we are back to sleep training my 13mo after a terrible episode of pneumonia. During her sick time we had her in our bed for about a week after we had just been into the sleep training for two week. So, as expected, she is having a hard time adjusting back to her crib for night sleep but is doing ok. My dilemma and hers is naps. She cries if we even walk towards her room and cried for longer than an hour after which I took her our and only want to nap while nursing and in my bed or in her swing. The same goes for when she is at my moms, who watches her while I work. Help!
Sounds like you’re all coming out of a rough patch with illness and poor sleep. Chances are she’s accrued a bit of a sleep debt with all that going on. She’s old to be in a swing BUT for the short-term, if it works, I would use it. Let her catch up on sleep again, use the swing to maximize her day sleep (stroller naps are also OK) and THEN work towards getting her back in her crib. Good luck!
My 8 month old has been taking the 30 minute naps for about four months now. We have not forced the crib for an hour yet, but it takes a lot of bouncing or rocking to get him to even sleep that 30 minutes. But he’s cheerful throughout the day and not even that cranky in the evening before bed. And he sleeps mostly through the night from 7 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. with one or maybe two wakeups. Our sitter is reluctant to let him just cry it out for a nap because he’s not at all unhappy during the day. He usually sleeps in the car on the way to and from the sitter (20-30 minutes each) and will only take 2-3 half hour naps during the day. Every once in a while he’ll sleep for an hour or 90 minutes (this happened Sunday while I held him, of course, expecting him to wake up any minute). I keep obsessing and tracking and bouncing and everyone else says he just must not need that much sleep. I feel like I’m doing him a disservice down the road by not making him nap, but everyone acts like I’m crazy because “you can’t make a baby sleep.” This shiz is frustrating. Thanks for this. I’ll be printing it out to share.
“This shiz is frustrating. ”
Hear hear 😛
I wouldn’t let him stay in the crib for 1 hour until you break out of the rocking to sleep thing. The fundamental issue here is that he isn’t falling to sleep independently at naptime and that’s going to lock you into short naps (this is pt #1 on the list above). So truthfully I think a bit more sleep would be grand, but happily he’s a chill little dude so at least he’s pleasant with short naps 🙂
If you’re open to it, I might consider trying a swing as a short-term transition from rocking -> independent sleep. Yes he’s on the old side but he’s a motion junkie so it might be your gentlest transition option to get from bouncing to him falling asleep solo. See post below for more.
Thanks for the reply. I printed out your advice for the sitter, too, but of course today he took two half-hour naps and two hour-long naps We think he’s on to our plans. He woke up really angry from the second one, but then the 4-year-old gave him her baby doll, he mauled it with his three teeth for a while and then cheered right up.
My four month old is starting these micro naps. I understand that consistancy is important but often times I cannot help where he naps. I have an older child who I must pick up from school and bring to other activities. Baby often needs to nap in carsest stroller or while I’m baby wearing. Am I doomed to have a crappy napper because of this?
Hmmmm….doomed? Well I wouldn’t say doomed but the path will be harder, yes.
Usually babies take GREAT naps while being worn so I’m surprised you’re getting micro-naps. The downside of babywearing for naps is that you end up with babies who ONLY nap while being worn, which gets old eventually. If he’s taking micronaps in the car or while being worn I’m guessing the issue is that the catnaps are too frequent and thus he doesn’t accrue enough sleep debt to take LONGER babywearing naps. Can you stretch out those times at all? Maybe some small tweaks to your travel schedule?
Good luck!
Yes! His catnaps are to frequent. At this point I’m going for any means necessary for longer naps. I’ll tackle the baby wearing issue when I get to that point. Thank you!
My oldest was a short napper until about 18 months when I suppose I inadvertently bored him back to sleep. I was cleaning the floors during naptime and *so close* to being done, so I just kept going. IN LESSTHAN 10 MINUTES he fell back asleep for another 45 min. I was shocked. If only I had let him cry a bit for that short a time sooner, I could’ve had those longer naps I’d been dreaming of because after that, he napped for 1.5 hours everyday.
See I’m super lazy about floor cleaning but look at all the bountiful things that can happen when you put some effort in 🙂
Alexis – thank you for this! Now get back to that book … I need at least four copies, yesterday! 🙂
I’ll be trying the suggestions in your post, but I thought I’d add my own boggle just for fun.
First baby after far too long trying; he’s 14 weeks old. He is sleeping from 7/7.30pm to about 7am with two breastfeeds in between 🙂
Morning naps are between 30-45 mins so I’ll be working on extending those … right now he’s having a whinge for the last few minutes of the “hour” his nap will be.
Afternoon naps are my holy grail at the moment. My husband and I are lucky enough to work from home, and baby tends to be in his dad’s office/den in the afternoons. Baby will nap in his little bed in there, but only one lot of 10-15 mins. I’m sort of keen that he sleeps there (light, different environment) so we’re not totally tied to his cot in a dark room with pink noise in order for him to sleep, but does this matter?
With his crappy afternoon naps, he’s spaced out and a bit cranky, and by 6.30pm we’re all ready for him to go to bed/sleep – which he does.
His pacifer helps to get him off to sleep sometimes (not always necessary) but should we try and crack the naps first and then tackle the paci?
Thank you for your fantastic website and advice – I recommend your site to everyone I meet with babies! (UK / Essex)
You know what takes an eternity? Book editing. Like seriously, it’s ETERNAL. But no worries – I’m still working away! (And don’t tell anybody but this will likely be the last new post till August)
So baby is 14 weeks old which means he’s just barely old enough to have the more mature sleep cycle thing happening so it could be that “he’s just not ready.” Also I’m wondering about #7 – not enough soothing. Not sure what the little bed is like but maybe it’s not enough. Swaddle + swing might work better? Light is also not your friend – light exposure is a detriment to sleep. So unless Dad can work in a dark cave, it may not be the greatest place for him to sleep.
I would make some tweaks (light, soothing) and see if you can’t get longer than 10 minutes of sleep out of him because that’s pretty dinky THEN work on paci-free sleep if you can.
Good luck and thanks for the kind words!
I will tell everyone struggling with short naps that sometimes when you finally get down to just one nap (for us at 12 months), the short naps end. It was a rough year but now it’s like magic most of the time and she will nap for at least 60-120 minutes and still sleeps well at night. I am sure that as soon as I post this, something terrible will happen and she will decide on her second birthday never to nap again.
LOL
Maybe you’ll get lucky and she’ll nap till 5. My oldest did that. I figured it was his way of repaying me for the 1 year of crap naps I arm-wrestled with when he was a baby 😉
Our soon to be 6 month has got me wrapped around her finger… She naps only on the boppy, on our laps. The good thing is she will take 1-2 hour naps and has slept thru the night (8-9 hrs) since 1 month. Obviously I get nothing accomplished during her naps, other than holding Her :). Am I setting her up for failure. Each time Ive tried nap time in her crib I’m lucky to get 15-20 minutes before she starts whaling…
my wife and I keep telling each other she’s only this old once, but I realize this isn’t a good pattern..
Any advice?
Hello Trent,
I realised this is an old post but I was wondering what did you do to get your lil one to nap for longer without holding her. In fact, what did you to get her to nap at all without holding her? I’m in the exact same situation and also he is transitioning to 2 naps which means even crappier naps and a lot of fighting sleep. He is not coming down now with me nursing and holding so I’m having to re- think his napping routine. I also think holding him is just going to make it really difficult for when he has to go into childcare.
I would really appreciate if you could let me know how you got on in the end.
Thanks
True, she’s only young once. But but that argument starts to look a little ragged because it’s true for her whole life, “She’s only 3 once, she’s only 4 once…” Don’t get me wrong – holding a sleeping baby is a truly joyful thing! But let’s assume she naps until she’s 3.5 years old. Are you going to want to hold her for the next 3 years? And if not, what’s your strategy? Because right now you’re teaching her how to sleep every day she naps, and the current message is, “you sleep on us.”
It doesn’t get any easier as they get older, if anything it gets harder. Because now she’s young enough that you still have some powerful sleep-inducing soothing tools to work with. If it were me, and I wanted to do something like, you know stand up during nap time (hee hee 🙂 I would work on helping her fall asleep using swaddling, dark room, white noise, and the swing (or if that isn’t an option something more cozy than the crib – like a rock in play). Your short-term goal is not the crib – FORGET the crib for now – but it’s a decent-sized nap that safely happens but not ON you. It may mean naps are a bit of a struggle for the first week but there’s no time like the present.
Literally.
Hi Alexis,
Your blog is fantastic. The only baby-sleep advice I feel is somewhat relative to ‘real’ babies.
So my little girl is 4-and-a-half months old and is just an angel. Truly, she is the happiest bub on the block and is the light of my life 🙂 We wen’t on Easter holidays away for 10 days recently and since coming home her tune has really changed. She cries at the drop of a hat, can’t be left on the floor (I normally do heaps of floor play with her and she usually loves it), and is generally miserable. I am thinking that the start of teething might be at play (drooling, biting everything, and looks like she’s in pain) for which I’m giving her nurofen if it’s bad. However, I think that her short day naps are at the root of her troubles. By the afternoon, she is just so overtired! Here is what we do:
She goes to sleep in her cot, with a dummy (Pacifier) and a muslin comfort blanket, in her sleeping bag. Her room is dark, the ceiling fan offers some nice white noise and she puts herself to sleep (with the dummy). I can still do this in the mornings at the moment, but no way for afternoons. I have never rocked her to sleep (she’s never really liked it) but yesterday there was just no other way – she was hysterical! She wakes after 30 mins, every nap time, except for the one 1.5-2hr nap per week (totally random).
From your advice, I feel like we need to get rid of the dummy. I’m just so apprehensive as I know that is the one thing that puts her to sleep. Without it she will cry and I am really not a fan of crying it out.
As for night time, we really can’t complain. She goes to sleep between 6-6:30pm, I dream feed her at around 10pm, and she will normally wake once for a feed anywhere between 3:30-5:30am. Then sleeps again till between 6-7am. Not bad at all. It’s just the day naps that are crappy.
Honestly, if she was happy with having 30 min naps all day then I really wouldn’t mind. But she’s becoming so grumpy and it’s just not like her. It breaks my heart.
Please tell me what you would do! I want to set her up for some healthy sleeping habits now so she can get on with being happy and smiling and everything!
Thank you 🙂
She’s 4 months, yes? That’s still pretty young. What about MORE soothing? paci + sleeping bag is great but what about swaddling? Sure she’s not a newborn but it often helps. Swaddle + swing would be my best advice for both lengthening naps AND finding a gentle path to remove the paci.
Often travel leads to kiddos accruing a small sleep debt so part of what could be happening is she’s in a bit of a sleep-hole after your trip. So another direction would be to do what you must (car/stroller rides) to help her sleep MORE and recoup that sleep-debt. So personally I might do both (more soothing, car naps) to get over the hump.
Good luck!
Are there any cues to know if a technically-not-short-nap is still crappy?
My 22 month old has ALWAYS woken up bawling from her naps, I’m lucky if I get 1 a month that she just kind of wakes up groggy but calm. We’ve struggled a lot with sleep/naps so that might be part of it? But even recently that I’ve gotten her from 30 minutes in her crib to at least 60 minutes (but ranging 60 – 90 min) she will wake so upset and just wanting to cuddle and go back to sleep. If, at that point, we hold her she will generally go back out for another hour at least- I don’t know how much of that is that she NEEDS it or that she’s simply going back to sleep because arms have become an option. If we don’t let her go back down the rest of the day everything becomes the end-of-the-world syndrome so she’s obviously tired.
I thought about trying the disrupt sleep cycle because we do have gold stars on everything else and I’m sure it’s become more of a habit but she varies from 60 to 90 minutes. Would I just do that at 50 then? Or would bore to sleep be best?
Hmmm…that’s tricky. Waking up cranky is not really a huge deal. It’s annoying but totally common and generally “unfixable.” The fact that she’s a cranky mess if you don’t do the post-nap cuddle extension, however, is a sign that her 1 hour nap is insufficient.
However she’s almost 2 so I think bore to sleep would definitely work. TALK to her about it. Give her a cue that “naptime is not over” (like a nightlight on a timer – you can get these for $7 at Lowes or whatever). Help her understand that nightlight=naptime. If she can’t sleep she can sing, play with teddy, count toes, etc. But that’s it. If she’s REALLY struggling to fall back to sleep after 60 minutes you could work on dialing back the “only sleeps while cuddled” – maybe you go in there and rub her back to start, with an eye on gradually weaning off ALL of it (back rubbing for 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes, you come visit briefly, etc.).
I’m so very glad for your question and for Danika below because we were having the same issues with my 18 month old son! He was waking up too early in the morning (5:30) still tired and also after napping for 1:15, still incredibly needy and cranky. Then he expected to lay in bed with me and nurse/doze to catch up on the sleep he was missing. Although his total sleep and nap times were technically ok, I knew he was still tired and not getting enough rest. It seemed that he was waking up still groggy and decided “hey, I’d much rather finish out this sleep session on mommy’s boob!” Not such a great plan for Mommy! I decided he would lose the right to choose his wake-up time since, clearly, he wasn’t choosing it very well.
For a few days I did bored back to sleep with naps and they went from 1:15 to about 2 hours. Miraculously, he’s waking up rested and no longer needs an hour of cuddling/nursing. The rest of the day is going much better now, too. Since your nap situation seems incredibly similar, I thought you might like to know how it went for us.
After a couple days I changed his wake-up from 5:30 to 7:00. The first day he didn’t even wake up until I went to get him at 7! Extending out the nap really did seem to do the trick. I now go and get him at 7 am, rather then letting him determine when it’s time to wake up. I do something similar with naps. Since taking that choice away he’s sleeping longer and waking up happier. I guess some kids just do better when Mommy makes the decision for them.
Hi alexis
I really need your advice….my 4mth old little boy had been swaddled, white noise and in swing (goes in awake and puts himself to sleep with a little fussing) since he was 2mths. He was taking 2x2hr and a short 3rd half hour nap beautifully! However in the last week he has started waking after 30-40min and crying (a lot!!!). previously if he woke he would generally fuss/cry for a while and go back to sleep but the last week….No!! I have tried shortening and lengthening awake time but it doesn’t help – he’s also waking in the car after 30min and not going back to sleep……please help he is a mr cranky pants and it’s starting to affect his night time sleep (he sleeps in his cot at night and goes to sleep by himself by 7/730pm) I want my great napper back – what do you suggest????
Well I don’t have a fix per se (truthfully you’re doing ALL the right things) but I’m pretty sure the problem is this:
http://www.troublesometots.com/the-thing-about-sleep-regressions/
The good news? It’s temporary. Good luck!
Just re-read my post….he is still swaddled (not ‘had’ like I typed)…..duh!!
Hi Alex!
I have been reading your amazing site since my baby was about 3 months old (now nearly 8 months). Using your techniques, I had her to the point of putting her down awake in her crib for every nap and bedtime (with minimal to no crying!). Yay! Then we found out she was tongue tied and had to have that clipped PLUS six teeth came in all at once. After her tongue tie revision she WOULD NOT go to sleep without nursing and I caved for the first five days, the time period the doctor said the pain would be worst. Now, I have recreated our sleep monster. She won’t go to sleep independently, wakes frequently at night, and takes crap naps. So frustrated! I know I need to intervene, but now I don’t have the tools to teach her that I did at 4-5 months. She already has good routines, dark room, loud white noise. Rolls consistently when swaddled (yes, I tried again out of desperation, even tried zippadeezip). I fear we’re headed to CIO ville, which I soooooooo wanted to avoid. Any other Hail Mary suggestions?
Thanks!
Amber (and Ellie!)
Hey Amber,
Well if you feel the swaddle is helpful you could temporarily have her sleep somewhere strapped in (like a non-moving swing). She IS old but as a short-term hail mary, the swing might be my go to. Truthfully I’m not hugely optimistic but won’t hurt to try for a few days? If I can’t sell you on that plan for bedtime, how about naptime? Start by asleep in the swing but work towards removing nursing from the routine and swaddling her awake in the swing so she falls asleep there.
If you DO end up in cioville at bedtime I strongly suspect it won’t be the terrible scene you imagine and so, given that sleep all around has gone south, I would encourage you to do it sooner that later. Improved night sleep should feed into your nap struggles (in a positive way!) as well.
Good luck!
Baby is 5 months old. She sleeps great at night, occasionally she’ll wake once to eat but lots of nights she doesn’t even do that and sleeps 8:30p-8ish am. She usually has a really good first nap (1.5-2hrs) but the rest of her naps tend to be 30 minutes. I’ve tried keeping her up 2 hours, putting her down at the first sign of fussiness (usually closer to 1 hour), leaving her for 15 minutes after she wakes up while she just moves around in her pack’n’play. She falls asleep on her own after I nurse her to the point of being drowsy. Any other thoughts? If she’s getting 14 hours of sleep the way she’s doing it, should I even be concerned about her 30 minute naps?
Well I wouldn’t loose too much sleep (I know, I’m hysterical) at 5 months but this is a GERAT age to work towards separating that nursing session from bedtime so that:
1) you aren’t nursing directly prior to naptime
2) she’s actually wide awake in the pack in play
Not that you need to panic about this but it’ll help in the long haul and will be easier now than later. ALso it MAY help nudge her towards longer naps in the PM. Good luck!
Hi Alexis,
This website has been so helpful and reassuring – especially when I realized full extinction was really the only way with my daughter! We are in the midst of CIO with her and going well. She is in daycare, and I am lucky if she gets two 1/2 hour naps – in fact mu job is flexible and I have been picking her up early to get in a third nap. At daycare, I don’t think they will let her cry for naps, but I am going to try at home (bouncing her although she used to fall asleep on her own in the magic merlin sleep suit for naps) and hope maybe then once she gets it at home, they will be put her down, she will go to sleep and sleep longer – I can dream. So getting to my point finally! How long do you let them cry at naps? Do you do the same as bedtime and just wait until they fall asleep or call it quits at a certain point and try again a little later?
Thanks so much!
Austin
Well I’m assuming that since you ask you’re getting gold stars on all the potential challenges I list above, right? Because you REALLY want gold stars because there are many small tweaks that can make naps miserable if you don’t.
But let’s assume you do – so nap is 1 hour. If they’re awake after 1 hour, nap is over. Otherwise you let them sleep PROVIDED they don’t sleep so late that it messes up bedtime. You want to defend your consistent bedtime. If you call it quits then you ACTUALLY quit until the next scheduled naptime (so you don’t try again in 1 hour). Keeping them awake in this scenario is challenging and generally means you can’t go anywhere because they’ll konk out in the car 😛
Good luck!
Thanks so much for responding! That is just what I was looking for. On most things we have gold stars 🙂 But she is overtired b/c of not napping at daycare (so inconsistency is also probably an issue), but I am not sure how to overcome that except for what I do now which is pick her up early and hope she gets in a third nap. Thanks again!!
Dear Alexis,
I think my toddler might be napping too well (no, really). For the first 14 months of her life, she refused to nap longer longer than 45 minutes, and she bitterly fought each nap. Any and all strategies to extend her naps — and we tried them all — utterly failed. Our pediatrician promised her naps would get better as she got older and switched to one nap; it seemed impossible. And then … the impossible happened. She started sleeping for an hour and a half, then two hours, then three hours. But two months into this wonderful world of 3 hour naps, her nighttime sleep is getting shorter and shorter, and we have moved from a 8am wake up to 6am. Her bedtime is around 9pm — she’s always gone to bed pretty late, between 8 and 9. I try to put her down earlier sometimes, but she’s just not tired enough. She generally naps from 1/2 — 4/5 pm, which is late but she’s not tired earlier. She’s a very happy 2 year old, so I think she is getting enough total sleep, but I would love switch an hour of it back to nighttime. (She’s gone from 11hr of sleep at night to 9!)
However, on rare days that she does wake up early from her nap (after 1.5 hr), she doesn’t actually sleep any longer at night. In fact, if we allow too many hours to pass between nap and bedtime, she wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
I realize a day here and there isn’t enough to produce results, but I fear giving up this wonderful daytime rest with no guarantee of nighttime improvement – especially since we also have a newborn at home!
So any quick words of advice? In your experience, does shortening naps for toddlers lead to better nighttime sleep? And what might be a good schedule? Or could all this be the result of upheaval due to a new baby? Thank you!
Well I think you know what the answer is – if you want her sleeping longer at night you need to wake her earlier from naps for ~5 days. Also ideally you would slide up closer to 8 or even 7:30. Most kiddos are wired to wake early so it’s unlikely that you’ll get her to now sleep past 6 so the way to lengthen her night sleep is to set her up to fall asleep earlier.
Also you can’t just shift bedtime up earlier all at once because she wont’ be able to sleep so the key would be to cut naps off at 3 PM for ~5 days. Meanwhile you gradually slide bedtime up by 15 minutes a day until at least 8 PM. Once there let things settle for ~3 days and see what happens.
My almost 8-month old loves taking 35-minute naps. He was starting to take longer ones about a month ago, but a cold, then an ear infection, then a bad bout of teething threw everything off. I was doing the sleep cycle disruption thing and thought it was working, he had about 3 days in a row where he napped close to 2 hours…but now we’re back in short napsville! What gives?? Do I let him “chill” (aka cry) in his bed until the hour is up? Of course we’re traveling this weekend and everything is going to be a mess anyway.
Oh and I can check off all the other potential problems – no sleep associations, put down awake, night sleep is 11 straight hours, dark quiet room with white noise, consistent routine for months, always naps in crib, not hungry. Grrrr.
Sickness can lead to chronic sleep deprivation which can ALSO give you short naps (the list of causes is long, sadly) – what about a few days of stroller naps so that he catches up on his sleep debt and then give the cycle disruption plan another go. If AFTER that you see no improvement then I would totally let him chill. Good luck!
Hi Alexis
I have a 6 month old baby who isn’t getting enough sleep overall and neither are we. We use a sleeping bag, white noise and dark room for her sleeps. For day naps I rock and hold her in my arms. She sleeps in her cot at night but wakes up frequently. 3am-6am is our witching hour where she gets restless and eventually wakes up at 5am. I have tried treating this as a night wake up and rock her to sleep but this isn’t always successfull. So some days we have super early starts and by the time it’s her bed time she’s pooped!! Oh and she cat naps during the day.
We have decided to sleep train her in a few weeks time when my hubby can take time off from work to assist.
We don’t have her in a routine as her wake up time and nap lenght varies. We follow a eat play sleep cycle.
I know things will not improve until she is sleep trained, in the meantime is there’s anything I can do to stop the early morning wake ups?
I keep her up for 2hr’s from her awake time in the morning (even if it’s 5am I put her down at 7am) and the rest of her awake time is 2.20hours with 3 naps a day..this being 30-40 mins long. Occassionally if I’m lucky I can rock her back to sleep after her first nap. Are my awake times causing the restlessness/early morning wake ups? Lately with her naps being so short we keep her up for 3 hours to ensure she’s in bed by 6pm.
I would love your advice on the above please 🙂
Thanks Kav
Well if her bedtime is 6:00 PM then 5:00 AM may be her natural wake time – that’s 11 hours at night which is pretty typical. I also hear that she’s restless from 3 AM – 5 AM which is also typical, especially with the “rock to sleep” thing happening at bedtime (which I know you’re working on!). You CAN try to smooth out this time with more soothing. If you have a swing you could try transitioning her to a swing at 3 AM. Swaddling (presuming she doesn’t flip over) is another option that might help at this time of night. But I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting her to sleep past 5 AM until she’s napping better and gets older at which point her bedtime will shift out towards 7 PM and hopefully she can sleep to 6 AM. Good luck!
I’ve long suspected that rocking to sleep has been my crappy nap villain, but I don’t know how to get my 7 month old to sleep on his own. Night time he is perfect, 11.5hrs straight no wakings alone in his crib after a consistent bath bottle bed routine. Does anyone have any tips for how I implement independent sleeping for naps? I have no idea how to set a nap routine or transition him from play to naps that can be replicated at daycare 3 days a week. Any ideas, what are your routines?
You can totally do whatever little pre-nap routine suits for you, and often kids are amazingly flexible about adapting to doing it one way at home and one way at daycare. If you’re rocking him to sleep and have a swing sitting around I would start by trying to see if that’s an option – use the swing to both extend naps and work on teaching him to fall asleep without being rocked.
Thank you for replying! We had a horrible bout of sickness and am finally starting today! I let him CIO for his first nap after putting him down drowsy, slept 30mins then protested for 20mins and went back to sleep. I am working on a nap routine that can be done at daycare too and now that he is older im going to start a nap lovie!
Thank you again, you are amazing, your advice has saved my life since I went back to work full time when he was 5 months I needed sleep to function. I can’t wait for your book to come out, I’ll buy a copy for everyone I know!
Hello. What do I do with 4-430 am wakings. My 13 mos old son typically wakes around this time (he used to do well and wake at 6). We bring him to bed with us and I try and nurse him back to sleep. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I always try because when it does work, hallelujah we can sleep more. Other times we just get up to play. He is going down to bed between 7-730 and he is taking two naps per day. We started with night sleep first, were successful, then when we were comfortable, we tried day time crib naps. He used to sleep in my bed or ergo for naps and would get about 3 hours total. But once we switched to the crib, two crappy half hour naps. And then the 4 am wakings happened again. My hubs and I argue about what we should do! Nurse down? Wake for good? Play? CIO at 4 until sunrise? Thanks! These early am wakings are so confusing!
I’m wondering if the 4 AM waking is related to short naps. Essentially he’s always slept ON you so I’m guessing that YOU are a huge sleep association for him. When you took that away by having him nap in the crib so naps got short. Then he’s headed into bedtime a bit over-tired which can lead to early morning waking.
I would try to work on lengthening naps using the techniques in this post (possibly the sleep cycle disruption or boredom route). I’m guessing that if you can get those crap naps to be at least 1 hour the 4 AM stuff will improve.
Good luck!
I’m so glad you asked this. I was having a similar (although not so severe) problem with my 18 month old. I responded to Janae’s post above with what we did and it’s working really well for us (so far).
Can the 4-month regression take the form of shorter naps? My 4.5 month old was a champion napper until 5 days ago, at which point naps went from a reliable 1.5-3hours (3-4x/day) to 20-40 minutes. Is it worth trying to troubleshoot the naps, or just ride it out for a bit longer in the hopes it will be resolved once the regression passes? Nighttime sleep is still (thankfully) ok – he sleeps from 8pm-7am with two feeds.
It ABSOLUTELY can!
Good Evening!
My son is 5 months old and has been having problems sleeping for about a month now. He started sleeping 11.5 hours at night (9pm-8:30am) with no consistent sleep associations, he was put in his crib drowsy but awake, at 2 months and was taking 2.5 hour naps every afternoon and a 30-45 min nap every evening. When he turned 4 months he stopped sleeping through the night and began waking up every 2 hours. We would put the pacifier back into his mouth and he’d be out again. This happened all night long. He never wanted to be fed, rocked or even picked up. The only way i could get sleep was to put him in bed with me so he was closer to put the paci back in. He will be 5 months in 3 days and is still not sleeping and has started taking shorter naps during the day and fighting his sleep for naps and bedtime. The Dr suggested CIO but when I tried WE cried for 2 hours until he started hyperventilating and throwing up and I ran to him. Any suggestions to get him sleeping well again?
Also, we tried taking the pacifier in case that was his sleep association and he slept without it and still had the same issues with waking up every 2 hours.
Well I definitely think the paci is not your friend. Yes I heard you tried without it but here’s my question, “What happened when he fell asleep without it and woke up 2 hours later?” Because what happened then can reset the sleep association issue EVEN if you’re doing all the right things AT bedtime. So whatever the answer to that question is? That’s the answer to why he’s up all night.
If he can happily fall asleep without the paci, what about removing it for all night use?
My son is 19 months old and we are just trying to switch to one nap a day at home. He’s been taking just one nap at daycare (2 hours, so says the report) since he was a year, but has been pretty consistent with two 1.5 hr naps at home on weekends and vacations. Recently, we’ve had a couple weekends with crappy naps…either both short, or morning long and afternoon wind down in the crib for at least 45 minutes before falling asleep. We tried extending wake time to 3.5 hours and that worked for awhile. However, when he started to wake later in the morning (6-6:30 versus 5:30-5:45) afternoon naps were ending up too late in the day and neither nap was more than an hour. We figured consolidating into one nap would be better; one, longer nap = more quality sleep and he was already doing it everyday at daycare right? Except every time we’ve tried one nap at home, its been no longer than 1.5 hrs total, with an all time low of just a one hour nap today. Awake by 12:45. We did what we’ve always done when short naps strike: he stayed in his crib for at least an hour…but he never falls back to sleep. So we’re in between a rock and hard place; it’s too late in the day to try another nap later on, but the awake time before bed is way too long. We don’t have the option to transition lovingly and slowly into this one nap, so I’m not sure if what we are doing is right or if there is something that might help this become an actual nap consolidation instead of a nap elimination! Thanks in advance!!
You probably won’t like my suggestion but here goes anyway…
1) It’s time for 1 nap (ideally at the same time as at daycare) and…
2) His naps at home with you WILL almost always be shorter than those at daycare.
Daycare is not you, YOU are cooler than daycare. Thus he’s going to fight sleep to enjoy the pleasure of your company. Personally I wouldn’t force the “1 hour post nap” thing because he’s highly unlikely to fall back to sleep after a 1.5 hour nap, and you don’t routinely want kids hanging out awake in bed that long as it can result in negative associations. Take him out after 1.5 hours, enjoy the fact that he ADORES you, and accept what is. Good luck!
Hi Alexis,
Greetings from Asia! Your website has been a great resource for me, and I’M SO GLAD I stumbled upon it during one of my desperate googling sessions around short naps (which then led me to read your other useful posts..). You give practical advice and you’re hilarious! 🙂 Anyway, was wondering what your view on my current issue was….
Background:
Baby J is 12.5 weeks and has been taking crap naps which last between 20-30 mins for more than a a month. He is on a 3-hourly feeding schedule in the day time. His nights are pretty good, and 80-90% of the time, he can sleep from 7 pm till 6 am, with a dream feed at 11 pm. He wakes up like all babies do in the middle of the night, but is usually able to soothe himself back to sleep. We got him to this stage within a day by Ferberizing him at around 10-11 weeks, On rare occasion, he does a more distressed crying, and we do something, (e.g., change a very wet diaper) Last night he was inconsolable from 3 am – 6 am, which was very unusual, but we’re attributing that to discomfort of some sort or a nightmare? (Let’s see what happens tonight). Unfortunately, ferberizing didn’t work for his daytime naps (to be fair, we decided to call it quits after 7 days of no success for his daytime as his crying was getting longer and more intense as the days passed, and he was just becoming a very tired, constantly cranky baby).
Issues/ Questions
1) Short naps
a) Cot vs. car seat — should I be worried?
Currently, he is able to nap in our car seat stroller in the living room (while we’re there). His cot seems to be anathema to him during the day time. We have a bedtime routine which consist of a lullaby we play before putting him down, but often times (especially if he’s not drowsy enough), he will start to freak out when he hears the lullaby. Even if he doesn’t, once he’s in the cot, distress just spreads all over his face. We are currently leaving him to cry for 15 mins, go in to check him then leave, then go in at 15 mins if he’s still crying to end the nap and put him in the car seat in the living room instead to get his nap (which he usually does, with the help of a pacifier). He seems to like company (duh). At my mom’s yesterday during lunch, I sat him beside me at the dining table in the car seat, put the pacifier in his mouth, and he fell asleep amidst all the noise of people talking and toddlers screaming. He woke up a few times when someone had a particularly loud guffaw or my nephew screamed, but I just placed my hand on his chest and he went back to sleep (is this OK or am I creating a crutch??) He ended up sleeping for 1.5 hours which is a new record for a nap, and for his mid-morning nap, he did 50 minutes, which is also another record! Wondering if he’s managing to transition from 1 sleep cycle to the next better now that he’s 3 months, or that there was just more accidental “wake to sleep” disturbances happening when he’s out in the living room (and he promptly falls back to sleep). However, I’m worried that he has developed (i) a need to be with others during the day time (i.e., can never be left to sleep alone, which may not be such a big problem in the day time) and (ii) a phobia of his cot, and a dependency on his car seat, hence we will never be able to put him in his cot for daytime naps. Should I be worried?
b) Bedtime — consistently asleep by the time I put him to bed!
Ever since we ferberized him 2 weeks ago, he is extraordinarily sleepy at the boob when feeding. The last feed of the day at 6 pm is the most frustrating because he keeps falling asleep. He’ll suck strongly for 3-5 mins, and then he’s just constantly nodding off within seconds of being placed back on the boob. I want him to get at least 20 mins of feed time, so I constantly wake him to feed him little by little, which makes my bedtime feed almost an hour! I often try to wake him up after this so that he can go to bed awake, but unless I shake him vigorously, he’s almost always comatose, and I usually have no choice but to put him in his cot asleep. I did manage to stimulate him enough such that he woke up once, but think I overdid it as he smiled at me (like the “I want to play” smile) once I put him down in his cot, and after I left the room, proceeded to take 40-50 mins of protesting/ crying for him to soothe himself to bed… Putting him down asleep hasn’t really been a problem so far (I repeat, so far) given he is still able to sleep through the night on these occasions (I’ve seen him wake up, move his limbs around, but then put his fingers in his mouth and go back to sleep). However, I’m worried it will create problems if we continue like this. What is your opinion here? Do I really need to wake him up and make sure his eyes are open when I put him down for the night?
Congratulations and thank you if you made it this far! 🙂 Realise you’re super busy so BIG THANKS if you can reply to this call for help, but no worries if you can’t (was good to write it all down anyway! :))
Wow – Mei – I think you’ve won the “biggest comment” award 🙂 There’s also a lot of detail in there so it’s hard for me to boil it down into 1-2 pithy recommendations, but let me start with a few thoughts that might be helpful.
1) This isn’t helpful at all but it was my big thoughts – maybe the answer is to just relax. Seriously, he’s itty bitty! He’s still a newborn! Sometimes with newborns it’s easy to get really wrapped up into things and it’s HARD to just go with the flow. But it sounds like on all fronts he’s doing amazingly well and it could very well be that the best thing for you to do at this juncture is to just relax about how things are going.
2) IT’s INCREDIBLE that he’s STTN at this age. Fantastic! And while you want to be mindful of creating bad habits, I would also not let him cry that much. In theory sleep training is for older kids who have sleep association issues. He’s too young for that and it feels like there is (maybe?) frequent crying at night. Really at 3 months crying should be pretty minimal and I totally think you made the right call in throwing in the towel for naps.
3) You shouldn’t be nursing him for 1 hour at bedtime – this sounds like it’s frustrating for you AND is likely leading him to have a “nurse to sleep” issue (which isn’t an “issue” yet as he’s too young but yes – he DOES need to have eyes open when he falls asleep eventually). What about working on mixing it up so that the feed comes earlier and then AFTER you do something lovely and soothing – warm bath + massage? Because it sounds like the current plan is exhaustingly long AND essentially results in nursing to sleep no?
4) Few newborns nap well in the crib so I would accept it. Carseats are not ideal locations however as sometimes kids are too schlumped (chin on chest) but maybe an RnP or just in the stroller? If he can fall asleep on his own in the stroller then that’s a huge win at 3 months.!
Hope that helps,
Alexis
Thanks, Alexis for your reply, especially since my comment was super lengthy — you’re a rockstar!!! 🙂 I agree maybe I should try and chill more…Guess I’m panicking because I’m back to work in 3 weeks and want him to be as settled as possible (as is common in Asia, we have a full-time nanny at home who will be taking over most of the day-to-day, and I want to teach her the right things too).
The good news, we managed to succeed in getting him to sleep in his cot again for his naps, without crying, and I’ve been managing to put him in his cot awake for bedtime most of the time now, and have him go to bed on his own. The not so good news is, we re-introduced the pacifier and he seems to be more reliant on it now to fall asleep (I just read your article on losing the pacifier today). The even more not so good news is that for his nights, he seems to wake up crying 1-2 times a week at around 3-4 am, and we need to soothe him back to sleep (pacifier back in the mouth, put him in the rocker..) I suspect these wakings are linked to the dependency on the pacifier (i.e., when it has fallen out), but I’m not sure. Trying to see if there is a pattern and whether it’s linked to hours of nap time, amount drunk during the dream feed, etc. I haven’t had the courage to put the feed before his bath yet during bedtime, but may try it soon when I have the energy to handle a fussy bedtime baby!! Thank you again for being this awesome, altruistic baby sleepfairy!
Hi Alexis!
Thank you so much for this article. It has helped so much! I was wondering if you could please clarify something for me regarding nap time. My daughter is a week shy of 7 months and she goes to sleep 100% awake and on her own at night. We started CIO about a week and a half ago and she has done amazingly well with it. She often cries for only a minute or so, but sometimes not at all! However, naps are still a struggle. She takes 30 minute naps and it takes SO MUCH soothing to get her to fall asleep. I recently increased her awake time to 2.5 -3 hours and I think it has helped some with the duration of her naps. Of course, if I wait too long, then she is an overtired mess and I can just forget about a nap! I have also been trying the sleep interruption and I think that combination has helped (although I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.) However my main issue is actually getting her to go down for her nap.
So here is my question: Is CIO always a no-no for nap time? I don’t mean the post-wakeup CIO, but what about for putting her to sleep? To be honest, I tried letting her cry several times but I gave up after 15 minutes. I’ve thought a lot about the pre-nap ritual because I know it’s supposed to mimic our bedtime routine, but I feel like I don’t have a good one. Our bedtime routine is bottle/nurse (I do both at bedtime) in her rocker, then poop (I know it sounds funny but it happens every night after she eats!), bath, PJs, white noise, cuddle for a minute, then bed. So for nap time, I’ve been trying this: nurse in rocker (if she’s hungry. If not, then short book in her rocker.), then change diaper, white noise, cuddle/rock endlessly while she squirms, wiggles and whines until she falls asleep! This isn’t working… thoughts?
Hey Karla,
I would never say that CIO is a no-no for nap. It is a bit of a tricky wicket however. I would also say your nap routine doesn’t have to mimic your bedtime routine unless you want it too.
I might start with the diaper change at nap because that’s a pretty stimulating activity. Diaper change, book, nurse, 2-4 books (they’re short!). I’m not sure how long you’re rocking/squirming but am assuming the answer is “a small eternity.”
Part of the issue may be that she’s fighting sleep because she’s old enough to have caught wise to the fact that you’re sneaking out (and sneaking her into the crib) as soon as she falls asleep. CIO is definitely an option, although naps can be rocky and take ages (OK weeks). One option you might want to start with would be to try to have her fall asleep IN the crib WITH you present. What about putting her down in the crib and rubbing her belly or patting her back like a tom tom (whatever feels natural). So you’re still present and soothing but try for 5 days to have her FALL asleep in the crib. IT’s OK if it takes an eternity – you’re used to it right? If you can make that happen then you gradually do LESS of whatever if is you’re doing. She may sqwak a bit as you back off on your patting/rubbing/singing/etc but it’s generally a good plan.
If however that just feels like a frustrating effort in futility then nap CIO might be the answer. Good luck!
Dear Alexis, my sweet Ana Sofia is 16 months old, and we are experiencing difficults at naptime and bedtme.
I think they started about 2 months ago, when she had a flu and the only way she can get some sleep was on me and rocking her to sleep. Then she got another flu and then we had a travel and we needed to sleep with her in the same bed.
Prior to that we had some sleeping problems but at least she used to sleep trough the night since 6 months almost every night.
Nowadays she is on 1 nap, in normal days her schedule is like this wake up at 7, nap from 12 to 2 and bedtime at 7.
She used to fall asleep with minimal assitance (I hold her and rock her while I sing her bedtime song and put her down very drowsy and she falled asleep within 15 minutes)
Latelly she wakes from 6 to 7, then falls asleep 5 hours latter, she does not sleep without assistance, if i “dare” to just lie her down she will not sleep. Then, she wakes crying and very mad after 30 or 45 minutes, and some days she does not calm easily, then I put her for bedtime 5 or 6 hours after she woke from nap, depending on the day 6 pm or 7 pm, and every night she wakes crying after 1 hour!!, I need to put her down because she is standing and I am afraid that if she falls asleep she will fall down and hit herself.
She wakes up every night from 3 months or more… some days at 1:30, some others at 2, some others at 4…
I´ve applied check and console technic but it hadn´t work, and my heart breaks to hear her crying loudly every time, she gets sweaty and very agitated… I know that she might be just spoiled.
What can I do? I think I need to teach her how to fall asleep independently, but since she is older now, the way I used when she was younger is not working now.
Also another thing… can this nap thing maybe related to 18 ish nap transition?
Thanks
Gaby
Hey Gaby,
Well the good news is that she’s not spoiled, but she’s forgotten how to fall asleep without you. This OFTEN happens when people take trips. The bad news is that this isn’t an 18 month transition issue – she’s become habituated to you being really involved when she falls asleep and this is leading to nap battles, bedtime struggles, short naps, and night waking.
If it were me, I would start by making a change at bedtime. She’s young but it won’t hurt to talk to her about it. Make sure she has a rock solid bedtime routine (that isn’t just you rocking and singing) and ideally lock in bedtime so it’s happening the same time EVERY day (no more floating based on how went nap). Probably this is closer to 7 as 6 PM is a tough early for a toddler.
If sleep training is fully off limits (is it?) you could work on things gradually. Start by just lying with her (sure she’ll complain, that’s her choice) – don’t engage but be present until she falls asleep. This will take time – that’s OK. Then each night move slightly farther away. So you go from lying near her to sitting near her to the chair moving farther and farther away. Until eventually you’re not in the room when she falls asleep.
Yes this will require some commitment and take time. But it’s an option. So is CIO (no checking – honestly it’s hurting more than helping at this point). Less frustrating and far more rapid results (~3 days). So that’s also a possibility.
Once nights are significantly improved, you can choose how to tackle naps. And you’ll have a lot more energy/enthusiasm to do so when nights aren’t as messy.
Whatever you choose, tally ho and good luck!
Thanks Alexis for your detailed answer. I just have a question. How do I proceed if she wakes in the middle of the night? To be honest I go and check her and help her lie down, sometimes she falls and a stay asleep and many other she stays awake and or cryin until I hold her…some nights I am just so tired that after a few attempts I take her to my bed and she sleeps like an angel. The same minute she touches my bed is asleep….
I am committed to improve this whole situation. thanks for your suggestions. I will consideer CIO.
Thanos and a warm hug
Gaby
If you stop holding her and hanging around when she falls asleep AT bedtime, she shouldn’t NEED you to do this at 1 AM or what have you. It all starts AT bedtime and changing what happens there is critical.
If she DOES continue to wake after you’ve changed bedtime I’m going to strongly encourage you to NOT to help her lie down. If you must visit, go for 2 minutes max. She’s falling asleep the second she hits your bed because you are her sleep association. The only way to help her form new/better association is to make YOU unavailable. Consistently unavailable.
This isn’t as horrible as you think. Commit to 3 nights, come back, and tell me if I’m wrong 😉
yes, you were right!!
Thank you very much. I thought it would be harder than it actually was. It took us 3 or 4 nights of some crying, no more than 30 minutes.
After our bedtime routine, I keep her company for a short while, and then leave the room, some nights she cryies and I let her cry for increasing periods of time from 10, 15, 20 min and do a rapid visit. She is standing and crying, so I confort her with my voice and a quick pat in her back and whisper “lie down”, she lies down immediately and goes to sleep.
It is 4 nights since she does not wake up in the middle of the night. It means the world to me, since during the day she has a lot of energy and is taking short naps some days from 20 mins to 1.30 hours. But at the end what I care more is that she (and I) sleep at night.
Thank you Alexis !!!
hello there! I’ve tried my best to hang in there but, I NEED HELP!!!
My second born is now 15 months. With the exception of 4 really long naps (2hrs) in his lifetime, he doesn’t ever take a nap longer than 40 minutes. From day 1, he was awful at napping. He’s always been an early riser (we are now at 4:30-5am) and so we’ve always put him to bed early as well. (think 6:30pm). I thought since he was falling asleep alone and didn’t have sleep aids that I was just really unlucky and would have to wait for him to grow out of it. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand here we are. Crap naps have never stretched into long naps. Now, his nights just get shorter and shorter. He’s down to about 9 hours at night and two 40min naps. Despite what the ped. says, I know that’s absolutely not enough. I know that crappy naps make really crappy nights and so the cycle continues. You know for sure, by this time, I have tried all the combinations of tweeking the schedule to come up with the magic and nothing seems to work. I have read and reread your old post on short naps and was crying happy tears to see you update it. We immediately tried interrupting the bad sleep cycle at naps and at night but for days now, have only managed to wake him up fully instead of just disrupt the sleep cycle. I’m. so. tired. and he’s so tired, too. I know you can’t do miracles but, any help to offer??
*forgot to add… he’s always slept in his crib with white noise and a lovie and with the exception of the the first 2 months, I haven’t been able to get him to sleep any other place. ever. I’ve had several mamas tell me to just cut down to one nap but with inconsistent, inturrupted shorter nights, is this even a possibility?
Yuck, that doesn’t sound good. And like you I’m not inclined to believe that this is just where he’s at. Technically 6:30 – 5 is 10.5 hours which is a tad low but not concerningly so. If 5:30 is the norm I would say “OK that’s that.” If 4 AM is the norm that’s more an issue.
Because 10.5 hours + 1.5 hours of day sleep isn’t terrible. It’s really not!
You may want things shifted AND I do sort of wonder about the 1 nap thing. 1 – 1.5 hour nap is likely better than 2 – 45 min naps. So I do sort of agree that fundamentally this may be a scheduling thing. What about trying for 1 nap a day for 5 days to see what develops? What about inching bedtime back to ~7 PM for 5 days to see what develops?
How would you feel about a 7 PM bedtime and fully ignoring him until 5:30 AM for 5 days? It may be helpful to give him a visual sleep cue – light a night light on a timer that doesn’t turn off until 5:30 AM (you don’t go get him until it does)? Thoughts?
Thanks for the reply!
my concern is that even though we put him down at 6:30, he’s often awake till 7-7:30 depending on how tight his gears are. (even with a 20 minute wind-down routine) And the wake-ups are now around 4:30 pretty consistently. For about two weeks he’s also been waking sometime in between 1am -3am and is awake for at least 30 min. So most nights, it’s not even a solid 9 hours of sleep. We absolutely ignore him till at least 5:30 because some mornings (2/7) he will go back to sleep for another 40 min nap.
And i would LOOOOVE one nap but here’s my hang up… he seems to fall apart after about 3.5 hours of awake time in the morning, especially on the early mornings, so sometimes that first stupid nap is at 8. ??? I know that sounds absolutely crazy but when i make him wait till 9 or even 10, i still get the faithful 40 minutes.
I will definitely try a week of 7pm bed and continue to ignore him till 5:30am. I’m gonna wait to hear back from you about when to try for the one nap… When would be the magic hour to aim for in the morning? especially if he’s awake at 4-4:30? Do i wait to try this until he can go a solid… 9? 10 hours at night?
My almost-7-month-old’s 30 min naps make me want to gouge my eyes out! He’s been going to sleep totally independently, in his crib, since 4.5 months. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a gold star on everything in your list. What’s especially frustrating is that he CAN take long naps! He’s done it! It just isn’t anything consistent at all. For example, one day his morning nap is 2 hours and the next several days it is 30 mins. What gives?
The only thing I can think is that he’s been overtired from inconsistent nighttime sleep. He recently had some regressions there because we got lax. But we’ve doubled-down on sleep training and he’s sleeping in longer chunks. He pretty much STTN (11.5 hours) last night, with the exception of a brief (5 min) wakeup to fuss in the early AM.
I totally think this could be due to crap night sleep. HOPEFULLY you’ll see things improve now that you’ve doubled down on the night stuff. Good luck!
Out of desperation, I have found your website and boy am I hoping it will help me out!!!
I have an equally challenging and compounded problem, along with short naps, I have not one, but 9-month-old TWINS who both wake after their sleep cycle is over leaving this mommy feeling stressed and worn out.
I have read ALL the books written probably on twins and they all stress the importance of getting your twins on the same schedule as early as possible; well, due to one twins with a major reflux (projectile vomiting type) early one, we were unable to put them on a tight schedule.
Fast forward to when the reflux problem ended at the age of five months and I tried to do some some training and get a handle on our daily routine to put their schedules back on track. This was somewhat successful,they now eat at the same time and are put down for naps and beds at the same time though do not always falls asleep or wake up at same time.
They definitely go 11 to 12 hours at night without being fed and baby A will sleep through most nights-HALLELUJAH,only occasionally waking, but will usually get herself back to sleep. Baby B is the problem here, she goes to sleep on her own (no nursing, bottle or rocking) at night, but will awake after 45 minutes or so (I am learning sleep cycle is over…). She then wakes up HYSTERICAL and cannot get back to sleep on her own. We have tried letting her CIO, but this seems to backfire as she gets so upset that she vomits and is too distraught to sleep, and she wakes her sister in the process. I am not gonna lie, I find it very difficult to let her CIO; I am weak and just don’t like this method. We never give her a bottle or nurse, we do sometimes rock her, giver her a pacifier and of course, a small comfort item to try to let he self soothe. After this episode and once asleep, she does sleep about 10 hours straight.
Yes, that issue needs dealing with, but for me the WORST problem is both babies only napping for anywhere from 20-50 minutes max. I try to not let them go more than 3 hours without sleep, but sometimes they don’t seem tired and get very angry if I try to put them down too soon. Other times, they go right down only with a pacifier and a soft comfort object. We never put them down for nap after a bottle, nursing nor do we rock. The problem is the length of time obviously is not conducive to me getting anything done and more importantly with them only taking 2 naps per day, they are sleep deprived. Again, one will wake up, cry and talk loudly waking the other one up…double nap trouble.
I am new to this site so maybe you’ve answered some of the questions, but I would love some guidance on how to get started.
Thank you and thanks for this website.
We’ll I’ve got 2 thoughts that might be helpful?
1) When kiddos wake after 45 minutes SCREAMING it’s sometimes a signal that bedtime for baby B is a touch too early. So I might experiment with that a little bit. Or alternatively…
2) The root of ALL your problems (nap and 45 minute screaming bedtime stuff) could be the pacifier. See it sounds like they’re not really going to sleep on their own, they’re going to sleep with a pacifier (two very different things there). Paci pops out and WOOP! Short naps or 45 minutes post-bedtime screaming. Now for a staunchly anti-CIO Mom getting rid of the pacifier might be tricky, but I strongly suspect that you’ll be locked into short-nap-land until you do 🙁
Hey Alexis, or anyone who may know,
For the “bore to sleep” technique, do I time the next nap from baby’s wake time, or from when the hour is up? I was doing it from when he woke, but so far no results, which I’m assuming is due to my complete lack of consistency and fear of poop blowouts…?
Much thanks!
Well ideally “bore to sleep” is best for kiddos who are already napping on a schedule-ish BUT if not I would go from actual wake time.
And why so scared about poop blowouts? They’re relatively uncommon no?
Hi there, I’m new to this site but I have heard a lot of good things about this site. I’m having a big napping problem with my 4.5 month old son, we’ve sleep
trained him at night when he was 3 months old and I would say he’s now a pretty good sleeper at night, I would put him down awake and he will falls asleep on his own and he could sleep up to 8-9 hours straight at night. But when it comes to his naps, he’s terriable, he would only sleeps on my chest or in my arms and also needs to be rocked for his every single nap (that’s
how he’s been napping for the past 4.5 months), he would start screaming if I put him down in his crib for his naps and he would only sleep there for maybe 15-30
mins and he will tired again after an hour so I know he needs a longer nap than just 30 mins. We decided to nap train him when he turned 4 months, but he went crazy if when put him down awake in his crib and it’s not going anywhere.
My question is : is 4 months a very bad timing to nap train him since they’re going through some kind of development? Should I wait until he’s 5.5 months to starting training him again? Or am I doing anything wrong in terms of nap training? And why is he so different between day and night if we put him down in his crib ?
I really can’t rock him or hold him for his very single nap since he’s getting bigger and bigger each day. Your professional advice will be appreciated.
Alexis, you’ve already helped me a ton with this site, your newsletter and feed. However, I have yet another question, so like the beggar I am, I come to you again…
My 13.5 week old is just an inconsistent napper, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to approach this now and in the next few months. She does GREAT at night – we have a routine, she’s nursed close to time for bed, but we do book and prayers after nursing to seperate it….and she goes down in her crib awake but usually drowsy – with a paci and white noise – and is asleep within 10 min. Goes down around 8ish and up around 4-5ish for a feed, occasionally going even longer. So I feel like we’ve succeeded there.
Naps, however, are a different story. This baby LOVES to suck. She would prefer to stay on me, but she makes do with the paci. I’ve tried putting her down without it, but she just cannot get settled. And because she’s not getting into a super deep sleep at naptime, any time that damn paci comes out of her mouth she wakes up and frantically roots and doesn’t go back to sleep without it. I swear sometimes I want to tape it on her (I would never do this, but one can fantasize). I should say all of this occurs in her crib – where she’s occasionally taken an hour long nap (I thought I found magic beans with the white noise, but alas it didn’t last)u, but usually it’s 15-25 min every single time (3-5 times a day)
HOWEVER, if she is sleeping on the bed next to me (as she is now) or being held, she will sleep for HOURS. It’s 5:12 now, she’s still asleep and has been since 2:15. And the stupid paci has somehow stayed in her mouth except for one re-insertion early on.
So how do you determine when her sucking needs have subsided and we need to to kick the paci? Im concerned it’s what is making naps hard for her. And I can’t stay on the bed with her like this, but I’m afraid putting her in the swing will mean one more thing to break. I’m just not sure what to do. We stopped swaddling at 6 weeks and she’s done great at night without it.
Any help appreciated!!!
Hi Alexis,
My 6-month-old baby is a short napper: 30 minutes, to the minute. The past week we’ve been doing the Ferber method for both nighttime and naps. The night sleep training is working very well. He went from waking up every 30 minutes or worse, to so far only waking once.
His naps are a disaster. When I used to reliably get 30 minutes in the crib, now I put him down drowsy but awake (after feeding him) and he then cries for 30 to 40 minutes (with checks). We then give up and wait until his next naptime. He’s not hungry and we use a white noise machine. Yesterday there were two failed naps using this method and one successful 45 minute one in the stroller.
I’m not sure what to do. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks, Colleen
Also: I try to get him down for 3 naps. I keep him up between 2 to 2.5 hours. I’ve also tried shortening and lengthening the time in between naps. Nothing has worked.
We have been sleep training our 6 month old and for the most part it has been going pretty good expect for the afternoon nap which is always only 35 minutes. I feel like we have a schedule issue but don’t know how to change it. We hired a sleep consultant right from the start and her plan was nap # 1 start between 8:30-9:00; nap # 2 start between 12:30-1:00 and nap 3 is short and about 2 hours after wake from nap 2 and bedtime 3-3.5 hours after wake from nap #2 which can result in a very early bedtime, we usually put him down between 5:30-6. She suggested nap 3 be taken on the go and if it doesn’t happen don’t worry just move to early bedtime. This seemed to all work well in the beginning but we are almost 3 weeks in and it’s just not working well anymore. He is going to sleep on his own at naps and bedtime. Night time we’ve chosen to feed so we feed 2 x a night sometimes he wakes and sometimes we beat him to it with Dream feeds to maximize our sleep and avoid an early morning waking. His first nap lasts 1-1.5 hours and the second has been 35 for the last week and then his 3rd is about 25 and then he was fighting bedtime so I cut out the third and he’s gone to sleep better at bedtime with or without the 3rd nap he seems very tired by 5:30. I’d like to lengthen the second nap and push bedtime a bit later, I’m not sure if he needs the 3rd one or not. I’m going to try your suggestion for rousing a couple minutes before the 35 min wake up but I’m not sure if I would be better off making some schedule changes?
Alexis, your site has been such a help to me. We have spent the last week establishing a bedtime routine and sleep training our 13-month-old daughter. The first three nights, she cried 15, 30, and 45 minutes, respectively. I worried she was only going to get worse! But we persisted, and the past two nights, she has only whined as I walked out of the room — and then NOTHING. AND, she is nearly sleeping through the night now (waking once, at most, for a diaper change), when one month ago, she was waking 4-6 times. Amazing!
I see now, from experience, that a bedtime routine was *essential* to her going to sleep on her own. Before this past week, she never had one — some nights she had a bath, others not; before she was weaned, she would nurse, but would be rocked to sleep; some nights I read a book, others not; some nights I sang a song or two, others not.
Now that we are having success at bedtime, and she almost sleeping through the night, I’m thinking about naps. I’ve been rocking her to sleep for both naps because I wanted her to be well-rested for crying-it-out at bedtime (that’s what you said, isn’t it?). When is a good time to start sleep training at nap time? I’m leaning towards getting 2-4 solid weeks of nighttime sleep under our belts before having a go at it, but I’d love to hear your opinion!
I searched through your site (I think I’ve read every article!), but I didn’t find anything about when to sleep train for naps. 🙂 If there is an article, I’d gladly read it, if someone could link me to it, or give me the title!
Oh, I don’t know if it helps, but she sleeps about 2 hours in the morning, 1 hour in the afternoon (occasionally a longer nap in the afternoon). She goes down for naps at pretty consistent times and is very easy to rock to sleep (less than 15 minutes). She sleeps at night from 8 to 6:30.
Hi, Alexis 🙂 First of all, THANK YOU! You’re a lifesaver! My 10 months old forgot how to sooth himself to sleep so I was having a really tough time putting him to bed without nursing him to sleep. He used to wake up during the night several times so as you can imagine we were very unhappy 🙁
But not anymore, thanks to you 😉 I started sleep training 6 days ago and the first night he cried for 1 hour, woke up twice after midnight (nursed him once and second time ignored him and he fell asleep on his own), slept until 7:30 am; second night cried less, slept through the night, no feedings, briefly woke up – back to sleep on his own, and now he falls asleep at bedtime almost no crying (5 min or less), and sleeps like a champion until 7-8 am. I still struggle with naps but I hope I’ll figure it out soon. I just wanted to say THANK YOU and let you know it’s working for us wonderfully.
Hi! I just discovered your site and love it. I wish I’d known about it when my toddler was a baby. Speaking of the toddler, my dilemma has to do with balancing her and my newbie, who just turned 3 months. I’m trying to get consistent naps down, but we’re out in the mornings 5-7 days a week for classes, play dates, etc. My 2 year old doesn’t sleep well if I don’t keep her active in the mornings, but I’m worried my newbie won’t ever sleep well if I don’t have her in the crib for all of her naps. Afternoons are home. My toddler sleeps from 1-4 and I hope the infant will in due time. What do you recommend? Is there any way to balance the two?
Hi Alexis,
I have been desperately searching your site for solutions to a new sleep issue that has arisen in my 23 month old son. Here’s some background info: he’s always been an okay sleeper. He goes down at around 8:30 and gets up between 7 and 8. He has always taken a 2-3 hour nap…except lately. Kind of. See, he’s gotten into this new thing where he won’t nap unless he’s on top of me. It’s beyond frustrating, and quite honestly, I’m not sure how it started. I still nurse him, so I nurse him for his nap and he falls asleep very easily. Sometimes, I fall asleep, too, but not very often. It has always been very easy to transfer him from me to his crib, but now he wakes up instantly and screams when I put him in his crib. It has been suggested that he might be ready for a toddler bed, but I disagree as he goes down easily at night and sleeps in his crib just fine then (although he does wake up at least once, sometimes twice at night, and sometimes he sleeps the entire night through, but always he goes back into his crib easily and falls back asleep). I don’t want to create a whole new set of issues by transferring him to a toddler bed before he’s ready. Then, of course, I go to the old CIO plan. Well, he’ll CIO alright…for over an hour. I go in when he starts hyperventilating. Some have suggested that maybe he doesn’t need a nap anymore, but again I disagree. The minute I go in there to pick him up, he immediately falls asleep on me and will soundly sleep on me for up to 2 hours. Kid still needs his nap. I’m at my wit’s end and just have no idea what to do anymore. I need my “me” time, and he needs his nap. Any suggestions would be so highly appreciated!! Thank you so much, and thank you for being so passionate about sleep!!
Hi Alexis, I love reading your blog! It has lots of great advice, and our little one is a preeettttyyyy good sleeper, but I feel like we have so many little issues, I don’t even know where to start. He’s 5 1/2 months old and sleeps about 10:00-8:30 with two feeds at night, sometime between 3 and 5am and always at 7am. I’m realizing now we need to get rid of the first feed at the very least. And would love to get him on a bit earlier of a schedule, or longer total nighttime sleep. He has a good afternoon nap, usually 1.5-3 hrs, but really short nap in the morning, and almost always when we’re doing errands or walking the dogs, and nap at in the evening is always short (20 mins), but I always have to rock him to sleep and it sometimes doesn’t happen until 8:30pm. If I’m gone, he just cries and cries when he’s with dad. He goes to sleep sort of on own – I put him down in crib awake, but he likes to snuggle into a pillow, so I put his nursing pillow around his head and then take it out once he’s asleep (I realize this is also another little problem). Is it best to get nighttime worked out and then try to fix naps, particlarly the evening one? At 5 1/2 months, is it a bad idea to start with the swing for evening naps when he already goes down for his afternoon nap easily on his own?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I actually don’t have a question…
I just wanted to say that my baby is just turning 6 months old and I’ve been reading your advice since she was a newborn. There was so much conflicting advice out there on the internet, not to mention grandparents giving helpful advice such as “don’t worry, babies sleep when they’re tired” and “hah! We didn’t have ‘sleep specialists’ or the internet when you guys were kids and you survived!”
Well, my daughter wakes up at 7:30, happily goes into her crib at 9am, sleeps for two hours, goes down again at 1pm, sleeps for two hours, then has a 45 minute nap and is asleep for the night at 7:30pm.
Everyone is shocked that she’s “such a good baby”. No. We just listened and now we’re reaping the rewards. Thanks so much for all your advice.
Hey Morgan,
Thanks so much for swinging back around to share your generous compliments 🙂 The whole “We did X and you survived” thing is a favorite with my Dad too. Honestly my entire childhood was an example of “just because you can live through something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea” 😉
So glad to hear that you’re reaping the rewards of all your hard work and diligence with your “good baby”!
Cheers,
Alexis
Hi Alexis!
I’m so worried about my little girl. She was never a good napper. I would nurse her to sleep at night and she’d wake up every 2 hours to feed through the night.
Recently I’ve started putting her down drowsy but awake at night. She fusses a bit and goes to sleep.
The problem is… she used to nurse to sleep for her morning naps. Ever since she started sleeping at night on her own, she’s stopped nursing to nap during the day! Now she doesn’t know how to sleep during the day. She’s often cranky and tired but she fights sleep. I end up rocking her for half an hour and sometimes she naps…and wakes up after 45 min.
I’m so worried that she’s not getting enough sleep. What can I do to help her?
Well I can’t swear that isn’t what is happening but I highly doubt she forgot how to nurse to sleep. A more likely scenario is either:
a) Now that she’s sleeping better at night she can stay awake longer between naps during the day so the issue is that you’re trying too soon or…
b) She’s gotten wise to your “nurse to sleep” tactics and now is hypervigilant – a la – fighting sleep in order to stay with you.
Not sure if age but if she’s older than 6 months, one or both of those could be the case. I would consider some schedule tweaks, more soothing (depending on age) or maybe taking the plunge to put her down awake at naptime and give her some space to work things out.
Thank you so much for replying! It means so much to us. She’s 7 months old today and used to go down for naps at 9.30 ish, 1.30 ish and sometimes a nap at 4.30 ish. Whenever I saw her sleepy cues, I’d immediately nurse her and she’d drop off to sleep.
Ever since the night training, she finds it difficult to nurse to sleep during the day. 🙁
I tried once to get her to sleep on her own during the day but she got so worked up I couldn’t take it. I try rocking her and bouncing her. It eventually works sometimes but it takes at least 30 min each time and it’s so tiring! Both mama and baby end up getting so frustrated.
I wish there was an easier way. All the articles on sleep deprivation really get me thinking too much.
Thank you so much for your time!!!!
Hello,
My six week old has been bad the past week and a half when it comes to naps. He will only sleep if I have nursed him and then hold him. He will stay awake for at least five hours at a time. For example last night we went to bed at 10:00 (cosleeping) he kept waking up until 12:00 then he woke up at 4:00 for a feeding. Again and 6:30 and then woke up at 8:00. I got him changed his diaper and then fed him. He feel asleep in his swing for about an hour and then until 5:00pm took two 20 minute naps. I nursed him and he feel asleep and was able to put him in my bed for about 50 mins. He woke up and now has been up. He cries in his swing and car seat most of the time. When I swaddle him he will fight to get his arms out. He will take the pacifer sometimes but it will never put him to sleep. I use a white noise machine and make sure the room is dark and try to lay him down as soon as he starts yawning. I’m frustrated because I don’t know what else to do… And my husband says he thinks I need to let him cry more often. Can you help please??
Hi Alexis,
Thanks so much for all of your wonderful advice! My almost 7 month old daughter is now sleeping through the night nearly every night (about 11.5 hrs) but her naps are pretty consistently only 30-40 minutes long and have been this way for at least a month now. For the past few days, I’ve been trying your suggestion to disrupt her sleep cycle around the 25 minute mark. However, I haven’t been succeeding. She often just wakes up and wants to stay up. Do you have any further tips on how to do this? I think I’m not quite sure how to jostle her in a way that allows her to stay asleep…
Thanks!
First off your website is where my pediatrician sent me when I went to her for help with my 8 month old daughter’s short naps… so you must know your stuff! This article was great however we are still striking out on naps. My daughter USED to be a great napper in her swing (would go to sleep on her own in the swing for around 1.5-2 hours for morning nap, and then two other 45 minute naps in the swing in the afternoon) But around 6 months, she started learning to crawl and she was no longer content being strapped in her swing so we had to give it up. Ever since then it’s been a daily battle at home. She will nap for 1.5-2 hours at her 1/2 day daycare, but at home we are lucky to get 45 minutes. We have tried re-creating all the environmental settings from daycare, but nothing helps. At home, she falls asleep on her own in her crib (usually takes around 10 minutes of fussing/cruising around her crib) but somewhere in the 25-40 minute range she wakes up and will not go back to sleep on her own… wakes up crying hysterically. She has never taken a paci, but we have gotten her fairly attached to a lovey, which she has 3 of in the crib. We have white noise going and close the blinds so it’s fairly dark. We have no idea what to do to help her stay asleep… We’ve tried the disrupting her sleep cycle but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Although she’s fairly happy all the time we can tell a huge difference when she does get a longer nap. Longer nap?? Yes, we can get a longer nap if we drive her around for an hour+ or if her grandmother is watching her she will push her in her outside swing for 2 hours (and she stays asleep the ENTIRE time… spoiled by grandma!) or if I take a long walk in the stroller… so basically back to having her in motion.
We are feeling lost and frustrated and want sleep for our girl! We have gotten used to it and expect to never have free time again (ha!) but we really just want her to sleep for her own good. We are attributing some of this to development (early to sit on her own, crawl, pull up, etc.) and sickness (a few colds, ear infections, etc.) and transitions (mom returning to work)… but we’ve been fighting naps for almost 2 months now and we’re wearing thin.
Night time sleep is okay… she goes down on her own but is up 1-3 times each night, usually depending on what’s currently going on with teeth, sickness, and if I worked a full day or not (if I worked a full day she is almost always up more at night just wanting mom… breaks my heart honestly) On a good night she will go down around 7:30pm wake up around 2am and 5am and then up for the day around 6:30-7. On a bad night we add in an 11pm wake up. Not ideal, but we are managing.
Some back story… She slept through the night most nights from 6 weeks until around 3 months. She was swaddled in her crib… 7pm -5am and then down again until 7 or even 8am. At her 3 month growth spurt she picked up one 4am feeding again every night. Then it all totally fell apart around 5 months when we had to ditch the swaddle because she was rolling over in it. We were up 5 or 6 times per night for close to 2 months.
We really don’t know what to do… any help or advice at all would be so appreciated!
Hi Rebecca,
Your story is all too familiar! Did you find any solutions? Would love to hear if something worked to get your daughter sleeping through the night again and taking longer naps?
Amanda
Hi Amanda – We are now at 9.5 months and most days we get two good naps in and are mostly sleeping through the night… something I wasn’t sure I would ever say! We tried the interrupted sleep cycle thing at the 25 minute mark, but it didn’t really do the trick. What has worked has been implementing the 2-3-4 rule. 2 hours after she wakes up she is down for nap #1. 3 hours after she wakes up from nap #1 she is down for nap #2. And 4 hours after she wakes up from nap #2 she goes to bed – though this is one that has the most flexibility we have found. It took a good week of being really strict about this, but it has really helped. Some days she will still wake up crying from a nap at the 30 minute mark, but usually she will put herself back to sleep after about 10 minutes of crying. We have only had a few 2 hour naps here and there… mostly they are an hour or maybe hour and a half, but the difference is she wakes up HAPPY. For us, the length doesn’t matter quite as much as how she wakes up. On days when she might do one shorter nap (45 minutes) we still allow her a cat nap in the stroller around 5pm… it helps us get to a reasonable bedtime.
As for nighttime sleep it’s still a little bit rocky, but for instance last night she slept from 7:30-4:30 and then back down after nursing until 7:45! She cried for about 5 minutes at 11pm but we let her work it out and she did. Honestly, for us, I think food has been a big thing on this one… I think she was legitimately hungry and needing to nurse through the night. I know what the dr’s and all the books say about them not needing to nurse at night past 6 months, but all kids are different. We were having some pretty serious constipation issues from the time we introduced solids, but it has resolved itself and now she poops daily and is eating SO much more. So I think there was a compounding issue of her being constipated and not being able to eat enough during the day (who wants to eat when you haven’t pooped in 6 days!?) so she needed those night nursing sessions to get her through. She’s not a huge baby – in the 40th percentile for weight, which is great but we’re not talking in the 70th or 80th percentile here – so I just think it was what it was. I really try to fill her up from around 4pm on (babysitter gives a good 4pm snack after nap plus I nurse her as soon as I’m home from work and then dinner and then one more nursing session before bed) and so far it is really helping. Fingers crossed it continues! We are beach bound this week so I am terrified of ruining everything by traveling, but we can’t live our entire life in the confines of our house to get her to sleep… though it might be worth it. 😉
Good luck! I hope something I said resonates with you. Try the 2-3-4 schedule… I really think there is something to it! Let me know if you have more questions.
rebecca
Thanks Rebecca! This is great information. I’ve been wondering about food as well. We introduced food around 5.5 months but haven’t been giving it consistently and my work schedule has been so inconsistent that I’ve windered if it has been messing with my supply because she genuinely seems hungry in the middle of the night. She has been waking up a lot screaming within the first two hours of bedtime, seemingly from gas, but it doesn’t happen during the day or after the middle of the night feedings when I am a bit engorged. Her wake up times are so inconsistent too – one night a 12:30 and 2:30 wake up another night just one at 3:30. The times I have let her work through it have ended up with her choking on sobs so I couldn’t keep up with the CIO method. we go to the dr next week and eager to see if she has had consistent growth. She’s also been pretty slobbery so wondering if we are gonna see the next set of teeth within a couple months. Good luck with the vacation. We too are traveling this month and I figure after our return I will really tackle the sleep issue. I like the 2-3-4 method and have found her first nap of the day has still been coming in around that 2-hour mark. Thanks again for all the info!
Hi there. The initial CIO method for night time sleep has worked wonders for my almost 11 month old (our first). She still won’t go down awake in her crib for naps and lately I’ve been trying to get her asleep in my arms, then try to get her in the crib after abt 15 mins. But now by the time I get to her crib (asleep in my arms)she wakes up and is miserable. Do you think I should start putting her down awake for her naps and let her CIO? I’m afraid that if I do this for her naps it will cost me her sleep at night. Help!!!
Your website is SO AMAZING. I have found so much here to be helpful and works very well with the bits and pieces I took away from baby sleep books before (Babywise etc). I found it through Pinterest when my second baby was a couple of weeks old and have been using the sleep amount guidelines for both her and my now 16 month old son who I struggled with but by about 11 months old he became the perfect sleeper and has been pretty much ever since (except for a random illness or two and some teeth but even then I can’t complain because he only just dropped to one nap and it’s been anywhere from 1 1/2-3 hours long and he will go to sleep in his pack n play ANYWHERE providing he has his lovey which is fine with me and slept on vacation last weekend like a champ which is far removed from when he was 6-8 months old). Now baby girl is 3 1/2 months and fighting a cold big brother shared and I’m going cray cray with no sleep because she’s awake every 1 1/2 hours through the night and napping 30-45 min during the day. I feel like we’ve almost got through this because she’s not nearly as congested upon waking and she is taking a random 1 1/2-2 hour nap during the day but still night is sucking the life out of me. Prior to the cold she was sleeping 5-7 hours at her first night stretch and then 3 hours each sleep after that between about 9-10 until 8-9 and taking beautiful 1 1/2 hr naps during the day (big brother was constantly stuck with short crap naps from 4-7 months and off and on until about 10 months). Knowing she was doing this before she was sick means she should go back to this after she is fully recovered correct? Honestly where I struggle the most is trying to decide what their happy place is on awake time between naps. I will think I’ve hit it because she goes to sleep perfectly on her own in her bed after say 1 1/2 hours awake (okay with a paci but my understanding is this is acceptable under 6 months old from your opinions) but then she wakes up at 35 minutes or whatever and is tired and fussy at 1 hour the next time. Is there a magical trick to deciphering their needed wake time? Because I could never get past those crap naps with her brother and I would love to figure it out this time.
~1.5 might be a touch long (earlier naps tend to come with shorter awake times that stretches as the day progresses) but is likely in the ballpark. I’m thinking two things:
1) she’s at the right age for a sleep regression which is often huge
2) naps often need a bunch of soothing to happen well. You mention the paci but what about swaddling, white noise, or possibly a swing?
Especially as it sounds like she accrued a pretty significant sleep debt during her illness you could have lingering cold stuff, sleep regression, AND sleep debt backing up on you. The solution is to get her to sleep by any means (well within reason) necessary – car naps, stroller naps, swing. Help her catch up on sleep to improve sleep and break out of the cycle of sleeplessness.
Good luck!
Oh yes! I forgot to mention my white noise machine which I’ve used personally since I was 6 and now have one for my room AND one for the kids. 😀 So maybe I should be trying 1:15 for wake times? I had only just recently lengthened it thinking perhaps I was putting her down too early. It’s so confusing trying to figure out that perfect window since 15 minutes which FLIES by for adults can make such a HUGE difference. Last night was wicked awful, not only did she wake every 1 1/2 hrs ish but when I nursed her and tried to put her back down she would normally stay out but she would wake up and next extra soothing. On top of that my husband was up all night sick so I am super frazzled today!! Praying desperately for a better night’s sleep ASAP. Thanks for the help!
My 7 1/2 month old was taking a great 1.5 hour nap in the morning, right at 2 hours wake time from 7am wake up, and a 2+ hour nap in the afternoon. This nap was anywhere from 2.25 to 2.5 hours after the first one ended. Recently he’s back to the 40 minute wake up in the morning nap, rolls around for 30-45 minutes and eventually goes back to sleep. Sometimes this is repeated in the afternoon as well. This used to be a random occurrence, its now becoming the norm. I have reviewed and carefully examined EVERY aspect of our lives and NOTHING is different. Any thoughts? Under tired? Over tired? How do you know when they need more awake time? None of the “extend a short nap” tips have worked. I’m losing my patience!
Alexis! Thank you SO much for all the work you do to put out this info for moms, I’ve started to implement your strategies at bedtime and it has been working really well for my 6mo LO. She still gets up once to eat but is putting herself down at bedtime with very little fussing now and sleeping well into the morning. NOW, I need to tackle nap times. We’re currently rocking/bouncing/singing her to sleep and then laying her down while saying a prayer & holding our breath she stays asleep. Needless to say, it’s taking it’s toll on daddy and I as well as causing short naps as we’re sometimes having to go in after 30/45 mins and rock her back to sleep in order to get a longer nap. Do you have any posts/recommendations on how to start naptime sleep training to get her to fall asleep on her own? I’m all for CIO and don’t know if I should just go after it, starting with the first nap and stick with it until she gets it, or if there are any tips/tricks you’d recommend to be successful in the transition. She’s a fighter and when we’ve done daytime training in the past (she was quite a bit younger, around 10/11w), she’s cried as long as an hour without giving up. I’m scared to start!
Thanks so much for your help! Lindy
So can we do this CIO after short naps in babies as young as 3-6 months?
What if there is a pacifier that needs to be replaced?
Thanks.
I have a baby who will be 7 months in a few days. She has been taken care of by two grandmas during the week so doing any sleep training has been difficult because they never wanted to hear her cry. For the majority of her little baby life, we have been nursing her/feeding her to sleep for her naps and she was a great napper nonetheless. Sometimes she would sleep 2.5 hours for a nap! Her average was around 1.5 hours usually. The past two days, she has started to wake up after 1 sleep cycle, around 30-35 minutes. She will cry and Ive tried ignoring her to see if she will simply fall back asleep. Instead, she becomes inconsolable. She cries so hard she cannot breathe and starts coughing, sputtering, gagging, and simply put, it isn’t working. I put her down to sleep at night drowsy but awake most times, and she does put herself to sleep most nights. Sometimes she struggles and I go back in. We have a good bedtime routine but I’m not sure what to do for the nap problems we are having now. Is my best bet to try nursing her until drowsy? Or do I try waking her up 5-10 minutes before her 30 minute nap time is up to see if that works? I can’t see CIO as an option since she just becomes so distraught it seems to backfire and she cannot fall asleep. I really welcome help as I want to nip this problem in the bud ASAP. Before it becomes our new norm.
Hi Alexis! Your website is so so wonderful and helpful! Thank you so much! We have been having tons of sleep issues with our 7 month old and over the past few days have done CIO at night with great success!!! He is now going down with little to no fussing and sleeping until 4ish having a bottle and going back to sleep for a couple hours. Now we need to tackle his terrible napping :(. He is usually rocked to sleep with a bottle and then put in his crib. He is waking after 20-30 minutes. He will only sleep longer if held or sleeping next to me. I realize that we have a few issues that you listed above but I am not sure where to start. Do we try interrupting his sleep cycle first and see if that helps? Should we start doing CIO for naps and interrupting his sleep cycle? Just not sure what to do to get better naps and scared to mess up our progress at night. Any advice would be great!!!!
Hey Beth,
Interrupting the sleep cycle is a tactic for kids who are falling asleep independently. Your kiddo is not doing that yet so your first bit of work would be to wean off the rocking/bottle to sleep for naps.
If it were me, I would try to get rid of the bottle and see if you can JUST rock to sleep. If you can get that going after a few days, you have a fighting shot at gently weaning off the “rock to sleep” thing at naptime (rocking is far easier to wean off of gently than the bottle which is why I suggest the bottle be the first to go).
If you can get him to rock to sleep you could either:
– temporarily try to use the swing at naptime or
– try gradually weaning off the rocking (rock till drowsy, put down, jiggle crib, etc.)
If you can get him falling asleep independently you’ll likely see naptimes extend from that change alone. IF NOT, then you would try the disrupt the cycle thing. Good luck!
So the disrupting the sleep cycle thing TOTALLY WORKED!! I really didn’t want to try it but it worked. I made my husband do it first. Baby M is 7 months old and though he would fall asleep on his own for naps he was waking up after 36-38 minutes. We had been transferring him to the swing after that to get him back to sleep, but I have to return our borrowed swing on July 11th. Not only that but he is AT the weight limit of the swing and was trying to escape it now anyway so I am super happy this is working.
We also ended up having to extend his awake time to 3 hours since he was farting around in his bed for 15-20 minutes (from a 2.5 awake time) before he fell asleep and now he falls asleep with in a few minutes and sleeps longer. He seems like he is dropping the 3rd nap and won’t even sleep in the car. The only way I can get it at all is in the baby carrier while mowing the lawn, and that’s only about 50% effective (but my yard looks great!). He gets 14 hours total with awake times of 3 hours, 3 hours, then 4 hours before bed. Awake at 6 bed at 8pm and naps at 9 and 2.I tried putting him to bed at 7pm for a few nights but then he woke up earlier so he must be getting enough sleep?
My 8 week old was diagnosed with reflux at about 6 weeks old. We’ve been on Prevacid 2 weeks now. He doesn’t scream for 3 hours straight in the afternoon anymore, but still never content after feeding and usually fussy. He gives hunger cues right after breastfeeding but refuses to eat more. He also takes CRAP NAPS. I’m attempting CIO at the naps but also hesitant because he has reflux. He’s easy to go to sleep, but always wakes up after 30 minutes. He will go to bed at 8:00/8:30pm every night and never wakes up after 30 minutes. I’ve read another post you had that reflux babies will often sleep well at night because they’re so exhausted from not napping? That’s my only explanation as to why he doesnt wake often at night. I know you had reflux babies, any more specific advise on the 30 min naps for a reflux baby? Should their naps be treated any differently? I’m also not sure if Prevacid is totally working, seems like he’s still got a lot discomfort and crying during the day along with not napping or eating well. I cut out milk products for 2 weeks with no significant change.
That’s really young to do CIO. See Alexis’ post about it here: http://www.troublesometots.com/cry-it-out-when-and-why/
Most experts recommend baby be at least 6 months for cry it out. I would try some of Alexis’ other soothing methods like a swing. Especially for a baby with reflux.
We have a swing but he’ll only do 30 mins that too. He’s swaddled, has a paci, and sleeps in a rock n play. I’m clueless and wondering if he has some other GI prob that’s in addition to reflux
Allergies maybe? May want to check that out. If he’s genuinely uncomfortable and miserable CIO won’t work. It sounds like it could be allergies. You could go on an elimination diet or get a low allergenic formula to try for a while and pump to keep up your supply. It takes a few weeks of allergy free eating though to see the difference. You would have to try it for at least 2 weeks. The most common is cow milk, try cutting that for 2-3 weeks and see if it helps. If it helps stay off of it for a while. Most babies who are sensitive to cow milk at that age out grow it by around 1-2 years old.
My newborn 1 month)
Hi there, I have been trying your “interrupt sleep cycle” method to no avail. My daughter will be 7 months tomorrow, has been a “baby wise” baby since 3 weeks, and sleeping through the night (8pm-7am) since she was about 10 weeks. In the last 4 weeks, her 1-2hr naps have gone to 45min tops (2-3 a day depending on how long they are) Like I said, I have been doing what you have suggested, and all I do is wake her up. She doesn’t go back to sleep. Any specific suggestions? Thanks
Hi Alexis,
Love your website! It’s been so helpful! I am at a loss with what to do with my 10 week old. She has been taking 30 minute naps for the last 2-3 weeks. I was told it was a phase that would pass, but it’s only getting worse! We swaddle her, use white noise. And even bought a swing after reading your website — all to no avail.
I was so excited to come upon your idea to waker her up 5-10 minutes before she usually wakes up. The only problem is, now she’s started taking 10 minute naps!! I can’t even try this method out! Not sure what to do. The only time she’ll sleep is if I let her lay on top of me or carry her around in the carrier. I don’t mind doing this some of the time, but I do have to shower at some point!
She is an amazing night sleeper (often sleeps 8 hours in a row! And then usually 3 more hours in the morning in 1-2 hour spurts. Is she getting too much sleep at night that she isn’t tired enough for long naps?
Please help!
Hi Alexis! I can’t wait to read your book, I’ve been reading your blog plenty of times since the birth of my first baby boy, who is now 6-1/2 months! I’m at that point where reading your blog is not enough anymore. I’m asking you an advice as I think we have made all our homeworks!
I simply can’t figure out why he won’t nap more than 40 min on the lunchtime nap, and it’s been going on since he was only 7 weeks old.
He goes down awake with no pacifier, without much fussing at every nap and bedtime, and he made a lot of improvements getting rid sleep associations and night feedings (with a lot of help of your posts!! I can’t thank you enough!)
2 hours after wake up (usually at 6:30) is morning nap wich lasts 1.5 hour, then 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 hour after that is lunchtime nap wich always lasts 45 min. We dropped the third nap at around 5 months because he was fighting it and we simply could not make it happen anymore in any possible way, so bedtime is at 6-6:30. He STTN and awakens himself sometimes because he moves a lot, but he can put himself back to sleep with thumb sucking.
but why the hell he still wakes up at 40 min?! I know he’s still tired as he wakes up crying and not babbling. We have tried a lot of things since he started doing it at 2 months; Swing does not work (he sleeps only 30 min in there!), Wake to sleep does not work, cry it out ends up with a frustrated and inconsolable baby for the rest of the day, we are unable to soothe him back to sleep, longer period of wake time (sometimes up to 3-1/2!) not working, he is not hungry because he has solids 30 min before naptime, i think he have enough soothing and routine before nap time (quiet time in swing with lovey, then close curtains, nappy change) and goes down awake with lovey and his favorite thumb 😉
Please could you give me one more advice?
Your situation sounds very similar to ours. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a solution to pass along. Did you ever find anything that worked?
We are just starting to get things right about 40-50% of the time and he’s now 7-1/2 months.
We are doing a 2.5 hour of awake time in the morning and 2.75 hour max of awake time before the afternoon nap with PLENTY of physical activities because he’s so active! I also give him a top up feed before nap, but not enough for him to fall asleep on the bottle (4 oz). I’ve been doing this for almost a week and it’s starting to pay off, yesterday we got a record of 2-1/2 hour long nap. I was like, is he dead or what?? But most of all, I try to go with the flow and expect the short nap 🙁 That’s how i keep my sanity because most of the time we still got them, so early bedtime at 6/6:30!
Good luck and give us some news!
oye. help!
my almost 11 month old was the coolest napper around, until she wasn’t. her naps have diminished in length and she is flat out refusing to nap on some days. She used to nap around 2 hours in the morning (9-11) and 1.5-2 hrs in the afternoon (1:30-3/3:30). Morning naps are waking 10:15-10:30 now and afternoon is a fight, she skipped in a couple times, but is averaging an hour on these puppies. I dont.know.what.to.do! It feels terrible to just let her cry .. but is that the course here? Maybe just a tooth or some growing? any advice?
Our 12 week old still consistently takes 30 min naps (to the minute), even in the swing. Is she too young to try to “bore” her to sleep as you suggest above?
Hi Alexis,
I am hoping you can help me or give me ANYTHING that could possibly make my sleeping even a tad better. I am a stay at home mom with a 3 year old and a almost 6 month old. My 6 month old daughter Stella was a magical sleeper until 3 1/2 months and then like a switch went off she was changed. Up every 1-2 hours at night and taking terrible short naps all day. I did have her a night time schedule and no she wasn’t falling asleep on her own. I nurse her and she usually always falls asleep. After going nuts for a few weeks she began sleeping better not great but better and taking a bit more normal naps. But now once again we’re up all night and back to 30 minute cat naps with added fussiness. I know I have formed some sleep associations, she sleeps great in her bouncey seat, I think she enjoys the cuddled feeling from it and she likes to be elivated. I’ve been trying to get her in her crib, I even elivated one side, she sleeps with a blanket to stay warm. I stopped swaddling because she just started rolling in her crib and getting stuck. I know she shouldn’t have a blanket but it seems to relax her. I am just at a loss, I don’t want to co-sleep and find myself doing just that , so I catch an hour of sleep. I give her a bottle before bed to try snd break the nursing to sleep association but ir doesn’t seen to have made a difference. She is napping now and has woken twice in 30 minutes for her nuk. I am just hoping you have some advice that maybe just maybe I haven’t heard lol. I look forward to your response and thank you for your awesome website!
Mandy Warmenhoven (the mom of 2 troublesome tots)
There I was all tearful and heartbroken. Then I discovered this place. I was under the impression there was no sane discussion concerning baby sleep on the internet anywhere. Thank goodness for this blog.
I have managed a successful binki and swaddle wean over the last month due entirely to the suggestions and helpful information I’ve found here. I have nothing against swaddles or pacifiers. I am horribly jealous of parents of babies who can keep their binki in their cute little mouths for longer than 45 minutes at night. I just don’t know how they do it. My adorable little bundle of wiggles spat his out promptly after falling asleep and woke up at the end of ever sleep cycle requesting it back. And being as my baby is a strong wiggle monster he was rolling and bouncing and wriggling all over the crib while still inside his swaddle. It was some kind of black magic. So both had to go.
I am now the proud (read “relived”) mother of a 5 month old who sleeps through the night (with a dream feed at 11pm and a night feeding around 3am or 4am). HOWEVER, his naps have suffered. He used to wake at 6:30am, sleep around 1.5 to 2 hours for his first and second nap, sleep for about 30 to 45 minutes for his third nap, then down for the night at 7pm. That is a prefect little napping dream right there right?
Since the night battles have been resolved he sleeps for about 40 minutes for his morning nap, anywhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours for his second nap, and about 30 minutes to not at all for his third nap. He is an uber-crank after his first nap every day now. I KNOW he’s not getting the sleep he needs. He is generally happy after his second if it is longer than an hour. If I let him sleep as long as 2 hours for his second nap he won’t go down for his third nap and ends up being very overtired by bedtime. If he only sleeps for 45 minutes for his second nap then he is an extra overtired cranky mess and wants to sleep waaaaay to long for his third nap which then makes bedtime extra terrible.
I’m not quite sure what to do. I have, as you say, created a more luxurious sleeping environment than a Turkish Bathhouse. I have been carefully watching sleep cues and done my darndest to make sure he is getting put down during his sleepy window. Though his sleep cues have become more subtle over the last new weeks. I layer on lots of napping cues.
Perhaps he is ready for longer awake time between his morning wake up and his first nap? Blargleflargle. I’m so confused.
Blargleflargle indeed!
I would start with how long he’s awake. Because it’s a moving target AND he’s sleeping better there is a good chance this has extended out on you.
Also part of the issue could be the loss of paci/swaddle. I think they HAD to go BUT, the amount of soothing he gets at naptime just got bumped down a ton. The pressure to sleep at naptime is pretty dinky and most babies need MORE help at naptime then they do at bedtime. If the sleep window adjustments don’t help, maybe consider more soothing. If you don’t want to go back to swaddling (because safety) maybe a merlin sleep suit?
It took me a bit to get back to you as my little wiggle bean is learning to crawl. *flails arms wildly*
I have tried a swaddle type system that involved wings and Velcro but the babe was flopping all over in it. He was able to curl up his legs, roll over onto his face, and then somehow wrap the swaddle wings and all around his head. He’s pretty strong…and tenacious. A sleep sack with arms is working well. He is warm enough and has a “wrapped up” feeling without danger of suffocating himself.
I have taken your advice and we take a bit more time to soothe before each nap. I have very slightly extended his awake time as well. (by about 10-15 minutes) Those two things combined with a bit of time have smoothed out his naps a bit. Hallelujah! I made sure his nursery is dark and has a big box fan humming in the corner for gentle but endless white noise. Imagine all the money around the world spent on white noise machines when a $10 box fan did the trick for us. He often starts to fall asleep on my shoulder, whereupon I plop him in his crib. He grizzles a bit and then conks out for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Thanks much!
Thanks for this great post! I’m struggling with paci/no paci for my 3 1/2 month old as I’m pretty sure this is the culprit for his crap naps. I know he’s still on the young side, but I don’t see anything getting better in a few weeks (I’m sure it will just get worse as his object permanence grows stronger). So he used to be typical newborn with some tiny naps, other longer ones. Now over the past couple of weeks, every nap is between 35-45 minutes. I can sometimes go in and give him the paci and a hand on his chest for 20 minutes and he’ll go back down (sometimes for an hour and a half, thus making it through a sleep cycle), though this is dwindling as well. And with my older child it’s getting very difficult to be in and out of the baby’s room all day for these naps. I feel like I’ve tried different wake times (btw 1:15 and 1:40) and there’s no difference. At night, he’s falling asleep with the paci (needs a couple of re-visits for about 10 minutes) and then makes it through the night till 3-4 am feeding, then often puts himself back to sleep after this feeding even when paci falls out (I hear him grunting, cooing, then silence). I’m anxious to get rid of the paci as I think this is the culprit and I’m really worried it’s going to start sneaking into night time for a 4-month regression. I just don’t know how to do it (and if he’s still too young). So two questions: 1. should I go back to experimenting with wake-time (and if so, how long do I give it to see if that’s the thing)? 2. Do I get rid of the paci? If so, HOW????
Oh! And he was busting out of his swaddle so he’s in a Merlin. He starts to cry as soon as I put him in it so it takes some patting, rocking and ultimately the paci to soothe him to drowsy state at which point I put him in the bassinet and keep a hand on him as well as replace the paci if he fusses when it falls out. We have loud white noise, black out curtains though it’s not pitch black.
Thanks!
So…I have a baby who can fall asleep independently, but would always wake up after 32-37 minutes into a sleep cycle. She will be up for 2-20 minutes, then go back. When she was going down every hour and a half she did this many *but not all* naps, and so around 4 months we put her on the 9/1/4 schedule (which she was basically already on). It resulted in more like 2 or 2.5 hours between naps.
She slept through her naps for 2 weeks for all her naps. Morning nap is at 9 and generally 1.5-2 hours, afternoon at 1 is 1.15-1.50 in duration. 4 pm is 30 minutes.
Then after two weeks, she was back to being up at ~37 minutes, then after some period of time, going back to sleep. She doesn’t cry often when she wakes, just plays. I don’t think stretching her longer than 2.5 hours is good (though she needs that amount of time in the mornings before her 9 AM) which usually is her best nap and most likely one to sleep through
(more like continuation of night sleep?).
She does get a 2.5 hour gap if she wakes up at 10:30 and is down by 1. She doesn’t cry much or for longer than a minute when I put her down. She is a healthy eater so she isn’t hungry, and we have a nap and bedtime routine (bedtime is great and a night sleeper).
Any ideas?
She is 5 months and one week old:)
Hi Alexis,
I followed your sleep training guide to train my sons night sleep. It worked wonderfully. I did that when he turned seven months old. Now he’s a 9 month old who’s beautiful and happy. But he got used to napping on me for 9 months. Now I’m nap training. I’m just on the second day. It’s so hard. He wakes up after half an hour and then starts crying. And I know he wants to sleep more. I did go in every 15 mins to soothe him. For night sleep we did extinction. I guess I’m looking for some guidance. I followed your advice to the ‘T’ for night sleep training. I know I created this bad habit so it’s not fair that I ask him to fall asleep on his own now. But I need him to nap on his own now. Any advice? Thank you.
I’ve been following your advice for bedtime and we are now sleeping through the night (finally!) Or at worst only waking once (thank you!) This is week 2 of sleeping training my 6 month old. Naptime however is a disaster. I can not get her to take a nap in her crib, or pack and play unless I nurse her to sleep. It’s awful. Today we went on two hours of me putting her down drowsy (admittedly after nursing her) her crying as soon as she felt the crib, me leaving for 2 minutes while she cried and then coming back in and starting over. I finally had to pass her off to my mother inlaw who rocked her to sleep and then put her in the crib. Maybe it’s me? Maybe she just expects the nursing so she won’t sleep without it? We did just recently start to transition from naps in the moving swing to naps in the crib. Did I do too much at once by cutting out the swing and putting her down awake at night all at the same time? I’d appreciate any advice 🙂 thanks.
Hello, I’m really hoping someone could give me some advice.
My baby is 13 weeks old. She has never been a great napper but about two weeks ago things got really bad.
She sleeps night and naps in her swing, swaddled, with white noise. She cannot be soothed by rocking, bouncing, bottle, shh’ing, patting, holding. We have always just did her routine and put her in her swing and she would nap. For 45 min, but she would nap.
Now she fights naps with all her might. Especially in the afternoon. And since there is nothing that soothes her we have nothing but to hope she eventually sleeps.
I put her down in the 1 hour window of wake time because I can’t go by her tired signs as she yawns and rubs her eyes constantly. Is she chronically tired? I don’t know.
I spend all day trying to get her to nap. I don’t go anywhere, I don’t let anyone come over, because I just want her to nap. But she doesn’t.
I feel so defeated. It makes me sick seeing her so tired and I don’t know what to do. I feel like a failure. I’m failing my baby. I failed at breastfeeding and now her sleep requirements.
I wrack my brain thinking about what I’m doing wrong. Maybe she needs a longer waketime? Maybe shorter?
We have been putting her to bed at 5-5:30pm because between her last nap and bedtime it can be up to 4 hours 🙁
She won’t nap in the car, on me, with me, in her car seat or in her carrier. In fact, she hates all those things.
If somebody could comment? Or is this impossible?
Hi heather,
Sorry to say that I’m in the same boat as you. Ever since I brought my son home from the hospital, he has fought naps. Now he’s 7 weeks and the only way he’ll nap is on me. If he is lucky enough to get a 20 minute nap in his crib, I also spend the rest of the two hours (before his next feeding) trying to help him nap. Do you keep trying since you know he’s tired or do you think about play time? I’m so lost as a first time mom: I understand how you feel because I’m trapped in my nursery for 8+ hours a day ATTEMPTING to help him fall asleep because he’s so tired. Just wondering if you had any success with anything. Hope things somehow get better for the both of us!
Is there anyone out there who has twins who might be able to give me some tips/advice? I have almost 5-month-old twins (a week shy) who I am trying to teach to put themselves to sleep. With them being twins, all the advice I’ve ever gotten is to keep them on the same schedule. One feeds, the other feeds. One wakes up, wake the other up. However, how do I stick to this during the day? It seems that very often there is one twin who will only take a very short, crappy nap, while the other twin seems able to keep sleeping. Up until now I have been going in and rocking/holding the other twin so that his nap can be extended to match his brother’s and so that he doesn’t get overtired. Do I need to stop doing this and wake the other twin? If so, this means short, crap naps for both of them all day and most likely they will be overtired. Won’t I be creating more problems this way? I’m just not sure how to handle this with twins. Do I treat them as individuals just while sleep training and hope that as things progress their schedules will sync up again? Do I keep rocking the other one back to sleep, since ‘technically’ they put themselves to sleep at first, I am only extending the nap? Anyone have any experience or advice?
I should mention that it’s not always the same twin who takes a short nap. They seem to take turns depending on the day/week/nap. But rarely do they both naturally take a decent (1 hour or more) nap together. Most often one wakes after only 25/30 minutes.
Hello Alexis!
I’m in crisis so I’m praying you can help!
I have a 7 month old (just turned and was also 5 weeks early). She started sleeping 7-11 hour chunks straight through the night at 9 weeks. She would nurse, then go back to sleep so she got 12-14 hours total at night. She didn’t nap super well, but probably 2-3 hours total. This lasted until she was almost 6 months old. I went back to work when she was 5 months and she had trouble sleeping at daycare (taking naps in crib was hard, they held her or used a swing). It is also extremely loud in there, a center with 8 infants and 12 toddlers in one large room, fluorescent lights only off for 2 hours a day for “nap time”. Due to leaving for daycare she now was woken up at 11-12 hours of nighttime sleep, then napping inconsistently and having trouble. 3 weeks later, she started waking up every 2-3 hours crying in MOTN wanting to nurse but sometimes being fine with pacifier. Then I was off work for 3 weeks, on vacation, she got sick, night waking continued but naps seemed to improve. Now we are back at daycare for 2 weeks and her naps are almost nonexistent unless someone holds her. She napped a 1/2 hour one day and is going about 1 hour total which is comprised of 2-3 small naps. She awakens immediately when put down in crib. I’ve come at lunch to nurse her to try to help soothe her to sleep and that works inconsistently. She many times wakes up still when I lay her in the crib very carefully. For the past two evenings she has fallen asleep on the way home at 4:30, slept soundly to 7:30 (in her car seat because I know if I move her she will wake up and not go back to sleep until bedtime) wakes to eat and then is nursed back to sleep for the night. Sleep deprivation! She is a very aware and social baby so she tunes in to the slightest noises, voices, etc and always wants to know what is going on around her. I am at a loss because I know that sleep deprivation can cause delays in development! Please help!
I’d be interested too, Alexis. My 7 month old has yet to start full time in day care and would dread a similar situation. My baby also is a very aware baby which makes napping / sleeping a challenge as we live under flight paths, next to an alley and a neighbour who parks his truck in the driveway!!!!
Help! So my baby girl is 5 months old now and for the last two months she has consistently been taking 35 minute naps. On the good day, we will get an occasional 1-1.5 hour nap in which I sing and jump for joy and am optimistic that things are looking up, but only to be disappointed and back to 35 min naps. She falls asleep on her own, but she does use a binky. I thought this was the problem, however she wakes up with the binky still in her mouth so the loss of the binky is not what is causing the waking up. I tried the method of slightly waking her up to help her venture back into deep sleep, but it didn’t seem to work. I have watched her sleep and she does a full cycle, and starts back into another one and then will flinch or seem to have gas or sometimes no reason I can detect will wake up and be wide awake. Sometimes she will cry and sometimes she is just wide awake laying there. I have also tried leaving her to go back to sleep, but no luck there either. I make sure to not let her get over tired, she only is awake 1.5 hours between naps. I used to do 2 to see if she needed to get more tired, but it didn’t matter. And I have tried 1 hour and still the same, 35 minutes like clockwork. Is she just a short napper and I need to accept it?! I just worry about development and her being a happy, sleeping baby. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!
Hello Megan.
As I was reading about “helping babies get precious sleep”, I saw your post. I have a 5.5 month old girl that takes 30 minute naps- like clockwork. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Honestly, after about 3 weeks of researching and trying to make modifications which haven’t worked, I have accepted it! I wish I could provide help, but I am only replying so that you can rest assure your situation is not unique. I am tired of worrying (and stressing) that she is not getting the 3.5-4 hours of daytime sleep or the typical long afternoon nap that 90% of the other babies get.) She is who she is. AND I know her biological rhythm will change when appropriate.
What I have done in the past couple of weeks, is transitioned her to take all naps in the crib. I originally thought this will lengthen her naps. I also conditioned her to fall asleep on her own. So, even with OPTIMAL CONDITIONS (her usual nap time, darken room, white noise- uninterrupted time to sleep…she still continues to wake at the 30 minute mark and eager to get on with her day.) I have just learned to accept it! Like your daughter, she is a catnapper and sleeps more often- every 2-3 Hours. As a mother of four, I thought I had the baby sleep thing figured out. My others did naturally what was the “norm.” But, I guess my 4th and final child is unique and I cannot expect her to conform to the norm.
FYI: this is her schedule
Wakes at 6AM
Nap at 8am (30 minutes)
Nap 11:00 (30 minutes)
Nap 2:30 or 3pm (30 minutes)
In bed sleeping at 7PM- (wakes around 1:30 and 5am to nurse) I won’t wean her from these night feeding until at least 6 months.)
Hi, Alexis, everyone, can I get more info about the “disrupting sleep cycle” thing? Has anyone here tried it? My lovely 4 mo (5 m in a week) only takes crap naps, and by the end of the day he gets pretty cranky. No matter where he sleeps ( bed, hammock, pram) he ALWAYS wakes up after 35-40 minutes!
But three days ago I decided to try your trick: I put him down for his nap with a short routine, rock him close to sleep in his hammock, dark room, white noise, he usually falls asleep on his own. Then I came back to jostle him after 30 minutes. First I woke him too much (ie, he was in full “get me out of there” mode, no going back to sleep) then too little ( he just turned his head a bit and woke fully 10 minutes later) but on the 3rd try I tickled him until I saw his eyes open shortly, and then it worked! 50 minutes! The next day I did that again, and he slept 90 minutes (NINETY !!! OMG I was doing victory dance in the living room), then 60 min. Last nap of the day was in the pram, 30 min.
And then yesterday I did the exact same thing, and he woke up after 35 minutes every time, just as before. For all 4 naps of the day. What am I doing wrong? I was so disappointed!
Ps, I’m so looking forward for your book! Any news?
Marie,
So rarely will something just “fix it” so that it’s “all better from now till the end of time.” I consider the fact that it has worked a few times a HUGE VICTORY! Keep with it, see what develops over time. Also naps #3 – #4 are less likely to be successful so if it works for naps 1/2 that would be huuuuge.
Book is in beta – getting VERY positive feedback (YAY and PHEW!), print version please-make-it-so hopefully out June/July LATEST!
Hi Alexis,
I’m hoping for help. My husband and I are first time parents and are on the brink of information overload trying to get our 6m old son to sleep consistently during the day. The short of it is he must be held/rocked to sleep. Try and put him down and those little peepers fly right open! He’ll sleep for an hour or two if you hold him though. However, at bed time he goes to sleep with little to no resistance. He sleeps in a baby merlin sleep suit to help with the startle reflex since he can now flip over, swaddling is no longer safe. My question is how on earth can this little boy be so good at sleeping through the night and so bad at taking naps during the day??? Below is a typical schedule.
4:30-5am: Wakeup come into our bed and nurse
5am-6:30am: Snooze a little longer
6:30am: Nurse a little bit before mom gets up
8:30-9am: Dad tries for nap number one, success with rocking failure with CIO.
9:30am: Bottle
12:30pm: Nap attempt number two, success with rocking failure with CIO
1:30pm: Bottle
3:30-4pm: Nap attempt number two, success with rocking failure with CIO usually shortest of the day.
4:30-5pm: Nurse
7-7:30pm: Down for the night in his sleep suit with no tears or rocking. Then he sleeps until 4:30-5am with no crying or interruptions.
What do you think? We’re stumped!!
The reason is that he’s learned to sleep at night but not at naptime. That’s right – he needs to learn for naptime. SOO UNFAIR!
So sleeping on Mom is like sleeping in the Four Seasons. It’s great if you can afford it. Sleeping in the crib is like downshifting to the Holiday Inn – not bad but a far cry from the Four Seasons. So no, he’s not going to take 2 hour naps in the crib. But he will be napping for the next 3 years, is the Four Seasons a viable option? LIkely not. And getting him napping in the crib doesn’t get easier later.
I would try feeding hi a bit closer to naptime. He’s going down hungry ish so consider some feeding schedule adjustment. It’s OK that nap #3 is the shortest nap of the day – he’s close to the age to drop it so that’s normal. But otherwise you need to commit to the Holiday Inn so he can get USED to that. Not fun I know, but also unavoidable!
Hi!
First off – your site is amazing. By far my go-to resource for sleep answers!
My baby turned 13 weeks and all of a sudden all progress on naps seem to have vanished. It’s only been a week, but every day has been the same, short 30-45 minute cat naps for every nap.
Before this he was taking at least 1-2 solid naps (1.5 hours+) a day with another 2 shorter naps later in the day. He also started sleeping through the night just one week earlier.
I put him down completely awake in his bassinet, swaddled, with white noise (no pacifier because he can’t keep that thing in to save his life!). He falls asleep on his own, happily. But no matter what he is up again 45 minutes later. I’ve let him cry himself back to sleep twice (took about 10-15 minutes) but then he wakes up again 10 minutes later rather than sleeping another 45 minute cycle
Because he took longer naps before, I know he is capable. And if I pick him up after 45 minutes and give him a pacifier he will conk out again, so it’s clear he needs the sleep. But since he wakes up the minute the pacifier falls out, I can’t just give him the pacifier in the crib and walk out – have to actually hold him for the next 45 minute cycle. I only do it once a day because I don’t want to create a habit. But if I don’t let him get at least one long nap in he is a wreck in the afternoon/evening.
I will try the “wake to sleep” method you mentioned. But do you think a swing might help? Or do I just need to calm down and let him grow up and into a better nap schedule (haha!). I wouldn’t be so frustrated except it seems like we’ve gone backwards! Any advice would be so appreciated!
One important naptime rule at home — never let our baby sleep past 4pm. Or else, it’ll be a wild night for Mom and Dad!
My 4.5 mo is a notorious crap napper. She gets tired around 75-85 minutes so goes down for naps at that time (counting from her previous nap). However, she only takes 37ish minute naps (once in a blue moon she will wake up for ~15 minutes and then go back to sleep, but that is rare). This means she takes 4-5 naps/day!! She is pretty good at going down for naps and bed (recently we stopped swaddling and now can put her down awake if she is in a decent mood), but even so, a lot of the day is devoted to putting her down for naps. She is pretty good at night–waking a few times, but if it’s not hunger, I can just leave her alone in her crib and she will eventually go back to sleep on her own (without crying). I cannot seem to get her in a better nap routine though! She naps in the same place every day. The room is dark. She falls asleep fairly quickly. How do I get her to sleep longer and take fewer naps? Or are we just resigned to the 4-5 naps until ??? TIA!!
Oh, and I have tried the wake to sleep method but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Is it supposed to work the first time you try it and “stick” after days of doing it, or is it supposed to not work at all until you have done it several days in a row? Thanks!
Love this site and all your advice! Two months ago my five month old (just turned 20 weeks) used to only wake for two feedings at night and go straight back to sleep. He has never napped longer than 30 minutes since two months old. Once he hit four months he started waking ever 1 to 2 hours. He is not always hungry, but wakes, and cries until we come to him and rock/bounce him or use a paci. He seems very uncomfortable, more of grunting crying. For the past month or so we have been putting him to bed in his car seat, and rocking him in there. He has really only taken a paci for the past month. We think he may be teething (increased drool, and always wanting to put his hand in his month), but not sure.
Do you think we should start using the swing method for bedtime? We have tried the swing for naps and he still wakes every 30 minutes. How do we do the wake to sleep method when he is swinging?
Also, he weighs around 20 pounds, so the swing might be out of commission soon….
Do you have a swing brand for bigger babies?
Your site is wonderful. Thank you for providing all of us struggling parents of crappy nappers with such great info! I have a dilemma I havent seen addressed yet, so was hoping you could provide some advice. My kid is almost 4.5 months and hates naps. She cant get beyond the 32-40 minute stretch of sleep. I have read Ferber and understand the importance of maintaining a consistent schedule and am working on that, but it is hard because my kid likes to eat all the time during the day. Until recently, I didnt care because she slept through the night. But now it is slowly killing me and I am imposing a two hour rule between feeds during the day. This has not helped with her napping situation. Now my question is: do I set her schedule by naps or by feeds? I had been just trying to follow her cues but apparently (or I should say according to Ferber’s thoughts) she needs a more structured schedule. Please help me, my kid, and my boobs 🙂
Hi Alexis,
What a fantastic site! I have a nearly 4 month old wee boy and I’m a first time parent. He sleeps swaddled (in a double swaddle) with white noise and in his cit in a dark room for most naps and at night. The only thing we are struggling with is he gets really tired around 5pm(even if he’s had a nap 30-40 mind before this and will fight another nap at this time and it is obviously too early for his bedtime. I end up sitting with him upstairs for 2 hours or more doing quiet activities like book, massage, pj’s and feeding him before he’ll go to sleep. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do with that in between time he’s tired but doesn’t want to sleep and he’s too stimulated by being downstairs with the lights and sounds. Help!!
Hi Alexis,
I’ve been scouring your website for months and there is lots of helpful info that I have used in the last 7 months for my baby’s sleep needs. I am having another issue though that I was hoping to get a little more insight on and quite frankly- a solution for! 🙂 My baby is almost 7 months old now and I did CIO for her bedtime routine when she started going through her 4 month sleep regression. It worked like a charm! She is now sleeping mostly through the night (7pm-7am w/ a 5am wakeup to feed sometimes). She is breastfed during the day and gets a bottle of formula (6-7 oz) at bedtime and at the 5am feed if she wakes up then. She goes down in the crib drowsy but awake for the most part b/c she starts to fall asleep w/ the bottle at bedtime. So ultimately, I don’t have major issues w/ bedtime besides dropping the 5am feed (which I read about on your blog and will probably start the night weaning at some point in time). BUT, what I desperately need help with is NAPS! She is reliant on the boob for naps 🙁 I guess I created this habit by nursing her before naptime and did I mention that I also let her nap in my arms?? So, here’s my confession and how naps go down: She has 2-3 naps (9:30-10:30, 1:30-2:30, and a catnap at 4:30 some days) and right before each nap, I go into the nursery, black the shades out, turn white noise machine on, sit in the glider and nurse her to sleep. She then sleeps in my arms for an hour and wakes up happy as a clam, unsurprisingly. I know these are bad associations- I have tried CIO for naps, but chickened out after a couple of days b/c she was crying for long periods of time- and I was afraid that her night sleep would get off track and then I’d be screwed w/ my sleep. It didn’t take her long to CIO for bedtime (2 days of a 20 minute crying stretch and then boom, she fell asleep on her own), so I guess I”m just not used to hearing her cry for so long. I am truly exhausted w/ being held hostage in the nursery to get baby to nap. She does a great job napping and bedtime w/ this method so I was too scared to veer off course…but it’s time now! In the end, I am suffering b/c of this and it’s definitely not good for her, I know. Any suggestions?
Alexis, thank you for this brilliant site which has helped me a lot and brought me to a place of sympathy with those who end up sleep training (and I’ve given myself a break about considering it with my wakeful boy but so far the gradual approach is going well for is, at night at least).
My son, 4 months, napped ONLY on my or his dad for 3 months. Even then 30 mins was the hard rule…never more, which was making me miserable. Then I started buckling down and force-lengthening his naps, to get us into a routine which got him more sleep and made us all happier, but the naps were still cuddle naps (with white noise in a dark room, jiggling him through sleep cycle transitions). Thanks to this site I bought a swing and he went down awake after a few days and followed his schedule in there great, but for the past seven days he almost always rouses fully at the 30 min mark again and even if I leave him ten mins I can see him chilling on the video monitor, eyes wide open, or he cries (and it’s not a sleepy cry). this after some mammoth sleeps in there only a week ago (2 X 2hours in a single day!). It’s driven me back to cuddle napping again just so I can plan my days and give him a long midday nap… Without which he is a cranky mess and we are both exhausted and crying to sleep by 6pm!! Wake times of 2 hours are what we go with (he will rarely sleep before 2 hours awake). Swaddle, dark room, swing on highest setting, white noise loud. Am I nuts trying to get 2 hour naps out of him anywhere but on me? Even though he did it for a whole week?
Dear Alexis,
I am a single mom (in Denmark!) struggling with guess what?!- my baby´s naps. 😀
Currently I am still on maternity leave (yes we are so privileged here in Scandinavia) and my son is almost 7 months. He has always been a poor sleeper, with a hunger for the world, which means he hates closing his eyes. I have finally managed to get him to sleep by himself and not on me, problem is that napping is an all day activity with short sleep (20-30min) and loooong efforts to make him fall asleep. He has never in his life managed to fall asleep by himself.If I leave him in bed he will find amusement in the duvet, or the pillow, or looking at something, whatever. He is never bored. He doesnt cry, however nor does he fall asleep. I am at the end of my patientence and really dont know how to solve this…
Any good advice?
Best,
Kasia.
Hey Alexis! I love your blog and have been hardcore reading everything on here since I found it a few days ago. You mentioned that being undertired can lead to short naps. How do you know if your baby is ready for a longer waketime? Currently my recently turned 6 mo can be awake for 2 hours before her first nap. I just figured this out and so now that she’s napping great for the first nap, I wasn’t sure how long she needed to be up for her next nap. Around 1h50 min mark she started doing subtle signs and so I started her nap routine and she seemed good and tired as we went thru the routine but when I put her down she played for 30 mins and finally knocked out. Does that mean she’s ready to be up for 2.5 hours before her 2nd nap?
The problem I encounter with my baby is that I put her down when she is just about to fall asleep, and when she is put down in the crib, suddenly it’s PLAYTIME with MOMMY! She starts giggling, flapping her arms and smiling like crazy. I don’t know what to do! I’ve tried drowsy but awake, but each time I just seem to wake her up more! I eventually pick her up after 2-4 tries and wait until she’s totally zonked out to put her down 🙁 which I know is a disservice to her because when she wakes up she’s like, “where’s mom??”
My question is, how do I disassociate putting her in her crib drowsy but awake with playtime? It seems to be a recurring thing when i am hovering over her, which is fine in most cases but in this one I don’t have a chance to disappear and she’s already psyched that it’s playtime
TIA
Hi Alexis,
Love your site and have recommended it to all my new mommy friends. Quick clarification (apologies if you already answered above, I honestly tried to read all the comments first to make sure I didn’t repeat, but there are nearly 200 at this point so I crapped out). Anyways, my question is this; if my 5 month old wakes up after 30-40 minutes, but then I can quickly help her back to sleep and she gets another 30-40 minutes, is that 2 crap naps or can I count that as 1 good nap? She sleeps well at night and is about 50/50 on her naps; sometimes she sleeps straight through 60-90 minutes, sometimes she wakes and settles herself on her own after a few minutes, but at least half the time when she wakes I can hear her start to wind herself up by rolling, playing, singing, etc, but if I redirect her with sleep cues (rocking and shushing) she will fall back asleep. I don’t want to cause a bad sleep association since she is often capable of doing it on her own, but I wonder if the benefit of getting consistent 60-90 minute naps outweighs occasionally helping her reach that goal.
Thanks!
I really appreciate your way of explaining things!!! It’s real and it makes sense. Got any thoughts on a 7 month old who is just emerging from the sleepless haze of reflux? This kid’s sleep is erratic and unpredictable. He’s been on ranitidine since 4 months old, which helped a lot with the blood-curdling screaming and nursing strikes but didn’t do a lot for the bad nights and naps. He was exclusively breastmilk fed til 6 months, now is exclusively formula fed (I’m astonished we made it to even 6 months. He refused to nurse for most of that.) The longest stretch he will sleep at night is 5 hours, because he won’t eat more than a 4 oz bottle in one sitting. He prefers to eat a bottle before falling asleep, for a nap AND nighttime, and I know it’s a bad habit but he literally won’t drink a bottle unless he is falling asleep. Really frustrating. So should I start trying to work on this issue or is reflux still rearing it’s ugly head?? Ugh.
Miss Alexis – THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Your website has, hands down, saved my sanity and my health. My 9 month old went from waking up every 45 min all night long (and only sleeping if I was holding him WHILE STANDING UP. YES.) to sleeping from 7:30pm to 5am, due to the information and support on this website.
But now, we are still crappy at naps. I am extremely consistent, goes down for a nap exactly 3 hours after he wakes up, nurses right before sleep, long stroller walk just prior to each nap (routine of sorts), and white noise machine just like at night time. The room is also just as dark as night time. He has been crying SO hard when I put him in his crib, and its taking him longer to finally fall asleep than he actually spends sleeping once he passes out. It’s torturous for his poor mama over here watching it all in the monitor.
So…anything I can do to help him a little more? Is 3 hours after wake time too long? A more distinct routine? What about our exact same night time routine? (book and a song). Any suggestions would be so appreciated! Again, thank you for all you do!
Dear Alexis,
Thank you so much for your site and work and information that you provide. I have been reading your information for a while, but have hit a speed bump with my little one… She is now 5.5 months old and had been sleeping through the night and napping wonderfully until we took a trip overseas. We managed to get her on a relatively okay sleep schedule there since our stay was so long (a little over a month), but since being back (we returned home when she was about 4.5 months old), her sleep has been all over the place. We managed to make it through the initial 10 days of jet lag and waking basically every 40 minutes at night… but her sleep, mainly her naps, are still poor. She will not nap longer than her 32 minute mark. I have tried going in to unsettle her 5-10 minutes before her wake up time, but she either pops her eyes open or just ends up waking up at her same time anyways. I am pretty sure I am jostling her enough (her eyes just started to open and she moves her arms a bit). At night, she is waking up after 5 hours maximum and then wants to be awake… last night she was up for an hour and a half crying! She is able to fall asleep on her own at night time when we put her in her crib, but she doesn’t fall back asleep! I am just really worried she is getting to the point of sleep deprivation, because she is really only getting 11-12 hours of sleep a day total due to mini naps and long wake times at night. I am not sure what I should be doing, should I be trying to get her to sleep at all costs and ignore the sleep training “rules” (we have been leaving and reassuring after 2 minutes of fussing)? What do I do when she wakes in the middle of the night? Our 2 minute checks? I am totally at a loss! In all, she is such a good baby, but this lack of sleep is really worrying me!
Please help! thank you so much!
-frustrated, frazzled mama
Hi Alexis,
I have read this post probably 50 times over the course of my now 7 month old’s life…I think it was Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results, right?
Anyway, I am still flummoxed by naps. My daughter is a pretty awesome night sleeper (7pm-6am) and has been since about 12 weeks. Naps have been all over the place, and, as you say in the post, short naps meant it was always nap time and very isolating, to the point that it kicked me into full on post partum anxiety/OCD related to her sleeping (woohoo). Luckily, I have dealt with that, but the naps are still pretty wonky and we seem to be (shudder) going backwards with them. I can’t tell why, but even if she takes a good 1.5 hour morning nap, she’s tired again less than two hours later and then it’s just cat naps without warning all day long. I really cannot go back to the dark times of tracking and obsessing and being trapped alone in my house all day, and I swear I am doing everything “right” based on your posts and all the various sleep books I read.
Anyway, my question is this: if she’s sleeping basically 11 hours at night, waking up at 6am and tired for a first nap at 8am, what kinds of wake-time lengths and nap times should I be trying to get here? Weissbluth says the second nap too early means it’s not going to be as restorative or something, but I can’t get her to make it even until noon after an 8am first nap…and then we need at least two more little junk naps for her to get through the day without misery all around!
I have made you my sleep guru, so any help would be incredibly amazing!
Thanks,
Abby
Wake times are key because day sleep is largely driven by how long you’ve been awake. I picture it like a balloon that’s slowly inflating as you’re awake – too long and your balloon pops, too short and it’s wrinkly and no fun.
So I don’t want to push you into the depths of obsessive despair but yeah – keeping an eye on wake time is really helpful (you don’t need to go nutz about it though!).
Most 7 month olds can be awake ~1.5 hours before nap #1 and this wake time generally expands as the day goes on. If she’s waking at 6 AM, an ~8 AM naptime sounds about right. She might go ~2 hours between nap #1 and nap #2 and 2.5 hours between 2-3 and likely ~3.5 before bedtime.
I will say not ALL naps will be long so if you’re getting ONE long nap a day that might be as good as it can be for now! That’s 1 long nap more than many get 😉 So 1 long nap + a few cap naps + good night sleep is actually pretty great at 7 months!
Hello,
I’ve done all the wrong things and am now left with a 13.5 month old who doesn’t nap or sleep well. She did sleep through the night and take two solid naps. Then she turned one. And is teething. And now it’s terrible.
I nurse her to sleep for naps and nighttime. Which was never a problem until recently. Now she might nap 30-40 minutes (used to take two naps, but now doesn’t seem to want to take two) and then wake in the night. I do not nurse in the night, just go lay her down (as she stands and screams) and rub her back.
I don’t know what her wake times before her nap should be or how to break the nursing to sleep habit. I love nursing her but am exhausted and feel bad for her, because she’s definitely not getting enough sleep.
She’s usually up for the day around 6:30am. I’ve tried naps at 9:30, 10:30, 11:00, noon. Nothing seems to help.
Please. Help me and my baby sleep.
I have 2 thoughts:
1) If you’re nursing to sleep AT bedtime she’s going to expect to nurse when she wakes at night. So the standing and screaming during the night all links back to the nursing to sleep AT bedtime. If you want to help her sleep better at night she’s got to fall asleep without nursing AT bedtime – everything starts there.
How you break the nurse to sleep association at bedtime is really up to you. Sleep training is the most direct route. If you want to try to make it more gradual ideally you nurse her 20 minutes prior to bedtime then pass off to a partner who finishes the bedtime routine and helps her to fall asleep without nursing (rocking, patting, etc). Eventually she has got to fall asleep without the rocking/patting as well but this could be an interm step.
2) She’s likely ready for just 1 nap a day. It’s hard to say exactly when that should occur but most kids take their 1 nap between 11 AM – 1 PM. Getting her to fall asleep sans nursing at naptime will likely be MORE challenging than it is at bedtime (not trying to be a bummer, just realistic).
Personally I would start with bedtime and once you’ve really nailed independent sleep THERE, move on to naps. Because having a success under your belt will boost your confidence 🙂
Thank you for your reply!
To stop the nursing to sleep habit, especially at nap time, how do you do it? Cry it out? How long before quitting the nap and trying again later? She’s a stubborn cookie like her mother.
Last night she slept 7pm-5:30am, so I think we are on the right track.
Also, I totally agree with you- you can never have too much wine, cheese or GoT!!
Hi Alexis,
You’re website is so great, has provided my friends and I with some real help.
I have a 6mth old baby who has always settled easily and has slept at night reasonably well (0-2 wake ups for a feed per night). She settles on her own, in her cot or in the pram but her naps have always been short and now she’s 6 mths they’ve gotten even shorter (30 mins). I’m really struggling to get her into a routine with solids + feeds (I also have a toddler which complicates things). We’ve never used a dummy but she does suck her thumb to go off to sleep much of the time.
I’m trying the wake to sleep thing but I have a couple of quick questions:
1) Does the fact that she sucks her thumb to get to sleep change things? I know it isn’t a great habit but I’m not overly worried about it as I figure she’ll grow out of it, and I don’t know how to change it anyway. But… when she wakes I’ve found that she really does want to suck on something to resettle. I’ve only been able to resettle her back to sleep either by giving her a dummy or feeding her. I did the feeding thing last week but have stopped as it isn’t a great habit to get into. My questions are:
1) Should I be trying to stop her sucking her thumb?
2) I don’t want to introduce a dummy now but which is worse – not having enough sleep and having 30min naps all day, or using a dummy?
3) Everyone says routine and regular schedules are important. When I can’t get her to sleep longer than 30mins – should I change the plan for the rest of the day and put her down when she’s tired (approx 2hrs after she wakes) or still to the original plan? e.g. if she naps from 830-9am, should I stick with the original plan to put her down at 12, or bring the next nap forward to 11?
Thank you for your help! I want to spend more time with my toddler but am finding it so stressful that I have placed him in nursery much of the time and am feeling very guilty.
Alexis-
Thanks for all this great information on your site! I have a newborn, my second kiddo, that I have had a hard time with naps. Like awful. And I know he’s a newborn, but he’s almost 6 weeks and I would really like to help make an effort to improve his daytime sleep. I use all my “s”‘s and other tools: swaddle, white noise, swing, plus shushing (with the baby shushed), and the jiggle AND the paci. His issue is not falling asleep, it’s staying asleep. He can’t manage thru his sleep cycle to engage in another one, so we’re left with 15-20 minute naps without him sleeping on me to jiggle or pat him thru those. I know he’s still little, but he’s going to start daycare soon, so Any advice on how to further help him manage thru the sleep transitions even a little at his age?
*Note: he likes his paci, but it falls out almost immediately and that seems to wake him too. When he does wake and I go in there and simply replace his paci, that seems to appease him, but it’ll fall out shortly after and round and round we go. He’s also a decent night sleeper (in the swing, swaddle, etc) for his age.
Thank you a ton in advance–my decision to procreate a third time is dependent on this ones sleep:):)
I am really ejoying your site, but once again I am frustrated to see no advise for women who must have their babies in daycare. Daycare should be listed as the number 1 nap disruptor! And am I forever going to have a crap napper because I can’t be a stay at home mom? And since naps greatly effect night sleep, I guess I will never be able to fully help my baby sleep through the night…sigh.
So here’s the deal – daycare is EXTREMELY SITUATIONALLY SPECIFIC. Is your child is a larger institutional daycare or smaller in-home daycare? Also daycare institutions are subject to various state and regional policies based on where you live. In some swaddling is technically illegal. Others have mixed ages so babies have to nap in a room with bright lights and children playing. Others are able to provide dark sleep spaces or use white noise. Some babies sleep AMAZING at daycare but resolutely take 20 minute naps for Mom on weekends. Other babies take 20 minute naps at daycare until they’re 2.
So while I can relate to your frustration, it’s all but impossible to come up with insightful suggestions that apply to all daycare situations because they’re vastly different.
Depending on how long your child has been in daycare the answer may be that they’re doing all they reasonably can. Or the answer may be that it’s too soon to tell. I will say that as babies get older, shitty naps have less of an impact on night sleep so crap naps won’t sabotage your night sleep forever!
My baby is 6 months old and she has been in daycare since 3 month old. I love her daycare, but the sleep set-up is not ideal. the children are all under 15 months and sleep at different times. The room is pretty light, and can get pretty noisy. My daughter only takes 3 20-30 minute naps there a day, and her first nap is anywhere from 3-4 hours after she 1st gets up. YIKES! Sometimes I drive her around before daycare to get her to nap before getting there, because once she is there she is AWAKE and wants to play even though it is time for her first nap. Regardless of where she is (home, car, stroller, daycare) she naps for no more than 30 minutes. I have not attempted to nap train at home because I’m wondering if it’s worth it since she’s in daycare most the week. Sleep training at night has worked fairly well and she is now usually able to self-sooth. It hasn’t been miraculous though and we definitely encounter set backs often. I’m wondering if this is all because of her crappy naps. What to do? Attempt to nap train her on the weekend or just not worry about it? Also, at daycare her last nap tends to end at 3:30 and then she doesn’t go to bed until 7:00, so it’s a very long stretch and I have to wake her up at bedtime so she knows she is not being soothed to sleep by me. Very stressful! Maybe I should have them make her last nap of the day later? On the weekend she has 4 small naps and they start earlier and end later. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated.
This is a really old post but it describes my situation perfectly! Any updates?
Now this reply is also a few years old … but I’m in the same position. Either of you have any updates from the other end?
Daycare sleep is outside of your control. Ideally they do their best but what happens at daycare is up to daycare. If you’re stuck with a REALLY long wake time between last daycare nap and bedtime you likely will need a bridge nap to get there comfortably. Heading into bedtime desperately overtired can flow into night sleep issues yes.
And absolutely kids can and will learn to sleep one way at daycare and one way at home.
Firstly thank you! We had a little boy who woke every 45 mins through the night. He know sleeps 7pm – 6.30 am (with a 5.00am feed) thanks to your advice.
We are still struggling with short naps though. He sleeps for 30 mins usually but then will unpredictably take a longer nap, up to 1.5 hrs. I would love him to take longer naps and to be more predictable in when he has them/if he has them. Sometimes is 1st nap or sometimes 2nd nap.
We self settle in a dark room in cot, with a mini bed time routine. Ben will wake at 6.30 and then nap at 8.30, 12.00 and 4.00. He often wakes crying. He has a comfotor, no paci and white noise. We have tried wake 10 min before and leaving him to see if he re settles. He is not hungry and has had no health issues (so far).
Do I just have a little boy who does not need longer naps!
Thank you and hope u can fix this to!
I have the exact same problem! He sleeps so well at night (one brief, 5 am wake up), but only takes 30 minute naps. It’s so frustrating because o have been working since 2 weeks old to get him to sleep well. I don’t know what else I can do!
I am in same boat. What did you do??
I’m in the same boat too. My daughter sleeps well at night, we put her down without a paci when she’s drowsy but not full asleep. She only takes 40 minute naps during the day and we use the paci during the day. HELP!
Same thing with my 11 week old! I’m so grateful for her awesome nighttime sleep, but the 30 min naps during the day don’t change no matter what I do! I’ll try the wake to sleep, but don’t have much hope. Did you ladies find anything that worked for you to extend naps successfully?
Exact same issue we’re having with our almost 10-week-old. She’s sleeping between 7 and 9 hours straight through the night and then a 2-3 hour nap after her first feeding and then no naps longer than 45 mins until 9 pm when the cycle behind again. Also, those short naps require at least 15 mins of trying to get her to sleep with replacing her pacifier that she repeatedly spits out and putting a hand on her chest and shushing. All the while she’s going through a cycle of sleep cues and frustration cries and then awake and smiling and waving arms and kicking legs. Throughout the naps, she wakes briefly for various reasons like the pacifier falls out or a soft noise startles her despite the loud white noise, and we have to replace the pacifier and put a hand on her chest to get her back to sleep. I can barely find time to eat or use the restroom during the day, especially because I fear any noise I make might wake her!
Jess,
Which advice worked for you with regard to nighttime sleep? I read in your comment that your little one was waking every 45 minutes at night. My 4 month old is doing the same thing, and I’m at the end of my rope. If you could direct me to what worked well for you, I’d be very grateful. We’re also having crap naps (how is this boy going to develop properly if he never sleeps!?!) but to me, the first thing to tackle is night-time sleep.
Thank you!
Sorry, should have been clearer, often no long naps in the day and that’s the main issue!
Hi, I have a 7 month old boy. We had to sleep train him at night as he was waking 5/6 times wanting to be rocked back to sleep. He is sleeping now from 19:00-5am (bf)-7:30. His naps are only 30min at a time and I’ve tried everything. I have his awake time as 2.5hrs and he takes 3 naps a day. He is so grumpy when he wakes up, I assume he is still tired. Any advice on how to get him nap better please? I read you mentioned to leave him in the cot for an hour from the start of the nap, do I go and reassure him every 5min, he usually cries.
His schedule is as follows:
5ish breastfeeding
7:30 wakes up
8:30 oats
10:00 nap
10:30 formula
12:00 lunch
13:00 nap
14:30 formula
15:00 nap
17:00 dinner
18:00bath, breastfeeding and sleep all before 19:00
We have use sleep training for bedtime and it has worked great for our 6 month old. She is putting herself to sleep and waking only once to nurse and goes right back down afterward. However, naps are still a problem and we would like to begin working on them. My concern is that she is home with me two days, with my mother two and with my Mother in law for one day during the work week. Will this inconsistency in location and caregiver affect her ability to adapt if we try to keep everything else similar?
Hi Kate! I would love and appreciate knowing how you sleep trained your little one! And also, it feels like you have consistency within the routine–your little one is always two days with you, two days with Mom, and one day with MIL, no? Isn’t that consistent enough?
What kind of pre-nap routine would you suggest?
There is no magic prenap routine, just whatever you enjoy that is:
– consistent
– brief
– soothing
So diaper change, read a few books, sing a song is great.
Hi, my son is 13 weeks old and I have started to find that previous strategies for helping him to nap no longer work. He was napping for 50min 4 times a day then awake for 2hrs but would only go to sleep in my arms. At night he feeds to sleep and stays down for about 7hrs. It is now taking a lot longer to get him to sleep and rocking him in my arms no longer works, he’s basically going until he passes out from exhaustion and crying, but is now only sleeping for 35 mins max unless he’s in his buggie. I find a lot of advice tends to be up to 3 months and then 3 months onwards so I feel like we’re in a translational phase. Any advice would be so gratefully appreciated as my poor little boy is getting so overtired and I feel like a failing mum.
I’m currently in the middle of CIO with my 12.5 month old, and I think he may have hit the “Burst” point a few days ago because everything about going down was taking longer whether for night or naps. Last night he slept 8 hours straight no outbursts (yay!) with a total of just around 11.5hrs, and this morning he finally fell asleep for his morning nap after 50 minutes of crying at 10:25. He’s been asleep since, meaning 2h25m so far. I’m wondering if this will negatively impact his afternoon nap and going down for bed tonight. We’re now on day 9 with some bumps in the road on days 5-8. I’m trying to just keep my head down and push through. Any thoughts?
i have a 3month old who goes to sleep himself with no help, no paci or anything. Its near impossible to get him back to sleep an he only sleeps for 30min. Hes only awake for 1.5hrs sometimes (rarely) 2hrs max. Any tips for longer naps please?
Hi there, read the post above– that’s what it’s ALL ABOUT
I have a 5 month old who was taking great long naps in her crib through last week, and all of a sudden this weekend stopped taking long naps. What were once an hour minimum to an hour and 45 minute naps in the morning and around noon are now 30-45 minutes. I haven’t changed anything in the routine, she naps in her crib and before naps I read to her in a little seat, wrap her in her sleep suit (baby merlin magic sleep suit) and I rock her in my arms for a minute – minute and half and put her down…her eyes flutter she cries out and bam – asleep…but she can’t seem to make it back to deep sleep when she comes out of the first cycle. Am I putting her down asleep? Am I putting her down awake? Should I go directly into the crib after putting her in the sleep suit and let her fall asleep on her own without the rocking? Maybe this doesn’t seem like a terrible problem, but I go to back to work in two weeks (Teacher and SAHD for the summer) and my mother in law will be watching her and I want her napping well so she doesn’t go insane!
Would love to hear the answer to this as I have the same question: at what point does an eyelid flutter count as asleep? Also FWIW (moot point now as it’s been months since you originally asked), I transitioned my 5-month-old from the Merlin suit to the sleep sack just after she began rolling over before she hit 5 months and her sleep improved greatly.
Hi! I don’t believe an eye flutter really counts as being awake enough. Baby should be tired, but awake. Eyes almost closed is probably too close to being asleep, the baby would still have a sleep association with you. Unless it’s working of course and baby isn’t waking up at night!
Hi there! I have a 7mth old. She’s formula fed. She sleeps like a champ at night (so we think atleast!) goes down at 830 at the latest. We put on pjs, play, feed, lullaby plays in her room, and we put her to sleep awake. She will roll around and play for a bit if she’s not sleepy, but within 10-15 mins she will fall asleep. Without us having to check in on her at all. She will wake once through the night, to be fed which is between 5-7am. I have thought a few times that she may want to be awake for the day, but it’s more of a dream feed. She cries till she’s fed, then falls asleep before she’s even finished her bottle. She goes back to sleep. She wakes at different times each day, for 3 weeks she was waking at 1030. Then for 4 days it was 8am now for the last weeks it’s been 9am. I don’t mind when she wakes up, I’m a stay at home mom. So time doesn’t matter to me. Our biggest problem is nap time, she used to be a great napper when she was in her swing. At 4mths I tried to transition her to crib for naps (she’s been sleep in her crib at night since 6 weeks) but it was a nightmare for both of us. She screamed for 30 mins straight. Even if I reassured her, and soothed her. So after a week, I gave up. Talked to doctor about it, and they said to wait till she’s older to try again. Fast forward to 6months, we decided to attempt napping in crib again. First day, no problem. Our cold. For an hour! Great. Ever since then it’s gone down hill. Unfortunately we’ve become the parents that waste liters of gas so LO can nap. She can’t nap in her swing anymore she hates it. But the crib is the worst thing to her for naps. She screams. And screams. I do almost a similar routine, just no pjs. Playtime, feed, play music, make it dark, and put down to sleep. She has a soother, her blankey and a stuffed animal she holds onto. She gets them all for naps as well. After 20 mins of going in at 5 minutes intervals, she will sleep. But it’s a 20 minute nap. Maybe 30 minutes if I’m lucky. Then she wakes up crying. (She wakes up in the morning happy and babbling to herself) and then of course I have a miserable baby for an hour. She will nap in the car for an hour. I’m just lost at what to do. I debated about trying to get her to nap in her play pen. We don’t use it at all for anything. So wonder if she associates that to nap she will go down easier? When my parents watch her or my in laws, she will nap on a big bed with pillows around her. I haven’t got her on a schedule during the day for naps yet only because of the time she wakes up at. It being all over the place. Majority of the time she will nap at 11 if she’s up at 8/9. But of course not in the crib. I’m not sure what else we should do. Hope you can shed some light !
Hi there Alexis – First, I’m loving your blog. It has helped our family so much over the past month: longer period of sleep at night – hallelujah! – and fewer tears at bedtime. Thank you!
I have a question about napping and noise. How important/is it important to be quiet around Baby while she naps? And if I’m noisy during naps will she learn to be a deep sleeper despite ruckus? We, in the summers, live in a one room cabin in Alaska. I plan to use her nap time as my get-stuff-done time but I hate to cut her naps short with my washing dishes, doing laundry (the generator right outside is loud), etc. all in the same room where she’s sleeping. I feel like I figure out her sleep pattern and start a quiet project during light sleep but, of course, as soon as I think I’ve pegged her as deep-sleeping and pick up my noisy project she surprises me and wakes up. Also, how/when does tolerance or difficulty with noise while sleeping change as they age? Thank you, thank you!
Hi, we too are dealing with increasingly short naps as we are sleep training at 8 months old. We are able to put her down awake because she generally CIO for 30-40 mins. Then she wakes up 30 mins later. This used to be 45 mins and prior to that she had 2 hour sleeps at least 1x/day. You say bore them to sleep which is essentially CIO but can you be more specific? Do you still do the 10 min check ins or leave them to cry? I haven’t gotten up the guts to try to wake her before she wakes but that could also be because she keeps waking earlier anyways!! Could you provide some insight? Thanks.
Hi! My 9mo definitely has a nap problem! And a sleep problem for that matter… I found this article very helpful, but i have a question… Is it okay / advisable to apply both methods simultaneously (Disrupt the Sleep and Bore to Sleep)? Or is it better to start with one, say disrupt the sleep first to reestablish a proper sleep cycle, then move to the other “bore to sleep” if needed?
Thanks so much!
Hi, thanks for all the information, very interesting and helpful! Our 9-month old is having 2 solid naps a day (mostly 1.5 hrs each), so all good. However, I nurse her to sleep so I need to finish with that! We sleeptrained her at night and she learned to fall asleep on her own. During the day I don’t know how to do that though, as she wouldn’t put herself to nap independently. How can I teach her that? Is it a good idea to try your method for night weaning of nursing her one minute less on each boob for naptimes as well? Thanks in advance!
Hi Alexis,
Over the last week, I have read pretty much every article on your blog and a tonne of the comments too which have been very helpful! So thank you! However I’m still in need of some help, more like an SOS or life raft.
I’ll be honest, I had no idea I was forming bad habits, I just figured it would just happen (lol to the newbie first time mom). As a newborn she would sleep anywhere, so I’d just let her. There was no real commitment to sleep until I realized suddenly it was hard to put her to sleep and she wasn’t sleeping during the day. Just screaming.
Today is day 4 of using a mamaroo to help my babe fall asleep. I have been so consistent it hurts (my husband admitted if I hadn’t been so committed he would have give up days ago) I do a routine for naps and bedtime but seem to be gaining little to no ground. Previously, on someone’s advice I tried CIO in her crib before doing my research, which left me slightly traumatized. I tried CIO for about 10-12 days and had the same pre-nap/bedtime routine.
My sweet 12 week old will fall asleep and can nod off by herself with her soother, then 10-15 minutes later she is screaming because it’s fallen out. I or my very supportive husband settles her down and puts it back in again, then repeat continually until nap time is done. We do this until she gets a good long stretch (30 min plus) or it’s time to eat again, which means we can play this game for upwards of 3 hours. There is the odd time where she somehow makes it past this point and I make sure we disrupt her sleep cycle to keep her going. However these times are rare and inconsistent.
We tried different soothers, and found that a MAM pacifier stays in her mouth the best and I no longer have to sit by the rocker and hold it in her mouth. We have tried pulling it out of her mouth when she is drowsy so she doesn’t fall asleep with it in her mouth. I guess I’m asking- should I take away her soother, even though she hasn’t gone through her sleep regression yet? I am not yet sure I can handle another bout of CIO however I have cried more then once because I am not able to get anything else done during the day because all I do is put in her soother.
Furthermore, her nightsleep has now become fragmented, where before she would cry all day and sleep most of the night from 10 (her last feed) waking up at 3-4 to eat, then wake for the day around 8, now she goes to bed at 730 (which she is yawning and tired for) we play reinsert the soother for an indeterminate amount of time, usually till I feed her at 10, then she wakes up screaming at 12, or 2 or 3 randomly. I will admit she doesn’t sleep in her mamaroo for the night. I figured that was ok because you said that babies need more help to nap then sleep at night. When does this get better? Or should I be changing this routine as well?
Any advice or support is welcome.
Help!! My almost 7 month old self settles for all sleeps but the past two weeks will not sleep longer than 20 minutes for day sleeps no matter how much resettling I do she will not fall back to sleep. Do you have any advice on what we can try she sleeps well at night as long as she gets enough day sleep with inevitability means I have to take her for a long drive at some point.
Thanks for all the info. I’ll try a few things.
Although what I am finding hard is that my 4 months old often wakes up crying after a short nap. I know he doesn’t have a problem falling back asleep on his owns since at night he wakes up I feed him and then can sleep again fairly easily. But during the day, he’ll fall asleep (either in our arms or in the crib) and can wake up every 15 to 45 minutes crying. I rock him a bit and he goes back to sleep. So either he has a short naps (20-40min) twice or three times a day or he could have a decent longer nap but he keeps waking up crying. Just trying to understand why he wakes up crying. Although being grateful that he sleeps a bit more now since he had a lot of colics and almost didn’t sleep at all (and when he did it had to be stomach to stomach with mommy or daddy).
Our sensitive, night-nursing, up every hour 9-month old became a 10-month old who now puts himself to sleep and is finally night weaned (7pm-5am) – all thanks to this blog! Alexis you are my hero!
Naps, however, are still a total mess. We’ve been nursing to sleep and it’s getting harder and harder (read: impossible) to just drop him in the crib asleep. Knowing our baby – a persistent little fighter – it’s going to be a battle. Current plan is to do our nap routine at the appropriate times, put him down awake, and let him cry for a half hour without going in. I know he’ll cry the full time at every nap for many days.
Here’s my question – I can commit to a couple weeks, but how long could this take? What then? He won’t be getting daytime sleep (except carseat naps). Will that screw up our nights (which were a disaster until only a few weeks ago)? Should I not mess with a good thing (sleeping at night…omg it’s amazing) and just deal with the awful/lack of naps for a while? Has anyone had success with a similarly sensitive baby? Help!
We are in the EXACT same situation with our little guy. Did you ever get a response or find something that works for make the naps better?? Thanks!
I am in the same situation as well. Any response?
Hi Alexis!
I really enjoy your blog—as others have said, it’s so nice to get information without being beaten over the head with it. I just learned for instance from this site that my four month old should be sleeping after two hours awake and already she is a lot happier . . lol. I am wondering if you can speak to my situation. She is a great night sleeper in general, always has been. She nurses to sleep and then her dad rocks her until she’s out; she generally wakes up a couple times in the next hour crying and she gets rocked again (but not nursed) and then is out for the rest of the night (usually she’s completely asleep, without anymore cry wakings, from 9 pm to 6 pm, though she starts sleeping around 7:30 most nights). She wakes in the night but often goes back to sleep of her own accord without crying; however, sometimes I hear her poop and change her and once she’s out of her crib we either nurse or rock her back to sleep. I’d like to eliminate the need for the hour of needing to be rocked again in the beginning but our real problem is naps: she naps by being rocked in a bouncer with vibrations on but will wake thirty minutes in, and despite returning to rock her some more, she often won’t go back to sleep, or if she does, she continues to wake every few minutes after that requiring more rocking. I don’t think we can afford a swing. She used to be nursed to sleep for naps too until she started getting distracted, and thus not nursing, and thus not napping—she got super cranky which is how I landed on your site! My husband and I are thinking perhaps we should stop nursing her to sleep at night and replace it with the bouncer and that this will help her take naps in the bouncer. What do you think of this?
Has anyone tried to nap train at 12 months or later? My almost 1 year old has put himself to sleep completely independently at bedtime for a couple months now, but I’ve kept nursing him to sleep for naps. Bad idea. Now I have a nap disaster on my hands.
Tried testing the waters with naptime CIO and he just cries and cries…which I’m not scared of anymore LOL. But wondering if it can actually work to get him napping at this point, or should I just give up and try for a car nap every day? How long should I let him cry (1 hour?) and for how many days?
Hi
I am lost. 12 weeks baby. No naps during the day. I know the signs. I do everything. If I am lucky she is down for 20 minutes (I put half baked in the crib from my arms). My days are a complete nightmare. To bed she goes ok. Extending the naps did not work. She wakes up by the clock. We want to try CIO for this.
WHAT DO I DO?
More soothing. LOTS more. She may not sleep well in the crib – swaddling, swing, paci, and white noise may help. Swaddling at minimum.
I have the same problem!!! He is 4 months 2 weeks, my days are horrible I cannot do anything. I am frustrated because I feel like I’m constantly trying to put him to sleep, deal with wake up crying, and again!
Is he overtired? Or he cannot transition from a sleep cycle to another?
Please help 🙁
At 4 months your life goals are:
– independently falling asleep
– LOADS of soothing
– age appropriate wake times
Waking up crying is just something that some kids do – they wake up cranky. And yes this makes nap suck because each nap = fussy wakeup.
What if disrupting the sleep cycle doesn’t work and they still wake up at the 45 minute mark? Do you continue trying it?
I am so in love with your page, but also confused. We have a 12 week old that naps 3-4 times a day for 30 minutes SHARP. I haven’t tried disrupting naps yet, so I’ll leave our nap situation alone, just thought I’d mention it. At bedtime, we try to put her down around 7:30 ish after about an hour since her last nap, for soothing we use sound machine, pacifier and I cradle and rock her until her eyes close and put her down. Swaddling doesn’t do much. She wakes up about 7 times before she actually drifts off to sleep because her pacifier falls out and she wants it back. And then she wakes up around 12, 3 and 5 to eat. She is bottle fed breastmilk. It’s been the same since she was born, and we are EXHAUSTED from such fragmented sleep especially since I have to get up and pump at night 2-3 times as well. You say that rocking/swinging/singing/bouncing is not to be used and to put them down awake, but then in the above post you say “LOADS more soothing”, what do you mean by that? How do we get rid of the darn pacifier? Thank you, hope you will answer these.
For starters I think she needs to be awake longer before bedtime. That the reason she’s waking up 7 times at bedtime is that she hasn’t been awake long enough. Most 3 month olds need to be awake 1.5-2 hours before bedtime vs. 1. So I would push bedtime back slightly and see if that gets easier.
And yes she DOES need to learn how to fall asleep without you and believe it or not that ideally happens now-ish. No it is not easier but neither will it get easier down the road.
Currently the paci is not likely an issue (I think bedtime is too early) but it will be. I would use swaddling and white noise and see if you can rock till drowsy, put her down, and patt her belly till she sleeps. That would be something to experiment with anyway. Or you keep the paci and get rid of it later when it’s an issue (tears will ensue).
Then she eats 12, 3 and 5 which is HARD but honestly pretty typical for 3 months 🙁
Oh wow, thank you for quick thorough response. We will try pushing bedtime back! When you say “she does need to learn to fall asleep on her own”, do you mean we put her down half asleep and walk away? Because she usually just starts hollering. Are you talking about CIO? We are not opposed to it, just wanted to see if that would be something to try at this age?
Hi Alexis,
First of all thank you so much for your blog! You are the reason for my return (partial?) of sanity, so thank you! My daughter is 8 mo and about 2 months ago we decided to venture out into CIO-ville… she went from crazy needing to be swung n rocked n nursed n pacified and all of he above separately or together all freaking night and for naps, to a much more manageable waking about 4-5 times to nurse then goes right back to sleep. We have trained her to fall asleep in her crib for every sleep without any props. I nurse her about a half hour before bed time at the start of her bed time routine. I follow a flexible eat play sleep routine. I am quite confident that I can check off all those from your list about causes for short naps (except maybe the short naps have made her chronically tired), and I think I have on my hands a habitual 31 minute napper! Sometimes she does 32 mins and I get excited but the second my heart lifts, the child wakes up! Every time she wakes up from sleep, she cries and looks quite miserable. With the eat play sleep eat routine, eat comes after sleep so when she gets up hollering, I nurse her, then about a half hour to an hour later I feed her solids. She is on a 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm nap schedule with bedtime at 7 pm. She is staying awake for longer periods now and I think is transitioning to 2 naps which I am trying for 10 am and 2 pm. Naps are still 31 minutes, however…. I have tried wake to sleep, and have managed a couple longer (1.5 hr) naps after which she wakes up pleasant… but mostly even after she flutters her eyelashes and partially wakes up she will still keep her 31 min appt with the boob. I have a couple thoughts I would love your insight on when you have the time. I’m wondering if maybe even though we have worked past before sleep associations, her after sleep boob association may be too strong, so maybe I should try spacing that out from the time she wakes up? She would have eaten her solid meal about 1.5 hrs before her wake up time so she shouldn’t actually be that hungry I think. Also, I read about your bore to sleep idea or post nap cry it out…. I have a feeling she will cry for the remaining half hour, but she could surprise me if I try it. Another thought is, she sleeps longer chunks when in her car seat, so should I try car seat naps (near crib not in car) for a week to at least get her sleep debt better, then try crib again? Also, when I do go get her after nap and I nurse her, she frequently falls back asleep and if I try putting her back in crib she will wake up and cry, so sometimes (guilty as charged) if i have the time, I will hold her and she will sleep sometimes another hour! The 4-5 times waking up is an issue too but not as urgent right now, and this message is already too long so I’ll leave that for another time. Thank you so much for your time.
What is appropriate prenap soothing after 6 months? My baby is 6 months and has never been a napper. We subscribed to the let him sleep when he wants which led to getting only the occasional 10-20 min. nap on someone when they’d sit still long enough for him or in the swing. Recently I’ve tried to improve his sleep so I’ve berm encouraging naps at any cost (nursing to sleep and sleeping on me) in order to set up a good stage for SLJP. We have now done that very successfully for 3 nights and already there’s huge change but now I need to get him to do the same for naps. Should I be putting him down and cio like bedtime so he’s going down awake?
Hey, great page lots of great info! I’ve been searching and I can’t seem to figure out HOW to get my 8 month old to even take a nap, if it’s not in the car he’ll just scream his head off in the crib if we put him down. If the advice is already on the site I can’t find it :/ . A link would be super helpful. Thanks in advance .
Hi! I have a 7 month old who sleeps great most nights. She is usually to sleep between 630 and 730 depending on her last nap. Our problem is naps. She almost always wakes up after 45 minutes. During her morning nap she puts herself hrs after 10 or 15 minutes of talking 99% of the time, but can’t seem to do that for the afternoon nap. I’ve tried extending her awake time to 2.5 hours and shortening it back to 2 hrs. We have brief 5-8 minute sleep routine, sing a going to sleep song, book, another song and she goes right to sleep.
Suggestions?
Good morning!
Your baby is still on the young side. around 6 months is when babies start maturing and being able to take longer, chunkier naps (assuming they are falling asleep independently for the nap). So the fact that she’s starting to extend her morning nap is a good sign! She may need some more time before she can take a longer afternoon nap. My baby started taking longer naps around 7 months, but it wasn’t really consistent till about 8/9 months. Good luck!
What if we have those 45 minute naps…do we still wait 2 hr to go bts or make shorter? Obv don’t want an overtired cycle.
Thanks!!
Hi,
Really would like your help… I am the father of a 8 months baby, I stay at home with him during the day since I work on night. He has always had problems to sleep more than 30 minutes, I have tried many things to longer his naps but it won’t work, I put him on time at the first sign of tiredness, I tried to enter his room and slightly move him to extend the cycle, hold him when he wakes up to get him to sleep more, etc etc… and nothing seems to work. He usually sleeps around 11 hours at night. Please I need your help and suggestion on how to fix this. Thanks!!
Well 11 hours at night is fantastic so gold star on that front! Does he fall asleep independently? That is the #1 issue with short naps. If he falls asleep 100% on his own, no paci, AND you’ve done everything I suggest here, then you’ve done all you CAN do.
Thanks Alexis,
I put him on his crib (no paci), he usually sits down on mattress and cries a little,I go, lay him down, put my hands on his back and stay for a minute until he falls asleep, I can repeat this process about 4 times sometimes going for him every 2-3 minutes.. Can this be considered as a 100% on his own or let’s say 80-90% :).? Could this be the problem for his shorts naps?
Thanks
I can’t say for sure but it’s definitely not helping. “stay for a minute until he falls asleep” doesn’t sound like independent sleep to me. If you want to have a real shot at better naps he needs to fall asleep without you there, without you visiting, and without your hands on his back. That may not lead to 1.5 hour naps but I fear the current situation is locking you into the 30 minute thing 😛
I have a question about short naps. My daughter is 12 weeks old and has trouble sleeping more than 30 minutes for her naps. I’ve been working on laying her in her crib drowsy and she falls asleep on her own pretty easily now, but she never makes it past the first sleep transition. So, she takes a few short naps each day and I will also hold her for a couple of naps if she’s really tired and can’t fall asleep on her own. She sleeps an hour or more if I’m holding her. At night we have to hold her to get her to fall asleep but she sleeps all night and manages to put herself back to sleep if she wakes up usually. Is it a bad thing that I hold her for some naps? Will she eventually be able to sleep past the first sleep transition on her own? Thanks for your help.
Wow, your 1st born sounds just like mine! I really wish I had known about this website when he was a newborn (a friend tipped me off when he was about 3 months old–God bless her). Now I have another newborn, and she is a fantastic sleeper. Maybe it’s natural. Probably not. More likely it is the most excellent resource and great advice I get right here. Now that I know all the secrets to excellent baby sleep, I can anticipate her naps, help her get to sleep, and keep her asleep for a long while. THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY SECOND MATERNITY LEAVE AWESOME!
My 7 month old son has basically been a crappy napper since day 1. He sleeps all night (from about 7-7). He’s doing two naps a day right now, but he has been consistently waking up at the 45 minute mark for his morning nap, and sometimes his afternoon nap. I’m to my wits end as to what to do to help!! I feel like I’ve tried all wake times and they don’t seem to change the length of his naps. He puts himself to sleep as well. What am I missing??
Hello, thanks for your guide to CIO or whatever your calling it, it helped weaning off a bed sharing 7 month old girl. She was napping swaddled on her co-sleeper and during night time in our bed. So while she was with us, she wasn’t swaddled. It worked great until it didn’t. We tried CIO after Put down Pick up went terrible and didn’t work. So we moved her to her cot bed in her own room. And that was it, sleeping through the night with one night feeding occasionally. This was going perfectly: 1.5 hour naps, three times a day with only two minutes of singing needed. But our girl was still swaddled for her naps, until we found her more and more on her tummy. So we had to stop swaddling. Bought the Zipadee-zeep, which in the UK is not so easy to get, the first day seemed to work but that was it. Since then, three weeks, later, our girl naps crappy, crappy naps. She cries as soon as we put her down, so we thought, let’s do nap CIO but she stops crying very soon and just starts rolling like a panda in her super big space, and if we leave her, it can take up to an hour for her to even complain even if she’s super tired. So we tried putting her down totally asleep, it’s the only way she will nap, and then it’s only 30 minutes. Still sleeps well through the night, but she seems to have forgotten how to do it for napping. Can you please, please suggest something?
My daughter is 9 weeks old and is a terrible napper. She was initially an “easy” baby: took long naps (45 mins – 1.5 hours) and gave good long stretches of night sleep (6-8) hours. However, the last couple of weeks she has totally digressed at a time when I thought things were supposed to become easier i.e. longer night sleep the the beginning of nap consolidation??
She now only takes short cat naps of 10-30 minutes. She wakes up crying and seems to fuss most of the day I assume because she is tired. She usually wakes up when her paci falls out so I think this may have something to do with it. At night she again wakes up initially when the paci comes out and is now doing shorter sleep stretches than before of 3-4 hours.
I am trying to follow the “Weisbluth sleep method” which worked really well for our first daughter. Therefore, she is never up longer than 2 hours, is swaddled, white noise playing and is put down to sleep in a quiet dark room in her crib for all naps. However, none of this seems to be helping. Also it is hard to recognize “drowsy signs” as she seems to exhibit these all day!
I am at my wits end! Is it too early for CIO?? Do I need to toss the paci and put up with some screaming for a couple of days. Please help!!!
I nanny for a 9 month old that refuses to take naps. It will takes me at least 30 minutes to get her to sleep. Once I lay her in the crib she will be up in 10 minutes with poop in her diaper and then it is in possible to get her to go back. The parent seem to think that she does not need to nap. She will go from 6:30 am to 3 pm before I can even attempt to get her to sleep. She co-sleeps with her parents and they say she does not sleep well at night either. Doctor say she needs to sleep more ( which I knew) and the parent want me to fix this problem! Any suggestions?
I have a 14 week old baby that either catnaps during the day or won’t go to sleep at all. She still sleeps great during the night, down at around 7:00-7:30pm most nights and wakes for one feed anywhere between 2:00 and 4:00am and then sleeps until around 7:00am. Generally it takes 5-15mins for her to go to sleep at night but occasionally I have a bad night and can take up to 2 1/2 hrs. I have used a dummy to get her to sleep in her bassinet (no rocking or feeding to sleep) since she was born and it worked with no problems until she was around 6 weeks old. Now during the day, she either spits the dummy out every few mins and starts crying or wakes up 20-30 mins later. I’ve tried parting her in the bassinet recently but she just cites even more. She’s crazy cranky by the end of the day, I work from home (currently not getting any work done) and I also can’t seems to give my 3 year old the attention she needs. I feel like I’m spread too thin with spending the majority of the day trying to get her to sleep. We are all losing out and I’m at a loss. Is this dummy related? It started so young and she sleeps most of the night without waking after it falls out so I’m confused. She is swaddled with white noise and her awake time at the moment is around 1 1/2 hrs. Any help would be so appreciated as I feel like everything is falling apart during the day.
Hi Alexis,
First of all thank you so much for this site. I’ve read the whole thing so many times and have used it to train both my children. One question-when my 7 wakes from a crap nap, do I need to wait another 2 hrs before putting him down? Or should I put him down sooner because he is so overtired already?
Thanks!
Following as I have this issue with my 9 month old who we just started sleep training last night (extinction cio)
Help!! My daughter is 5 months old and will only take 30 minute naps. I can’t get her on a schedule of napping at 9 and 1, because her first nap is only a half hour. I keep her up for 1.5-2 hours. I put her down drowsy but awake and she will wake up after 35ish minutes. She’s really fussy at the end of the day and I’m so frustrated and tired from feeling like a failure. Any advice would be appreciated.
My 12 month old son cries for hours and when he finally falls asleep to nap, he will nap for 20-30 minutes. He has been a good night sleeper since he was 6 months old (sleep trained), however, he’s always had a hard time napping. I’ve tried everything from CIO to extinction for his naps. I must be doing something wrong because he has yet to nap well. His schedule is always the same:
7am – wake up
7-10am – eat, play, etc.
10-10:15 am – put down for nap (cries from 30 minutes to 2 hours)
Depending on his morning nap, he’ll eat and play and be put down for his afternoon nap 3 hours from his first nap wake up time.
7pm – bedtime
I’m not sure if I should continue with the extinction method. I’m not even sure if letting him cry it out for hours is healthy/good. I’ve done all the pre-nap rituals and I don’t think that works. Is my son just not a napper? I think it’s too soon to drop to one nap because if he is in a car during his nap time (occasionally when I’m running errands) he’ll sleep well. At bedtime, I just do the night ritual with him, put him in his crib, and he’ll fall asleep right away.
Any advice or suggestion will be helpful.
Wanted to say, for those with the Nap Disruption Fear Alexis describes, I hear you, I was there, I tried it, it is working! Ok, I will admit I have a very unscientific data set of two naps so far but this is from a clockwork under 40 minute napper so random coincidence is unlikely. After a month of nap and bedtime training, my 4+ month old falls asleep independently like a champ. After we switched from the Halo Sleep Sack Swaddle (which I finally realized was interfering with her ability to transition between sleep cycles because she experienced it as a challenge to work her hands up and out of which completely woke and worked her up in the process) to a double swaddle with a muslin blanket she has been sleeping like a champ at night. Her naps, sadly, remained squarely in crap territory. I finally took the plunge and disrupted her last two naps by gently nudging her shoulder. Last nap she made it to 50 minutes. This nap she is at 1:05 and going strong. This is from a baby who has independently (not on Mommy) napped over 37 minutes like 5 times in her life, EVEN IN THE SWING. Conquer your fears and follow the way of Alexis!
My 3-month-old takes frustratingly crappy naps. He generally sleeps well at night (goes down around 9 and can sleep through the night, but usually wakes up once or twice), but during the day he takes 5-6 30-15 minute naps. They generally get shorter as the day goes on. He naps in his crib. We’ve tried the swing and had some early success, but lately he wakes up immediately (after falling asleep while rocking) during the arms-to-swing transfer and will not fall asleep. One problem, I think, is that he still falls asleep while nursing. So, if he is hungry 10-15 minutes after he wakes up (usually nurses every 2 hours), and then night nurse’s for 30 minutes, he does not stay awake long enough to build “sufficient pressure” to sleep. I’ve tried gently extending the wake-up-to-nursing window with more play, etc. as distractions, but I’ve only been able to do this for 40 minutes and it doesn’t seem to make nap time longer. Sometimes when his naps are particularly short later in the day I will rock him back to sleep. If I let him sleep in my arms he will often stay there for an hour or more! During nap time in the crib we use white noise in a dark room and we swaddle him (arms out – he recently started to roll). He doesn’t use a pacifier because he never really took to it. Any advice/info about what I’m doing wrong/could be doing better is appreciated!
It sounds like its the transfer that is really the problem, so I think its worth exploring removing yourself a bit. I’d try patting baby in the crib (if he rolls to his tummy its easier) OR the varsity swing method. If you can get him to fall asleep in either the crib or the swing, he will likely sleep longer since you’re not transferring. Both can work, but rarely work on the first try! So it pays to work at it over the course of few days, earlier naps especially as those are generally easier to get.
For nursing, you may just need to unlatch when he starts to get drowsy, tickle his feet, walk around a bit, and then finish the feed once he’s awake, maybe?
https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/the-ultimate-baby-swing-sleep-guide-for-swing-hating-babies/
Thanks! This is helpful.
Hello! We have tried pretty much everything for my 9.5 month old to lengthen his naps. Your “disrupt the sleep cycle” method worked wonders for his morning nap at 6.5 months, but it didn’t stick unfortunately. Now our problem is that his nap lengths are unpredictable! They can range anywhere from 25 minutes to 1.5 hours (most often under 1 hour). We’ve been trying to bore him to sleep for months, but he gets more and more worked up or has just come to expect it and never falls back asleep. Should I still attempt to disrupt the sleep cycle even though I have no way to know when he’s likely to take a long nap? We’re as consistent as possible with his schedule (without me feeling like a hermit from working on naps for 6+ months 😀 )
Hi, my son is 3 months old and I have started to find that previous strategies for helping him to nap no longer work. He was napping for 50min 4 times a day then awake for 2hrs but would only go to sleep in my arms. At night he feeds to sleep and stays down for about 7hrs. It is now taking a lot longer to get him to sleep and rocking him in my arms no longer works, he’s basically going until he passes out from exhaustion and crying, but is now only sleeping for 35 mins max unless he’s in his buggie. I find a lot of advice tends to be up to 3 months and then 3 months onwards so I feel like we’re in a translational phase. Any advice would be so gratefully appreciated as my poor little boy is getting so overtired and I feel like a failing mum.
I love this blog and all the advice seems so logical and sensible. My question is, how do you follow through on these steps when you’re working with a second kid? I have a preschooler who needs to get to school a few days a week, as well as other activities, so it’s just part of life that I have to haul around the baby with us, which often leads to short car naps or stroller naps at the playground.
I have a 5.5 mos old who is a crap napper. Same story as many folks here: Very good at nighttime sleeping but will sleep 20-40 min throughout the day. I’d love to be able to devote many days in a row to crib-only sleep, but that seems completely unrealistic when you have an older child.
Help!
Dear God pls someone help me before I spiral even deeper into this RIDICULOUS OBSESSION WITH…MY CHILDS SLEEP (I wish the conclusion to that sentence was “love” -specifically- with Moulin Rouge era Ewan McGreggor. Or any era Ewan McGreggor. Anyway. I digress.)
I feel confident we have tackled the nursing sleep association with my 4 month old and she falls asleep on her own, in her crib, not too loudly and fairly quickly… for bedtime and 3-4 naps a day. But she sleeps for EXACTLY 34-36 minutes then it’s over. Then randomly she’ll give me hour + naps. I think we’re a bit hung up on the pitfalls of EASY schedule- her ideal awake time is 2 hours, no more no less, but she’s not quite able to go 3 hours without eating and if I were to nurse her before a nap we’re back in nursing to sleep territory. the tracking and tallying is making me like A Beautiful Mind level crazy. Have used the interrupt method with some inconsistent success leading me to be pretty sure she’s hungry. Is it because she still wakes for a night feed? So the association is still sorta there? Is it because I wore a blue shirt instead of purple? Is it because I have dreams of waiting on solids until 6 mos for Pinterest worthy baby led weaning? AHHHH!
Thanks for making this worn out mama laugh at the end of a long day! Hope things have improved for your family.
Moulin Rouge McGreggor = the BEST McGreggor 😉
Feeding your kiddo 1X at night is not contributing to the short naps. But yeah EASY can lead to short naps because they’re hungry. You can’t nap before a nap without huge issues as long as she doesn’t fall asleep. So either KEEP her awake while nursing, or nurse sorta between naps when she’s less sleepy. Not falling asleep while nursing gets easier with time. Someday you’ll be less Beautiful Mind level crazy!
Hello! Does anyone have any experience with extending naps when day care is involved? We did SLIP using graduated extinction at 5 months and it worked REALLY well for night sleep and naps… at home. Baby is now 6.5 months and goes down to sleep at night completely independently. Naps at home are also completely independent affairs– we keep an eye on the clock and put him down 2 hours after wake up, then 2.5 hours after wake up from first nap, and usually about 2.5 hours after wake up from second nap (third nap is almost always in car or stroller). He goes down awake and cries for about 5 minutes and will generally sleep for 45 minutes. I wish this was longer, but I’ll take it.
But day care is a MESS! I have asked, BEGGED, them to put him down awake and deal with the 5 mins of crying but they won’t do it because the one time they tried he cried for 10 minutes and woke up other babies. So I get it, but they are still rocking/pacifier-ing him to sleep and sneaking him into the crib. He wakes up after 20 minutes SCREAMING (#objectpermanence) and they scoop him up out of the crib so the other magical babies who take 2 hour naps are not disturbed (I am consistently reminded of the other magical babies).
So now he is taking like 2 20 minute naps a day and conking out on our drive home, and then is a PUDDLE until bedtime. I’ve started taking a longer drive to get him a solid hour nap before getting home but honestly the gas is getting $$! Plus it doesn’t solve the problem that he’s just getting terrible sleep at day care and the staff complain about his fussiness constantly– they are blaming it on him not having enough milk (I breastfeed) but I really think it’s the tiny non-naps!
Anyone else deal with this or have any guidance? How can I nap train from afar? 45 min naps are still tragically short but 20 minutes is just unacceptable for a 6 month old!
Hello! Quick question: if my baby starts screaming the moment I try to put her down for a nap, am I doing something wrong and not soothing enough pre-nap? She’s almost 6 months and lately when I put her down for a nap in her crib she screams for an impressive 45 minutes then naps for 20-30 then wakes up screaming again until I come get her. I’ll usually wait 25-30 minutes before I go in and get her but she’ll scream the whole time. Should I start the nap clock from the time I put her down or when she actually falls asleep? In desperate need of help! S.O.S.! She’s hardly napping these days except when I’m laying next to her letting her nurse and I feel like that’s a horrible dependency to allow her to develop!
Ugh, this is an old post so I don’t know if I’ll get a reply, but I just need to shout into the void because I’m frustrated!
My six-month old was a great sleeper at night until about six weeks ago, at which point he started pooping in the middle of the night again (and it was always a HUGE quantity). That might be a separate issue, though, and I’m working on it.
Anyway, on the nap front, I worked hard to get him into a routine, and for maybe two or three glorious weeks I was straight chilling. Ninety minutes after waking, he’d go down. If he slept for 45 minutes, I’d push his later nap (11 AM-ish) to be 90-120 minutes. Sometimes in the morning he would take a longer nap, so I’d push for the second one to be an hour or so. Then in the afternoon he’d probably sleep 30-40 minutes while we were out, in his buggy or something.
Then this weekend, all of a sudden, the naps are back to one sleep cycle. Cannot get to him to go more than 45 minutes. The white noise is on, he’s tucked in tight, etc. He puts himself to sleep and has since he was probably 12 weeks. But now, no money on the long naps. I have no idea why he’s regressed––teething? (No symptoms right now.) Starting on solids? (Was supposed to help his reflux but that too seems to be worse.) HE had a cold––maybe that threw him off?
I really don’t know if it’s possible to troubleshoot this way, but I’m just frustrated because I had come to rely on that 90-120 minutes mid-day to do stuff for myself/around the house, and now I don’t have that anymore :(.
I just wanted to say that I followed the instructions from this guide carefully and got my three month old’s naps to go from 20 minutes to 90 minutes in the space of two (admittedly intense) days. Getting rid of the pacifier is tough for younger babies, and the only other thing we did that helped was to use the sleep sack to hold her hands closer to her face so she could put her fingers in her mouth more easily. But turning up white noise, making sure the room was dark enough, ditching the pacifier, and the “extending” thing, especially, all worked for us. I thought jiggling a sleeping baby was preposterous but it got us past the 45 minute mark (jiggled at 35 minutes). Thank you so much.
Tried the gentle rousing a few times she just straight woke up. There’s no gentle way to rouse a baby, they just become wake-up every time. And leaving her to be bored to sleep just means letting her cry and cry in her crib no matter how many times you try and comfort her or even just leave her alone until at the end of it, your heart breaks from her unhappiness and tears. No thanks. Wish you had some other methods to suggest.
I would modify this to say there is no gentle way to rouse YOUR baby. This actually works great for loads of kids.
I do have other methods which are covered in greater depth in the book. It might be worth checking out if you’re struggling with naps. Good luck!
I’m so scared to try the wake to sleep method. My almost 8 month old has been all over the place with her naps. Mostly taking four 30 minute naps a day to keep wake times appropriate. For a few weeks here and there she would take one long nap a day (her second nap usually around 10-1130 depending on when she woke up) which was great because then we could swing 3 naps….but then recently she’s gone back to 30 minute naps. The CIO used to work….she would fall asleep after 10 minutes but now will just cry and cry and won’t go back to sleep. With both the CIO and wake to sleep what do you do about length of awake time and number of naps if they don’t go back to sleep? My baby sleep anywhere from 10.5-12 hours at night.
I’m so scared to try the wake to sleep method. My almost 8 month old has been all over the place with her naps. Mostly taking four 30 minute naps a day to keep wake times appropriate. For a few weeks here and there she would take one long nap a day (her second nap usually around 10-1130 depending on when she woke up) which was great because then we could swing 3 naps….but then recently she’s gone back to 30 minute naps. The CIO used to work….she would fall asleep after 10 minutes but now will just cry and cry and won’t go back to sleep. With both the CIO and wake to sleep what do you do about length of awake time and number of naps if they don’t go back to sleep? My baby sleep anywhere from 10.5-12 hours at night.
I wonder what you mean by appropriate wake times. I had the same issue when my baby was 7/8 months old and we solved it by extending this wake times just a little longer, he just wasn’t tired enough hence the short naps. Don’t be afraid to stretch your baby a little to see what happens. We now do 2,5 hrs first wake time, 3 hrs second wake time, and up to 4 hrs last wake time before bed. He already dropped the 3rd nap and is now 9 months old. Hope that helps.
It’s funny how this article describes my daughter’s short nap issues to a TEE! For a time, she would ALWAYS wake up at the 30 minute mark (exactly!) So I started going into her room at 25 minutes and noticed that she always started moving at 30 minutes and wake herself up. So I started to gently place my hand on her back at about this time, and as soon as she started moving, my hand held her still enough so that she didn’t wake herself up! And then she finished up a solid nap. I did this for a few weeks until she started making it through that 30 minute mark on her own. Maybe this technique could work for you too if that’s what’s happening for your baby!
That’s a wonderful tip! Thank you! I will try it.
Sonya, if you’re after gentle sleep advice, I’d recommend Sarah Ocwell-Smith. I stumbled across this lady’s page by mistake and I’m horrified. Encouraging desperate and sleep deprived parents to leave their babies to cry themselves to sleep is just awful. Babies do not have the ability to self soothe! There is no scientific basis to CIO. Please continue to comfort your baby – she’ll sleep when she’s developmentally ready x
Interesting Luiza because I don’t believe Sonya mentioned how old her baby is… And babies DO absolutely know how to self sooth. Experts (which I am assuming you are not) typically disagree on when exactly this occurs, but usually between 3 and 9 months. I am no expert either, but I do my research and I am at least kind enough not to bash anyone on their own website when they are just trying to help other mamas. We all need all the help and advice we can get. And we need to remember that every child is different and what may work for one child may not work for another. As mothers, we are all faced with the difficult and never ending task of knowing our children and trusting our own instincts on what is best for them. At the end of the day we just need to have some patience – with our children, ourselves and others.
We started graduating our baby to self soothe over a couple of weeks. From a swaddle to a sleep sack. From a sleep sack to just pyjamas. From our room, to his own room, based purely on what this book suggests. At night we get him ready for bed, and we let him fuss it out for 6-8 minutes (the book suggests longer). If he’s still crying I go in, pat his head, put my hand on his chest and calm him down. 8/10 times he falls asleep in the first 6 minutes. Occasionally I have to go in. And every now and again he needs me to go in twice (usually for a day time nap). It works and he is a very happy sleeper. Sleeps through the night, between 11-12 hours.
Hi Alexis! I thought this article was great and interesting insight and as relate it to my 5 month old nanny kid.
Our son ( 12 months old) has a problem with habitual short naps. We tried your method with jostling him 10 minutes before waking up and had a great success. Now he sleeps for an hour. As he only naps once a day, would you recommend jostling him once more for another phase? Would that work?
I forgot to mention that it has only worked for two days in a row so far. Today is the third day and our question is whether we can jostle him twice today.
I read your book cover to cover at least twice now and have desperately made so many consistent and lasting changes in our routine and bedroom to encourage our 5-month-old to sleep. They have helped for sure, but we have seen almost no progress in regards to nap lengths and putting herself down independently. I wonder if you have any additional advice when it comes to “stress increasing” babies, who only get more upset once they begin crying? This little one will scream and sob for hours and hours until she has rashes from the tears and sweat, and I have never made it more than a week with sleep training. Unfortunately now it takes an hour of soothing to achieve a 30-minute nap and stretching her awake time isn’t helping her go down. As soon as we got her adjusted to a 9pm bedtime, she started fighting it until midnight again. Feeling pretty lost over here, and everyone to offer advice is convinced that I’m just doing it wrong and being too soft.
My son is 6 months old and is taking 3 naps a day. The first one happens 1 hour after he wakes and is always 45 minutes long. The second one takes place 2 hours later and can be 1.5- 2 hours with my help (going in and resettling after 1 sleep cycle, 45mins). The third nap is definitely longer than what this article suggests…it’s typically another 45 mins, sometimes longer so that he can get at least 3 hours of daytime sleep.
Is a long last nap of the day a contributor to poor night sleep?
There is always 2.5-3 hours of wake time between his last nap and bedtime.
Thank you! Love your book, love your website. I still don’t have a baby that wakes less than 10 times a night but I’m largely seeing that I’m the one who’s the problem (can’t maintain consistency when trying to remove his sleep associations). 🙁
Would love hear about what people do for their pre-nap routine!
Usually it’s fairly brief – diaper change, read a few books, sing a song or two, sleep sack, white noise, then boom into the crib.
Once pre-nap routine is done and baby is in crib, should I leave him to cry and settle himself to sleep? I’ve followed your sleep training 3 part article and it has really helped with night time! However, in the day I’m still rocking to sleep in my arms and he naps either on me or in the pram. Today we’ve had three 25 min naps!
Any tips when literally everything hasn’t worked? My 8-month old daughter still takes 30 minute naps, which is especially alarming since she is now resisting the third nap, so she is often only getting 11 hours of night-time sleep and 1 hour of day time sleep. She has a strict nap time routine, has been falling asleep independently since she was 4 months old, and all of her naps are in her crib (I have a shiny gold star next to all the most common solutions for short naps). I have been trying the disrupt the sleep cycle and the bore to sleep techniques for three weeks now with limited success (maybe once every three days I get a longer 1 hour nap).
My instinct at this point is that the only solution is waiting until she grows up a bit more and she will figure it out on her own (with me continuing to make sure the conditions for good napping are still met). Is there anything else left to try? Should I continue with disrupting the sleep cycle technique (which can work, but makes her nap times less relaxing for me)? Is “wait until she is older” a legitimate sleep technique to try?
PS I am obsessed with your blog, your book, and podcast. Thank you for all of your amazing resources!!
I’m at 10 months with the exact same issue! 11 hours at night. 1hr to 1.5 hours during the day. Nothing seems to work. Bedtime is often in meltdown because of crap naps. When will it end???
When will it end? Well kids stop napping between 3-5 years so we can definitively say it will end by then.
So let’s break it down – if your 8 month old is still taking 3 naps my first thought is – cut to 2 (extend wake times). Because even with super crappy naps she probably needs to be awake longer for these techniques to work which mean (you guessed it) no more 3rd nap.
At 10 months if a kiddo is napping 1.5 hours a day they may not NEED more sleep. They’re sleeping 12 – 12.5 a day which is normal. Some kids drop to 1 nap a day sooner than others so imagine a future where they sleep 1-1.5 hours for their 1 nap and sleep 11 hours at night. That’s… well that’s pretty great.
The challenge is there is a range of sleep needs and everything within the range is biologically normal. So you do all you CAN do to set your kiddo up for success and they’ll sleep how much they’re going to sleep. But at that point you’ve done all you can do right?
Thank you so much for the tip! We will hang in there and give that a try 🙂
My girl is just about 9 month…. same problem. She was a good sleeper since she was born …. 4-5 months she was great ! Long naps good nighttime sleep. We definitely did the cry it out for naps and she was great right away and would wake up during naps and go back to sleep.
It seems like every time she hits the sleep regression age we struggle for a while. She is crawling and just learned to stand as well. Our struggle is she stands in her crib and just screams….
she has been waking at 30-35 mins. Sometimes she falls asleep on her own other times I have to put her to sleep than lay her down. Still short naps…..
I’ve been holding her for naps after she wakes up which I know isn’t good but she hasn’t been getting enough sleep.
We’ve tried EVERYTHING for nap training. Getting her to sleep is better doing it before she’s tired but that vicious 20 min wake is killing us all. And even the training to help her fall back asleep works for 20 more min.
I’ve never heard of the jostling but reading it I’m thinking wow that sounds so logical and might work! I’ve wondered how to break the habit in her body to wake up but it seemed impossible. I’m eager to try this and see if it helps.
All the other sites said 20 min naps are overtired which was the case but now it feels like her body is trained herself to do it.
Thank you so much!! I’m shocked I haven’t heard of that elsewhere but am so glad to have found it here it’s different, gentle and praying it’s just what we need.
And for the hanging out in the crib until time to wake up that was phenomenal for a toddler I nannied for she only cried 10 min for 2 nap times. after that if she woke up early she just rested or silently played. Resting time isn’t naps but still very important especially when she was trying to get rid of naps all together.
What do you do when they wake up close to the 50 min? Her naps were 20 min now extended to 40. That’s longer but not a full nap.
At 20 I could bounce her back to sleep now it’s full out fighting and screaming until next nap time. So do I accept the 40 min nap if she’s actually done and continue the attempt to disrupt sleep cycle (just started today) and work towards the 1.5-2 hour nap.
I’ve always wondered what to do when they wake up from a short nap nowhere tells you how long to try to soothe them back for.
I also care for another baby and the screaming wakes her and then they’re both tired and miserable. Correction were all tired and miserable.i feel like a failure when after an hour of trying to soothe her she’s still screaming I stop attempting the nap because by that point it feels pointless and we’ll literally be at it all day for weeks on end
She’s 6 mo old
Thanks
Thanks so much
My 8 week old has been doing these 30 minute naps, as you describe here! It’s awful. I’m trying the “disrupt the cycle” method but haven’t had success yet. Will keep trying. For the “bore to sleep” method, should I be letting him cry in there after he wakes up after half an hour? Even at this age?
Thanks for the great article. I am working to get my 3 month old over the 40 minute hump. When I rouse her, does anyone have a suggestion about what to do in regards to her paci? She still has it at 30 minutes, so when I rouse her, should I take it out to wake her, and then put it back in? Thank you!
We have a 10 week old. He’s our 3rd child and I’ve battled short naps with my older 2 who are now great sleepers at 4 years old and 18 months. With this one, it’s also becoming a nighttime challenge, as you noted about the vicious cycle. At nap, It seems like he wakes after about 40 minutes and then tries to get himself back to sleep but he becomes very restless. This restlessness especially happens at night, in particular the early morning. At those times in the early morning, I admit I have likely made things worse by doing too much for him. It may last for an hour where he’s appearing to sleep and only 5 minutes later begins to fuss and grunt and then suddenly again, he’s “asleep”. Or at nap he will fuss like he’s awake and by the time I get to his crib he’s quiet until it all happens again 5 minutes later. I say he appears to be sleeping because it’s not the deep sleep look. Instead his eyes may flutter, his breathing is heavy and inconsistent, and he may twitch. Do you have suggestions for this type of issue and is it restful sleep he is getting when this happens? Thank you
Jessica
I’m sorry to say I find your posts disheartening and discouraging. Not a good thing to read as I’m about to turn in for bed with a 5 month old who has “crap naps” we’re working on and waking every hour at night. Yes a lot of this is probably how he naps, he seems to take after me, but we’re trying a few different strategies which will take a while but I’m already having some success with. The no cry sleep solution book by Pantley is a great resource and well worth whatever it costs, even though I got my copy free from the library. I encourage everyone with sleep problems to read it. She explains why problems could be happening and helps you figure out your situation and offers a variety of solutions. Everything from the mindset of low stress, patience, and gradual change. I’ve been implementing changes for a week and a half and am alreay getting longer naps (not always linked but within 10 mins of waking) and baby sleeps for 2 hour sttetches at night. Since I EBF and I feel little guy is too young for CIO and other harsher methods this is working for us where we are at. If I had only read your posts I would have collapsed in tears, it leaves you feeling hopeless! I hope all the commentors will check out the No Cry sleep solution,(https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071381392/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_KInsBb55YNJN0) it is a quick read half of it is about babies development which I skimmed cuz I’ve read about it on various other sites. It makes sense for us sleep deprived parents and gives you things to start with right away. Don’t lose hope!!
The No Cry Sleep Solution is for people with easy babies. Sorry, but not everyone has a kid that can go to sleep or stay asleep without tears.
My baby is 3 months old (about 14 weeks) but was born 3 weeks early. Should I be adjusting for that? He takes short naps – 45 min at the most but often around 20-30 min. But I think I read that he’s too young to try disrupting the sleep? If he hasn’t gone through the sleep regression to longer sleep cycles what do you recommend? I start his nap routine when I see his cues but still sometimes feed/rock to sleep, which I feel like I should stop doing. At night he may sleep up to 9 hours for a long stretch but often it’s more like 5-7 and then short stretches/early naps. I feel like he’s in a transitional stage for sleep because he’s not quite a newborn but not quite older, so I don’t know if I should be working on more than bedtime and nap routines or what. HELP!
I have a chronic 30 min napper at 18 weeks old and am excited to try these techniques. Question about leaving him the crib for the entire hour, do I do timed checks and soothing if he wakes up and starts to cry for the remaining hour? Or do I simply let him CIO and not go into the room for the remaining hour?
Thank you
My 9.5 month old is and has almost always been consistently inconsistent, despite my strict consistency. I follow the same routine and wake times daily. I always base my first nap off when I want her to be up not when she actually wakes up. Wake up times are typically between 5:30am-7am. We have been trying to drop the 3rd nap for what feels like an eternity and I feel like we are constantly going to bed early because she never naps late enough to make it to a 7/7:30 bedtime. She typically takes 1 nap that is 1-1.5 hours and then the other nap is a Crap shoot. Sometimes it’s 35 minutes some times it’s 1.75 hours. She clearly can connect sleep cycles and I practice crib hour if she takes a crap nap but she rarely falls back to sleep. What works one day does not work the next and her wake ups are so inconsistent that even starting her first nap at the same time makes the rest of the day a struggle. She has been falling asleep independently since 2 months. What the heck do I do differently!?
Same here! Baby soon 9,5 months and first nap can be between 7.30am and 9.30am… It’s making me crazy and the more crazy I am the harder it gets for him. Nothing seems to help but me taking it easy, being patient and him crying it out. Eventually he will always fall asleep. Having a routine at this age would be wonderful but apparently not obvious for us.
Hi Alexis,
My second DD is just shy if 3 months
Previously she was napping on her own several times a day for 1 to 3 hours and some days 4 to 5 hours and she would wake up happy and alert for hours with no fuss or crying unless she was hungry.
Suddenly she is napping 10 to 30 minutes and we have no idea why. Getting her to sleep is a bear and when she’s finally down she is only down for a crap nap and then up and screaming or cranky for hours with more 10 to 20 minute naps throughout the day that never leave her rested.
What the heck is going on!!??
I’ve tried every trick in the book (yes your book) to get her to sleep and sleep longer but nothing (and I mean NOTHING) is working.
What do we do? Is this normal? A phase? Where did my happy no fuss baby go and how do I get her back?
How does Bore to Sleep work when they need a dummy to settle and it’s fallen out? I need to go back in to put it back but that defies the object! Am trying Wake to Sleep, it worked the first time but never again since. Sob. She’s just woken up after 40mins, is quietly playing by herself but she won’t go back off anyway as she doesn’t have her dummy!
My baby is 4 months and recently went from being a predictable 1 hour nap after 1.5 hours wake time baby to a 30 minutes maybe 40 on a great day and then wake time is all over the place because she gets tired and cranky. After reading this today I went in at 30 minutes and gently rubbed her arm until she tossed her head a bit. And she slept for another 30! No telling if it will work again but it gives me hope!! Thank you!
For bore to sleep. Do you count their awake time from when you get them or when they actually had woken up?
Hi Alexis,
My baby is 8.5 months old and is in childcare during the week. At home on the weekends he has two great naps during the day (1.5 hours and 1 hour), but while in school during the week, he has two awful naps (25-30 minutes each like clockwork). I’m sure this is because when he wakes up there’s stuff going on on the other side of the room, whereas at home, it’s a quiet, boring room without anyone in it. Is there anything that can be done to help with these naps?
Thank you.
I’ve got a 9-month old who sleeps through the night and has been napping two 1.5 hour naps a day for several months now. She has no trouble putting herself to sleep. All the sudden, almost every nap for the last 2-3 weeks has been almost exactly 1 hour on the dot and she wakes up crying every time like she needs more sleep. I see her rustle around a little bit around the 45 minute mark, so I am pretty sure she’s transitioning to a second sleep cycle. She gets about 15-20 minutes into her next cycle and then she wakes up crying and unable to go back to sleep.
It’s amazingly consistent and I don’t know what is going on- she knows how to transition sleep cycles, and it doesn’t make sense to me why she might wake up halfway through a cycle. Has anyone else experienced this? Alexis, can you think of a reason a 9-month old would wake up consistently halfway through a sleep cycle?
Hello Alexis,
We have been using a SWAG method from your book and seen a lot of improvement in the past two weeks in nighttime sleep for our 6 month old boy. I’ve been starting to use similar techniques for naps and it is helping there as well. The problem is that this only works when he is home with me 3 days a week). Four days a week., he is at daycare and I have no control over what happens. He only takes 25-40 minute naps while there and comes home a mess. What advice to you have for those of us who do not stay home with our babies?
Thank you
Hi Alexis,
My wife is an evangelist for PLS abd we’ve used your methods for both our kids with great success. We took our family overseas for the holidays and while it was tough, they eventually adapted to the new time zones (12 hour difference) and resumed their sleep schedules.
However since coming back, our son (22 mos.) will only nap for 30 minutes at home. He wakes up crying that eventually progresses to screaming for mommy and daddy, jumping up and down, and throwing things out of the crib and screaming to have them returned . We’ve tried to let him cry it out, but he’ll go for 60-90 minutes or more, all the way through the rest of nap time. We’ve also tried comforting him, sitting with him and having him finish his nap. This is obviously unsustainable and never works anyway. Putting him back down leads to more crying
When he wakes in the morning, he goes through the same routine. He never used to do this before the trip. He’d talk to himself or play but would not cry like this. What’s weird is that he sleeping fine (2+ hours) at daycare where there’s eight other 18-24 mo. olds plus three teachers in the room! It’s very frustrating not to be able to nap or get much of anything done at home during nap time like we used to when he’s waking up like clockwork after a half hour nap. Plus he’s obviously super tired, not really ready to be awake, and it impacts his mood and behavior for the rest of the day.
Ooofa – 12 hour time change is huuuuge. And he’s ~2 and loads of things happen at ~2. He can and will fight sleep and will SCREAM AND DEMAND TO COME OUT. And of course, we go get them and THEN they learn “OK if I want out I need to scream so LOUD AND BIG THEY CANNOT IGNORE ME.” It’s a trap, one we ALL fall into.
Here’s the deal – you can’t make him nap. You can’t. He naps at daycare because there’s a social aspect (everybody is doing it) and also YOU AREN’T THERE. He loves you more than the nice daycare ladies – yay you 🙂
Currently SCREAMING = he gets out and gets your time and attention. I would get a toddler alarm clock (there’s fancier ones but this works fine – https://amzn.to/2G1Bknt). Make it a gift – wrap it and make a huuuuge deal about. And make it clear “rest time is over when the light turns green.” At nap (which we call rest because he may or may not sleep – his choice) you turn it on and basically ignore until the light turns green 1 hour later. Make it clear to him so he knows – yes you’ll hear him but will wait till the light turns green!
Same thing in the AM. Set it to turn green close-ish to when he’s waking now. Ignore the screams but look at the clock when you come in “Wow look – it’s time to get up!” This is outlined in the book too but there’s the gist. Good luck!
Thanks so much for your reply! We’e started with the clock — we actually already had it, but had not implemented the color system yet. However, the problem seems to have resolved itself on its own as he started sleeping better at home the very next day! At the very least, he’s not screaming the minute he wakes up and even falls back asleep after a time.
Thanks as always for your advice, and now for your apparent magic. 🙂
My 2.5 year old son has always resisted sleep. He now sleeps through 8pm to 6.30 am but even following the directions of a sleep consultant he will scream for 90 mins about nap time. He is super tired at the end of the day as a result. I’m about out of options but can’t cope with his “seek and destroy” behavior or having to be held by me all afternoon if he hasn’t slept. what else could i try? Or how long should i persist? He sleeps at childcare 2 days per week, sometimes with a nanny 1 day per week but the other days we often skip the nao altogether or he will sleep on my bed for a couple of hours after 90 mins of screaming. Thanks
My 10 week old suddenly won’t nap anywhere but on me.i feel like I am messing up wake times. Any advice?
I have a 3 month old who sleeps great at night but has been stuck in the 1 hour nap routine for a while now. I tried to rouse him at 50 min but the problem is I can’t get him to move! I rubbed his belly and head and nothing seems to disturb him, but then 10 min later he wakes up like normal! What other suggestions do you have for jostling without picking them up?
Youre baby is young for a consistent nap schedule. I wouldnt even worry about that until 5 months
I have a 5 month old who is a terrible sleeper at night (waking every 2 hours) and not a great napper. She goes to daycare 5 days a week. At home we are lucky if we get 20-30 minutes in the crib for naps. At daycare she mostly sleeps 20-30 minutes and every once in a while will sleep 1-2 hours but in a bouncy chair, not the crib. I would really like to help her nap a little better and I know there a lot of things we could be doing differently but we can only do them for 2 days before she is back at daycare and then it is like starting over the following weekend. She is at a child care center in a room with 7 other infants so they can’t implement special strategies for me. I have read A LOT of stuff on naps and I have never found any mention of how parents do it when they aren’t home with their baby 7 days a week. Any advice from other working parents?
Blinds increase, however the number of arms never increase; actually, they decrease.
Hi Alexis, I have a question about naps and it would mean so much to hear back from you! I have taken away all sleep associations/looked at the physical environment, etc,etc, and my baby still will not nap more than 45 ish minutes. She wakes up so cranky and grumpy because she is still tired but cant put herself back to sleep and I am so tempted to give the pacifier back as she was a very happy baby previous to this. I have read that babies her age (4 months) may not
Actually be capable of connecting sleep cycles. Is this true and if so what should I do until she is old enough to take chunkier naps? Thanks so much in advance!
This is great but I can’t find anywhere on how to get them to nap in the first place. We did the ferber method for Bedtime and that works reasonably well, doesn’t generally take too long for him to fall asleep at night. The main issue is naps, he used to go to sleep in his crib after about 10 minutes, but at 10months he has finally started to roll (he can crawl and pull to standing already) but now he’s not stranded on his back he will literally not nap in his cot, I have tried ‘bore to sleep’ but it will literally take 1.5hrs of him screaming before he goes to sleep. If i put him in the car at the ‘right time’ it will take a couple of minutes for him to fall asleep (generally a 31 minute sleep) but driving around is not feasible every time he needs a nap (I also have a 3yr old). Any tips on how to get him to nap in the first place now he is mobile would be appreciated (what doesn’t help is he can roll off his back but I have never once seen him get back onto his back, other than falling over so I have to do it).
I have tried the whole waking up during nap things SO MANY TIMES. When I wake her up – surprise! She is awake. I don’t know what babies you’re hanging out with, maybe you had like really good sleepers and think this works for all babies? I can’t imagine this working for any of my kids. They see mommy waking them up and they wake up! What baby just calmly goes back to sleep? Or lies in bed and gets “bored to sleep”. That’s called crying it out. You must have had some super contented kids or something.
Hi! I found this article SO useful for me because my baby is a habitual waker especially at naps and early morning – i’ve done everything right and still can’t get her to nap/sleep longer. My question for you is this – with the jostling method, can you do it more than once in a single nap? For example, my baby usually wakes at 35 minutes so i go in to do it at 30 minutes and she enters a new sleep cycle, can i do it in another 30 minutes or would that not work? Thank you for such useful and helpful information! I am looking forward to reading your book!
Wow what a great article! Finally some practical advise – every point sounds just like the things I’m dealing with here with my almost 5 month old… Applying your advise as I’m writing this and ecstatic about him sleeping already over an hour :))) And makes the whole thing a bit lighter with the fun way you write, I was feeling so frustrated and upset – not being able to make any plans for successful outings and sleep deprived for a long while now, I was really cornered and stuck and now I have a solid strategy out of this. Thank you!
Hi Alexis, really learning a lot from you. HUGE thank you from this new mum! My issue with crappy naps is that if I hold my 7 week old, she’ll sleep indefinitely, if I put her in the bassinet, swing or rocker it’s maximum 20 minutes. Through the night she’ll stay down in the bassinet from 2 hours 15 on the short end to 3 hours 30 on the longest end. How do I create a daytime environment where she’ll sleep without being held? I’d love to get back to daytime showers.
Thanks so much!
Hi, Alexis.
When trying the sleep cycle disruption method, what do you do after you give them a little jostle to wake them up slightly? Do you just leave the room immediately? Or do you give them a lovey, pacifier, or soothe them with a belly pat?
Thanks!
HOLY COW THIS ACTUALLY WORKS!!
I have (HAD) a chronic 30-minute napper on my hands. He had been sleeping through the night since he was about 2.5 months old and was typically a pretty good napper. My baby officially became a crap napper around 6mos, waking after 30 mins on the dot. We used to be able to rock him back to sleep and he would doze for another 30-50 mins. That stopped working about a month ago and these crap naps started disrupting everything. I was determined to put it to an end.
I very quietly snuck into his pitch black room about 25 minutes into his nap and placed my hand on his belly, rubbing gently until I felt a slight movement. Then I got the hell outta there. To my amazement, he got an entire 70 minute, uninterrupted nap.
Bless you and the nap gods. You have restored my sanity.
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I’m not sure where my baby fits in the scheme of things. Just turned 1. Used to take 2 solid naps and wake up once at night to nurse. We switched nannies 2-3 months ago and he will not nap for new nanny. We put him down at the same time in the morning (9:30, about 2.6 hours after waking). He is nearly asleep and then as soon as he is put down he is wide awake and just plays in his pack n play until he starts to cry 45 minutes later. Then he will fall asleep some time between 11 and noon (now he’s been awake 4-5 hours!). He used to nap 2-3 hours which was manageable but now he will only sleep for an hour and then not nap again. My almost 3 year old sleeps more! As expected, nighttime sleep continues to worsen along with the naps. I’m not home during the day and don’t know what other advice to give to my nanny. It’s not like it’s a late nap that he’s trying to drop – he just won’t sleep earlier in the day. Help!
Hi Alexis!
Thank you so much for sharing! I keen to learn how to break sleeping cycles. Is there a way I can train my baby to sleep on certain time? Thank you!
Hi Alexis!
Thank you so much for sharing! I keen to learn how to break sleeping cycles. Is there a way I can train my baby to sleep on certain time?
Woow! I just found out about this awesome website today.
Thank you so much for the information. I feel empowered!
Keep it up.
I was researching good short naps for my website yourhealthcare.co.ke and I landed on this page. Seems this is a well-research and updated website. Nice article.
My 8 month old boy is struggling with short naps. Most of his naps are 30 minutes long, but occasionally he will have a 90 minute nap. I know he needs more sleep, and is very irritable most of the time when his naps are short.
His night time sleep is good (and goes to sleep on his own)- but he was sleeping through the night between 6-7 months, and then from 7-8 months he has been waking up at 5am and will go back to sleep after a feeding until 7am. His bedtime is around 6:30-6:45pm.
When he has a short nap I have been leaving him in the crib for minimum 1 hour (sometimes 90 min) for his naps, but he is usually pretty content to roll around in his crib and not go back to sleep. I can’t find a pattern to the times when he has a decent nap, and if it happens it will happen for one of his naps, and varies if it is the morning, afternoon, or evening (330pm) nap.
I feel like I am doing all the things in your list, yet he still has 30 minute naps 80% of the time. Any tips you have would be appreciated!
Also, how often do you find food allergies to be a part of this issue?
My 8 month old boy is almost exactly how you described yours to be (he wakes a little more often at night & we’re working on night weaning). I feel such a relief reading your comment knowing I’m not alone… or crazy.
Were you able to find a solution? Did anything help your situation? I would love to hear!
Hi,
My 9 month old is a terrible napper. She will fall asleep on her own but wake 30 minutes after being put down no matter how much wake window I do. I have to admit I have not been very good at leaving her for the full hour. Would you suggest I be consistent and leave her for the hour no matter what. She screams and it’s heartbreaking.
I have a (nearly) 4 month old girl who has always been a good sleeper, apart from when I try to get her to nap in her crib. She will easily sleep for 2 hrs if she is being held by me, but if I put her down in her crib asleep she wakes after 30min. If I put her in drowsy but awake she refuses to sleep at all and is still awake after 30min. She sleeps great at night and has pretty much slept through 90% of nights since she was around 2 weeks. She has her dummy at times but she will often spit it out after 10min and not want it again. She absolutely hates having a wet nappy as well so I can change her nappy as many as 12 times between 7am and 9pm, and her nappy definitely wakes her from her naps if she is in her crib. The guidelines say for them to sleep in the same room as you for the first 6 months, and I want her to be used to noise etc. As I have a dog so I need her to sleep through even if there is noise. Is there anything I can do to get her napping for longer in her crib?
Hi Alexis,
Was given your book by a good friend, great read! Thank you for all of the advice. Desperate for some help. Our son is 6 months old today, he currently sleeps in our room and continues to get up twice at night to feed. We seemed to have successfully sleep trained him when we put him down every night using the extinction method but naps he is fighting us tooth and nail. I have tried letting him cry it out for up to 50 mins only to go in eventually and nurse him. Any advice? How long is too long to do extinction for naps?
Thank you so much!!
Hi
I have a now 7 month old who loves to take regular good naps for everyone else but me . At 6 months we moved out of my parents house to our own. He adjusted well and sleeps throughout the night ( 8/9pm the LATEST & wakes by 7:30/8 am) I now have to take him to drop off his older sister to school. We leave by 8:30 / 8:50 am and return home by 9 am the latest. He falls back asleep in the car and wake up 3-5 min after getting home ( if he doesn’t wake up by the time we get home). He then has his 1st feed around 9/9:05 am.
He will take 2 5-10 min cat naps during the day in his crib if i am not in the room . By 2:30/3 pm he wi sleep for 1h IF he is sleeping on me or next to me.
It is as if he can smell when i am gone. Did i mention his crib is in our room on my side of the room.
But when he is with his grandparents he take good naps 3x a day.
My son is very attached to me , but it becomes very challenging working from home with a baby who refuses to nap. He is so happy joyful and playful all day even with his cat naps.
Fyi
Prior to moving out of my parents house he would spend most mornings with my dad from 730 am- 12:30/1 pm then i would take over so my dad could get ready for work.
So many different factors – I don’t know where to begin.
My challenge is deciding between awake windows or a set schedule.
I have a 6 month old and her morning nap she tends to go down around 2hrs of awake time. But that nap will range…. 2 hours or 30 minutes. And that sets the pulse for the day sometimes!
When it’s 30 minutes (and I’ve set a timer for 20 minutes of her crying, so she spends 50 minutes in her crib), what do I do with the next nap!? Do I go by the 2-ish hour awake window rule? The sleepy cues? Or keep with a schedule (which sometimes would have her awake closer to 3 hours! She’d be a mess)!?
What about a 6 week old who refuses to nap? It takes me 30/40 mins of crying and fussing to get him to sleep in my arms, and then he is awake in 5 minutes. If he falls asleep breastfeeding it’s the same. Occasionally I might get lucky with a 20 minute nap. He wakes up grouchy and yawning and often crying and kicking, and his night sleep is aweful. Getting him to sleep at night involves an hour solid of crying at least. He hates being swaddled, and when he tolerates it it makes no difference to sleep duration, he spits out pacis. I’ve one cronically sleep deprived baby on my hands and I’m at a bit of a loss as what to try next.
Hello- so you’re saying that if he wakes up quickly- leave him in his crib for an hour (from start of nap) even if he’s crying? We are sleep training (if you can call it that) now and his naps are literally 15 minutes long. Night time is getting better (still waking in the middle for bottle).
Please help… I don’t know what else to do or who to ask for advice from about my almost 5 month old (Feb 20) daughters naps. So, I have read A LOT of articles about naps and looking for advice on what I can do, but I am at a stand still. I have asked other moms, her pediatrician, took advice from articles, etc.
My little one sleeps in her crib for both naps and night time sleep. She is only sleeping 30-45 minute stretches which I know is normal at this age. The problem is… I watch the clock for her wake windows and for her sleepy cues. I have tried EVERYTHING. Laying her down earlier, later, watching for those times and her cues, etc. I know babies are on a 3-4 naps a day as of right now, but it’s hard to do this or even get her on any type of schedule because of what she does.
So, she wakes up at around 7:30-8:00 am and goes to sleep at 6:00 pm and sometimes earlier. Everyone tells me they think that’s super early, but I physically can not keep her up any later than those times. She goes to bed AMAZING at night. No problems at all, but for naps, I lay her down no matter how early, how late, how in between and she will literally play in her crib for about 45 min to an hour or hour.5. I read the 60 minute nap article and saw it in here as well… how do I do that if she does not fall asleep until right before, on, or after that 60 minute mark… how do I do that when I know she is in desperate need of a nap. She can literally be screaming because she’s so tired when I change her before she sleeps and the second I lay her down, BAM play time. I thought maybe I was laying her down too late right? Nope, even if I notice her first sleepy cue and act quickly the same thing happens. So than she’s tired as I lay her down, she plays for that hourish long time period and than she starts crying and at this point she’s overtired where she sleeps for that 30-45 minutes. It’s hard to even get her on a schedule because of her play time in her crib. I know it’s not too early to lay her down because of her wake windows and sleepy cues. I have tried even laying her down 30 minutes before she even showed signs of sleepy cues and nothing is working. Just constant playing. If I get her up and try again 30 minutes later to lay her down again, the second I get her up she’s crying because she’s tired and yawning and all of that. I don’t know what else to do. She eventually falls asleep for her nap after that play time, but do I just force her to stay up even though I know she’s tired or what? I do a consistent bed time routine, I try to stick to the same nap schedule, I make sure she’s fed, changed, she has plenty of floor time during the day to practice skills, the room is dark, has white noise, I do a short nap time routine before I lay her down by rocking her and singing to her which btw… she will start falling asleep when I’m rocking her and than when I lay her down is when she wakes and plays. She doesn’t fully fall asleep in my arms because I do not want her to associate rocking with falling asleep, especially because we just broke that habit, but I’m at a stand still of what to do.
I feel guilty as a mom not being able to get this down or to help her. I have tried EVERYTHING. I can’t even get her to take 4 naps a day because of her play time in her crib, so right now she’s at 3 naps and I know naps are suppose to end by 5. I feel guilty because right now she’s in her crib a lot it feels like because she just plays in there for x amount of time until she falls asleep for a nap. Like I said, at night time sleep, she doesn’t do this so I do not know what’s going on with these naps why she’s doing it, but at night time sleep she doesn’t.
She wakes at night for a bottle twice and I’m currently room sharing with her. Do you think if I moved her crib to her nursery it would make a difference at all? That makes me nervous because at night I roll over and check on her religiously so moving her to her room would be a big step for both of us, but I’m just lost on what else to do.
I don’t know how it can go from her being sleepy and showing signs me acting quickly and even trying acting later, her starting to fall asleep and than the second I lay her down she is smiling in her crib, talking to herself, and playing for such a long time… is this a phase? Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong……. I feel like a failure of a mom and I don’t know anymore. I will put her schedule below
Wake 7:30-8 most of the time it’s 8
Play/feed/morning routine
Lay down for nap at 9:15 in hopes she will fall asleep by 9:30
Plays till about 10ish
Naps depend but about 10:30ish to 11
Play time/feed/
Lay down for nap at 12:15 on hopes she will start nap at 12:30
Plays in crib till about 1-1:30
Naps from about 1:30-2
Than play/feed
Lay her down at 3
Plays till about 4ish
Naps from 4:15-4:50
Bed time routine starts at 5:15 (she’s loves the bath so we stay in their for a hot minute
Lay her down by 6… falls asleep instantly till she wakes for a bottle at 1 than wakes again at 5 for a bottle and sleeps till around 8.
My goal is to have her start her nap at 9:30, 12:30, and 3:00.
I have tried adjusting those times pushing them back earlier, later, doing the in between, etc. I literally don’t know what else to do. I feel so bad because by 5:00 pm she’s so tired that she has bags/dark circles under her eyes and she’s just miserable throughout the day from being so tired… but how do I force her to sleep instead of playing…. I don’t understand how she does so well at night (luckily with her lack of sleep during the day) but nap time is just awful… I literally feel like the only person going through this. Everyone tells me she will get the hang of it, but it’s been almost 3 weeks now and she still has not. I thought maybe it was the four month sleep regression, but that would be impacting her night time sleep as well… or so I would think.
Overall, just help! Any advice, tips, tricks, am I an idiot for not getting this down, and I completely screwing up this whole mom thing… I’m lost and trying my hardest to do what’s best and right for her… but again, I feel like a failure.
I’m also starting to take it personally (I know she’s a baby) but here I’m excited for her to wake up so I can hang out and play with her, but I feel like she just would rather play by herself in her crib than with me and it breaks my heart. Because she will start getting whinny and fussy when I’m playing with her and that’s my indication she’s sleepy. I do the short nap routine to settle her down, rock her as she’s almost asleep (but not sleeping), lay her down and BAM… eyes instantly open and playing. I have even tried not doing drowsy but awake but just completely awake to see if that made a difference and it didn’t. I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like I’m missing all this time with her, she’s exhausted, and I’m just feeling like an awful mom!
Thank you!
Hi Alexis,
I’ve been trying out the sleep disruption for my 6mo daughter’s naps, and at least sometimes, it seems to help. (Of course, I can’t know if she would have slept longer anyways, but either way, at least some of the time when I do it, she will sleep past one sleep cycle.) She was colicky when she was younger, so we needed to use a pacifier to survive. Although it is only used for sleep still, she still is dependent on it to settle much of the time. Although for a while I was able to only feed her twice/night (with the help of pacifier), lately she’s been waking more frequently, including earlier in the evening, and only going back to sleep after nursing 3-4 times/night (and even then sometimes it takes extra soothing after nursing). Bedtime (asleep) is between 7:15-7:45p, depending on the flow of the day with her wake-up time and nap lengths. She would usually go until at least 10p without requiring a nurse to go back to sleep, but lately it has been creeping earlier, and I know she doesn’t need to eat two hours after her bedtime feed. She has never seemed to have the strong nurse to sleep association that our son and most babies have (she only fell asleep at the breast a handful of times when she was very young). But, in the interest of making sure she is not having that milk>sleep association, her bedtime nurse is with a low light on, and she is definitely awake when I put her in the crib. (But lately I usually eventually give her the pacifier because she is pissed/won’t settle without it.)
We know we need to get her to fall asleep at bedtime without use of the pacifier, but while we work on that, I’m wondering about trying the sleep disruption technique you mention here for naps with nighttime sleep. My thought is to do it around 9 (if I can stay up that late, haha)/when I go to bed. I assume the same principle should apply, yes? Any comments would be much appreciated.
Is 8 weeks considered a newborn? My baby will only sleep for 20 minutes… almost on the dot and she needs to be rocked or bounced for a relatively long time (30-60 min) for every nap. Is this normal? If not, how do I fix this? I feel like I always have an overtired baby.
Hey Alexa! Thank you for this great read! I still have a question regarding my babe. She is 5 month old and is able to put put herself to sleep for naps. She only naps for 30-40 min the dot each time and is awake for about 2 hours in between naps. She ALWAYS wakes up from naps with a big smile and is very happy during her awake windows. She also sleeps from 6:30pm-6:30/7am without any night wakings. I know I am so lucky to have this but the short naps are causing me to feel nap trapped. I am following the 1 hours rule in the room but she just wakes up and happily hangs out in her crib cooing lol. Will her naps extend on her own? Is this still considered a crappy napper or is this just normal for her? I am so confused and would love to stop obsessing over it.