Naps. « Back to Group Discussions

[kaismum]

Nora mostly sleeps through the night. She wakes up rarely around 3 or so, but usually sleeps from 8ish until 6 or 7. It is amazing. Amazing. She used to take three naps. A shortie about an hour after she woke up and then a super long one and then another shortie around dinner time. Lately, she takes four naps. All are 30-45 minutes from the time she is finished nursing with the second about twice a week being a little longer, maybe 1.5-2hr. Wondering if anyone else is on a similar schedule. I cannot remember what DS napping schedule was like at this age, nighttime I remember vividly because he woke up every 45min to 1.5r from 8pm until waking up for the day at 5am. It was like torture. So, I will gladly take cat naps, but it just feels like maybe it is a little strange. Sometimes I feel like I spend all day nursing her for naps. 

[lalazap]

E takes three naps and they are completely random as far as I can tell. The first one in the morning is usually the most stable - within 1-2h of waking up and usually for at least an hour. We've been trying to nail down a bedtime routine for the past few weeks in hopes of improving nighttime sleep and building some predictability for me during the day. So I'm trying to observe naps and night waking a little more closely to see if it's working and to figure out her rhythms, if any. It's more maddening than enlightening so far.

[daylicious]

Holden usually takes two solid naps, one about an hour after he wakes up and the second around 2:00. He sometimes has a 30 min cat nap around 5:30pm. He still sleeps 11-12 solid hours a night. Pretty much 8:30pm-8:30am like clock work.

[NicMom]

My guy is definitely in the catnap group.  He takes short 30-45 min naps throughout the day.  Once he has been up for 1.5 to 2 hours he has to go down for a nap.  If not, then the teething starts to really bother him, he gets fussy and all hell breaks loose.  He sleeps pretty well at night, only waking every 3-4 hours until about 5 am, when he starts to wake more frequently due to gas.   

The little catnaps really suck.  You can't get anything done in 30 minutes.  Sometimes it only 15 min, but he wakes up in a good mood so I guess it is just his rhythm right now.

[CarlyVHT]

Grady takes at least 3 naps, sometimes 4. The length of the naps is all over the place. He always needs one within 1-1.5 hours of waking up. That one is usually right around an hour - pretty consistant. It is the rest of the day that is all over the place. I think mainly because it is hard to be home and available to spend all day putting a baby down and waiting out naps when you have another kid in the mix. And, at this age, with so many naps, we are inevitably not home for all of them. So he ends up getting catnaps in the car, or getting overtired because we're running

errands, or whatever. He is consistant about needing a nap 1.5 hours after he wakes each time. I think in an ideal world, he'd do this:

6:30 wakeup

8-9 nap

10:30-12 nap

1:30-3:30 nap
4:30-5 catnap

6:30 bed

At this point, my goal when I am home with him is to always get him his first nap of the day plus another substantial nap in the afternoon while we are home. The rest turns into catnaps when he can catch them.

He used to be such a good sleeper at night but the past 1-2 months have sucked. He is up every couple of hours, sometimes more. He goes down between 6:30-7, which is good. Then he wakes several times between then and when I go to bed at 9. Sometimes he is up every hour, sometimes every 30 minutes, sometimes every 10. He just wants to nurse. Oh well, I'm just going with the flow for now. It's not worth worrying about. He was sleeping great, then between colds, teething, illness, whatever, he got messed up. Even if he starts sleeping great again, I know the same thing will happen. So I just wait it out. This won't go on forever.

[Christy1980]

Isaac takes 2 to 3 naps ranging from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.  He does NOT sleep thru the night.

bedtime 8pm

up @ 11pm-12am for a feed/change

up @ 3am-4am for a feed

cluster waking/feeding from 4am to 6am

up @ 7:30am for the day

mini nap between 9am-11am

mini nap between 1pm-4pm

mini nap between 5pm-7pm\

bedtime @ 8pm

Repeat.

What sucks is he is tired/exhausted all day but will NOT go down for a nap, just fusses most of his waking time b/c he's tired.  We start him in his bed 2 night, then move to our bed around 3am.  I've tried laying down w/ him for naps, & he'll sleep til i move away from him or try to put him in his bed.  he would sleep for 2 hours if I sat & held him the whole time, but i just can't handle doing that.

[NicMom]

Christy - I have had some luck wearing him down until he is asleep and then transferring to a rocking seat.  The motion keeps him asleep longer than if I just laid him down.  My guy is the same in that he has to be in contact with me.  I have tried pillows and shirts I have been wearing to see if I could trick him into thinking I was still there, but no luck.

[lalazap]

Here's my question of the week - how long do you spend trying to make a nap happen before you abandon ship?

Etta mostly goes to sleep nursing in side-lying then I sneak away, but she also sleeps in the carrier or sometimes the stroller. I've been trying to offer nap-portunities at about 1.5-2h of wake time but sometimes she just won't go down according to my plan. There have been a few times lately when I've frustrated myself by nursing-nursing-nursing-nursing for longer than the nap would likely have ended up being.

If I can't figure out her routine or force her to follow my schedule :) then at least I need some plan for myself, like if not sleeping 30 min into nurse-down attempt, put her in the carrier and go for a walk. She doesn't transfer well when sleeping (or more like I don't transfer her well, cause some other people have had better luck) so a nap in the carrier means I pretty much have to stay upright moving for the duration of the nap. 

I think I'm overthinking all of this and getting too caught up in the sleep experts and plans. I expected to just go with the flow for the first three months but now I'm craving some kind of order in my life. Do I just need a reality check about life with a baby?

Christy, we have almost identical night time schedules. Your days sound harder though with the fussing. I'm sorry, hope happier days are around the corner for you.

[CarlyVHT]

Yeah, how long I try depends. Generally no more than 30 minutes, then give up. But, we had one AWFUL day where he refused to nap and it all spiraled downward and eventually he spent 6 hours crying while we tried various methods of getting him to sleep. He was SO overtired. So normally I will abandon and retry later, but I do try to give it a good 30 minutes - longer if I KNOW he needs it, because things get bad when he doesn't nap.

I have a fairly easy sleeper this time, though. My DD wasn't this easy.

I DO think going with the flow is key at this stage. Take naps however you can get them - in the carrier, the car, whatever. Their needs change daily and they are just babies afterall.

[Aletheia]

We've followed the schedule suggested by Gina Ford with little difficulty.  I have been consistently surprised how well it seems to suit our baby, though occasionally he struggles to take the entire 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day.  He is on the whole what she calls a "sleepy baby," always about a month behind her schedule.  But right now, at 5 months, he has three naps and is working on dropping the third.

7- wake

9 to 9:40- nap

12-2:15- nap

4:45-5- nap

7- bedtime

Our big problem is that he has difficulty settling from 7 until about 11.  He's up a lot and hard to get back down, though it's obvious he wants to be sleeping.  DH is in with him right now- I've spent the last hour with him.  It sucks.  Occasionally it looks as though he wants to be awake and play during that stretch, so we'll bring him out.  But mostly it looks like he wants to be asleep but can't do it.

The last week nights have really sucked in general, but that is compared not to the first two children, who rarely slept for more than 2 hours at a time, but to his first four months.  Before this last week, he'd been sleeping through from his 11pm feed to 6 or 7, just as Gina Ford said he would.  

I'm not sure what we're going to do next, but we are having a hard time.