Comments on: How To Put Your Baby On a Nap / Sleep Schedule

By: Debbye @ The Baby Sleep Site

Debbye @ The Baby Sleep Site — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 05:30:20 +0000

Hi @Elisa! Thank you for writing! 🙂 Short naps are actually very common at this age! While 15 minutes is extreme, 30-60 minutes is quite common. Naps often lengthen naturally at around 6 months, so if they remain short after that age, you may want to consider working on more aggressively lengthening them. For those super short 15-20 min naps, it sounds like you are doing what you can to encourage those to lengthen. Leaving hims for 5+, or gently helping him back to sleep by giving very minimal patting/etc may help. At this young age, he may have a hard time self settling on his own 100%, so try and be patient with him as he works on self-soothing and getting back to sleep on his own.
Here is a link to our recommend schedule for a 4 month old. You might find this helpful to see where you might be able to adjust your current schedule to help ensure naps and bedtime are at good times for him. Finding the right sleep schedule can help with naps too!: https://www.babysleepsite.com/schedules/4-month-old-schedule
Good luck and thanks again for visiting!

By: Elisa Cheng

Elisa Cheng — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 20:14:26 +0000

I recently sleep trained my baby at 3.5 months old (hurray)! He can put himself to sleep for naps and for the night. However he still takes super short naps, anywhere from 10-55 mins. We followed the Ferber method but it doesn’t provide any tips on extending naps. It just says to get the baby up if it wakes. I usually wait 5 mins before going to him to restart the feed play sleep routine. However baby is still tired especially if he naped for only 15-20 min. I don’t understand why he won’t sleep longer if he knows how to self soothe. Because he catnap so much, we end up having 4-5 naps to get to bedtime.

He has a nap time routine for every nap and sleeps in his crib with blackout curtains. He is 16 weeks tomorrow.

What should I do if he wakes from a short nap and how can I extend them? Should I let him cry longer until he falls back asleep? If so, how long should I let him cry for? Should I have a time cap?

By: Debbye

Debbye — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:54:48 +0000

Hi Terri,
I am sorry things are so tough! And I hope things have improved since you wrote! It is often an overall process to transition a baby or toddler to sleeping in their own bed, and it sounds like things got very rough and i think taking a break is a good idea for yo all to re-group. 🙂 At this point, your baby sees your bed as “his” bed and he doesn’t think of the crib as his bed. I would start with spending some non sleep time in his crib, maybe reading or singing songs so that he starts to see the bed as his bed. You can also try sleep on his sheet for a night or two and then putting it on his bed so that his crib smells like you.
You can start out by putting him to sleep in his own bed only for naps. Once he seems to have adjusted to that, then work on putting him to sleep at bedtime in his own bed and then decide which wakings you may bring him into bed with you but to slowly start weaning him from coming to bed with you when he wakes. There are some additional tips here that you might also find helpful:
https://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/baby-wont-sleep-crib/
If things do not improve, please consider a sleep consultation package. You can read about our services here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/services/

By: Terri

Terri — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:55:12 +0000

I have such a tough situation, the baby is now 22 months and has NEVER slept without being on me at nap time and next to me at night. I have stopped night nursing, but nurse to sleep both for names and at bedtime. I have tried (most recently for 6 nights) to put him in his crib, but the screams were so awful, I simply couldn’t bear it (after waiting for an hour), He is my second, we easily night coached our oldest and this beautiful baby is really different, definitely spirited. We did the whole night time routine – dinner, bath, reading, a bit of nursing until he was sleepy – then BAM!, a scream fest the second he even looked at the crib, and no matter how long we stood next to it to pat and soothe him (then just be a calm presence, it didn’t work. Any help would be appreciated. I am at my wit’s end.

By: Debbye

Debbye — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:41:26 +0000

@ Aubrey- Thanks for writing! It sounds like you are doing everything right, following cues and keeping awake times short. Here is a link to our recommended schedules for 6 month olds: https://www.babysleepsite.com/schedules/6-month-old-baby-schedule/
It will give you an average idea about how long to go between naps and etc. Some babies can handle a stricter schedule at this age, while others can not quite handle it until they mature a little more and their naps start to lengthen and become more predictable.
I hope it helps! Good luck!

@ Lisa- Thanks for writing! Often managing two different schedules is difficult, and it is hard to sometimes coordinate the two different routines and schedules. I would recommend that your family what watches him continues to try and follow his home schedule as closely as possible, and try to get the 2nd nap. If this has already been tried for a couple of weeks to no avail, then have them try to push the nap a little later, and yes, put him to bed extra early on days that he misses the 2np nap, to combat over tiredness. Here is a link to a schedule that may help as well: https://www.babysleepsite.com/schedules/toddler-schedule/

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:16:06 +0000

My 13 month old baby is giving us a hard time with sleeping. He spends 4 days with family and 3 days with me. The days he is with family he only has a morning sleep at about 9:45 for about 2 – 2 1/2 hours. By 6pm he is so tired and wakes 2 a night and up at 5am. How do i get him to nap later in the morning at about 10:30 – 11? When he is with me he has 2 naps – about 1 – 1.5 hrs each nap and to bed at 6:30pm and up at 6:30am. Its just the days when with family that he refuses to sleep in the afternoon so i want to try get him to have a later morning sleep those days so he isn’t so tired by bedtime. Do i put him to sleep earlier at night or just push through in the mornings til naptime???? Please help!

By: Aubrey

Aubrey — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 04:00:30 +0000

My 6 month old daughter is a short napper (30-45mins). Although it seems lately she has been having at least 1 hour nap per day. I’ve always put her down for her naps within 1-2 hours of being awake to prevent her from being overtired. I’d like to put her on a schedule now, but the lenght of her naps are still too unpredictable. At this age, how long can a baby stay awake in between naps before being overtired? How can I put her on a schedule when the length of her naps are still erratic? Thanks.

By: Debbye

Debbye — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:17:05 +0000

Hi Megan,
I’m sorry you are having such sleep issues, on top of transitioning to going back to work. Your baby will likely get used to the daycare, and begin to nap better there, and many babies sleep much better at daycare than at home, once they get used to it. 🙂
The four month mark can be a difficult one for many babies too, especially since their sleep is becoming more like adult’s sleep. This can lead to more frequent wake ups and shorter naps. Have you read the article Nicole wrote that specifically addresses this 4 month sleep change? Here it is just in case:
https://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/4-month-old-sleep-regression/
I hope things improve, and will share the great “when Mom heads back to work” article idea with Nicole.
Best wishes!

By: Megan

Megan — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:49:19 +0000

My son is almost 16 weeks old and was on a decent schedule, going 3 hours between feedings at night, even 4-5 hours a couple of times. He has never been a great daytime sleeper, but he was falling asleep 1-2 hours after each feed for 30-90minutes. Then I went back to work. He stays at a great daycare center, but they can not get him to sleep more than 40 min. 2-3 times per day. They say this is common and he will get used to sleeping there. In the meantime this lack of sleep is causing chaos on his night sleep. He has a bath at 6:30-6:45pm and is asleep by 7:30pm like clockwork. Then he is up every 1-2 hours until 5-5:30am. On top of it all he is getting 4 teeth already! The only way I can get him back to sleep at night is alternating pacifier/rocking and nursing. The only way we get more than 2 hours is co-sleeping, but I am not comfortable with that for safety and I don’t want to create a bad habit. I know I am not the only parent that has to deal with going back to work and working with childcare, but there aren’t many resources out there for me. Any suggestions?

By: Debbye

Debbye — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:31:15 +0000

Hi Hanna-
I just answered your email to us, and wanted to post a reply to you here as well. 🙂
It sounds like your daughter has some sleep associations, in that she has not quite mastered the skill of going to sleep on her own and back to sleep when she wakes.She sounds like she will need some help from you to learn this, and as the first few days will be the toughest, i recommend that you choose a method of sleep training, and make a plan and stick to it.
There are different methods of sleep training that you can use to help teach her, including no cry and limited crying methods. Here is an article outlining different methods for helping teach her to sleep: https://www.babysleepsite.com/sleep-training/sleep-training-from-no-cry-to-cry-series-part-1/
And an article about sleep associations:
https://www.babysleepsite.com/sleep-training/sleep-association/
For more help, I would recommend that you consider our consultation services. You can read about our services here:https://www.babysleepsite.com/services

Good luck Hanna!