Age for scheduled naps

kellyrn9956 · April 2013

At what age did your LO start taking longer, more scheduled naps? For example, morning nap and afternoon nap? My 6 weeker still cat naps like a brand new baby. Is that normal? I think I am frustrating myself by Having unreasonable expectations, but I have seen other babies on here who are taking longer scheduled naps at even 4 weeks! Are we behind?

iumegan716 · April 2013

You can't expect a schedule per se, at this age. I live and breathe the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It says that the "nap schedule" will start to develop around 3 months, in conjunction with an earlier bedtime. At 6 weeks (and for awhile), it suggests not having any longer than 2 hours of awake time at a time, though you may notice the baby is tired after only an hour. DS definitely follows this pattern, and it's helpful for me too-- when he wakes up, I know he will be asleep again within 2 hours of that time. He has been waking up after about 30-40 minutes lately, but I am able to put him back to sleep (rocking him, pacifier, or putting him in the swing) and then he'll go for a longer stretch.

kellyrn9956 · April 2013

Thank you. I'm just at a loss. He falls asleep in my arms. I put him in the crib. 15 minutes later he's up, looking bright eyed and ready to go. We go back to the living room, where he promptly falls back asleep in my arms. I could do this all day, and am so frustrated that he won't sleep in the crib. I mean, I don't want to spend all day stressing him and me out trying to get him in his crib to sleep, but I have to do it sometime. Ugh.

mnj05 · April 2013

Mine is 8 weeks today and he's got a schedule of some sort. He wakes up for the day between 6 and 7, goes back down by 8-8:30 for 3 hours. Up again between 11-12 then back down around 1 for 3 more hours. He does this cycle all day then goes down for bed between 9-10 and sleeps for 4-5 hours then his 3 hour cycle starts over again.

I don't know if that's the type of schedule you're talking about but it's been like this since day one, except as the weeks go on, he's awake a little longer in between. We're up to no longer than an hour in between of awake time.

KmfMjf1024 · April 2013

I work my 8 week old on a three hour cycle - eat, activity, sleep- during his waking hours. I find that he either maximizes his sleep time during the morning OR afternoon, usually not both. By that I mean, either he will go right back to sleep after his mid morning and late morning feedings, making those sleep periods his "long nap" OR he'll only take catnaps between morning feedings and then decide to take a long nap in the later afternoon.

So at this point, he's only relatively predictable within that three hour cycle. At least our babies are still young enough to nap in a number of different places - so nap time can still coincide with me going out and getting things done

kellyrn9956 · April 2013

KmfMjf1024:
I work my 8 week old on a three hour cycle - eat, activity, sleep- during his waking hours. I find that he either maximizes his sleep time during the morning OR afternoon, usually not both. By that I mean, either he will go right back to sleep after his mid morning and late morning feedings, making those sleep periods his "long nap" OR he'll only take catnaps between morning feedings and then decide to take a long nap in the later afternoon.
So at this point, he's only relatively predictable within that three hour cycle. At least our babies are still young enough to nap in a number of different places - so nap time can still coincide with me going out and getting things done

good point on napping in different places! Although mine naps everywhere except his crib! I'm stressed about that because he will nap in a crib at day care.

mnj05 · April 2013

Where does he sleep at night? DS started out sleeping in a bassinet so the reclined vs flat on his back was never an issue. I put him in the crib for the first time last week for a nap and he was awake for about 30 minutes before he started crying. I figured out it was too quiet in there for him to sleep. He's used to DH and I talking at night and the fan going and during the day the TV is going or music is on and I don't play things like quietly. When he naps in the crib I take my work laptop in there and play Pandora for him.

I also found, for whatever reason, he like his belly more in the crib. He still sleeps on his back just fine in the bassinet but in the crib he doesn't sleep long on his back. I have a video monitor and watch him to make sure he doesn't lay on his face like he does on me. I know that probably won't help for daycare though.

=Lee=B · April 2013

Have you tried carrying him (her?) in a wrap/carrier during day so he can cat nap while you do stuff?

My 7 weeker has fallen into the routine of sleeping in her crib around 9pm, I wake, change and feed when I go to bed around 10:30/11pm. She sleeps 4 hours wakes to feed and then continues waking every 2 hours for a feed. I feed in a chair beside crib with a night light and she goes right back to sleep.

Sometime in the morning when she wakes I bring to bed and feed side lying and we sleep another 2-4 hours (feeding every 2) then we get up for the day and she typically sleeps for 2 hour chunks (sometimes 3) and is awake from 30-90min at most.

In evening she will sometimes do a 2.5-3 hour stretch where she is alert and plays with her daddy before I put her to bed. Depending on her mood she will lie awake in bed for anywhere from 5-45 minutes chatting away before putting herself to sleep (calm and happy never crying).

This routine has been in place about 1.5 weeks and will likely change when he's more awake during the day.

Her daytime naps are downstairs, in her play pen, her bouncy chair or on my chest depending on what I am up to.

amatistajoy · April 2013

kellyrn9956:
KmfMjf1024:
I work my 8 week old on a three hour cycle - eat, activity, sleep- during his waking hours. I find that he either maximizes his sleep time during the morning OR afternoon, usually not both. By that I mean, either he will go right back to sleep after his mid morning and late morning feedings, making those sleep periods his "long nap" OR he'll only take catnaps between morning feedings and then decide to take a long nap in the later afternoon.
So at this point, he's only relatively predictable within that three hour cycle. At least our babies are still young enough to nap in a number of different places - so nap time can still coincide with me going out and getting things done
good point on napping in different places! Although mine naps everywhere except his crib! I'm stressed about that because he will nap in a crib at day care.

I was starting to stress about this too, but then I remembered DS1 was sleeping in a rock n play at home, but went down to sleep in the crib at daycare. Daycare is a totally different environment and it will be an adjustment... but the provider we had was able to handle the adjustment fine. It actually helped US transition DS1 to the crib at home!

MagickalNarwhal · April 2013

Mine didn't really start with a schedule or any sort until about 5 months unfortunately, and even then they were still 45 min naps. I did try to be fairly consistent with wake times, but he mostly could only sleep in a carrier (moby or ergo), the carseat or the swing. I heard about these magically sleeping babies too and it made me stabby!! Ha!

doremi29 · April 2013

DS was 4 months when he sorta naturally fell into a nap schedule. At that point he woke around 5:30/6am, napped around 8:30 for an hour, then at 12pm for an hour and then again around 3pm. Bedtime was around 7pm at that point but ended up backing up more towards 6pm for awhile because he just couldn't stay awake. Then overtime he changed to a 9am nap and a 12/1pm nap and both were more like 2 hours. He was late, at around 18 months, to drop the morning nap and go to one big nap.

DD is 5 weeks and she already seems to do something similar. She usually wakes around 7am, is awake for an hour or two and then naps for awhile, wakes 11am for a short amount of time, naps again, wakes around 2pm, naps again, and then is awake for a little more of an extended period of time from about 6pm until 8/9pm. She does a big first sleep stretch at night until 2am or so, then a shorter one waking around 4am for a quick nursing session and then back down until 7am or so. I have a feeling this "schedule" will turn into something very similar to DS's shortly but we'll see. She's still a very sleepy baby, so who knows.

KmfMjf1024 · April 2013

amatistajoy:
kellyrn9956:
KmfMjf1024:
I work my 8 week old on a three hour cycle - eat, activity, sleep- during his waking hours. I find that he either maximizes his sleep time during the morning OR afternoon, usually not both. By that I mean, either he will go right back to sleep after his mid morning and late morning feedings, making those sleep periods his "long nap" OR he'll only take catnaps between morning feedings and then decide to take a long nap in the later afternoon.
So at this point, he's only relatively predictable within that three hour cycle. At least our babies are still young enough to nap in a number of different places - so nap time can still coincide with me going out and getting things done
good point on napping in different places! Although mine naps everywhere except his crib! I'm stressed about that because he will nap in a crib at day care.
I was starting to stress about this too, but then I remembered DS1 was sleeping in a rock n play at home, but went down to sleep in the crib at daycare. Daycare is a totally different environment and it will be an adjustment... but the provider we had was able to handle the adjustment fine. It actually helped US transition DS1 to the crib at home!

During the day he naps in his swing, the Baby Bjorn (LOVE that thing, it's been a godsend) or in my arms...he doesn't nap in his crib either. Maybe I'm setting myself up for problems later, but I've been letting it happen that way.

Age for scheduled naps

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