- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Houston Babies
Napping - what's "normal"
L has stopped daytime sleeping almost completely.
She is down by 10pm and gets up around 8am. And then she just stays up. She wants to be awake and upright. No amount of wearing, swinging, rocking, walking, or bouncy time will get her to fall asleep... it just makes her mad. The combination of pissed off baby and tired baby is a little stressful so I don't push it too hard.
I know she gets tired. Her eyes get pink, she yawns, and gets cranky. She'll put her head on my shoulder and just lay there and drool for an hour... but she won't fall asleep. Every once in a while, she crashes in the early afternoon and will be out for ~4 hours but that happens maybe once a week.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Napping - what's "normal"
at that age dd was taking 2 naps a day and going to bed at 6 or 7pm.
have you tried ferberizing? dd had a bunch of night terrors recently that caused her to refuse to sleep in her crib. dh re-ferberized and after two days she was fine.
I honestly don't think there even is a normal. If it helps, my mom swears that as a baby my sister would NOT go to bed before 10pm, she woke at 7am every day and after the first 6 weeks or so she never ever napped. She still wakes up w/out an alarm in the AM and is the kind of person who can't take a nap in the middle of the day. I honestly think each individual kid's metabolism and sleep needs are different and they are what they are.
Cooper usually gets between 2 and 3 hours of nap a day, in some configuration and sleeps roughly 8 maybe 9 hours (non-consecutive) at night. That's less than all the "norms" I've read but he generally doesn't act overtired or cranky.
i agree there is no such thing as "normal" or i should say what's normal does not apply to every baby. some babies just don't nap. (ask bpaullo about that. lol) i hate to sound like a broken record but try skimming Healthy Sleep Habit, Happy Child. 3 mos is usually when babies start to fall in to their own patterns and it's a good time to read the book (or NCSS- both the same basic principles but NCSS is more AP and HSH is more mainstream).
based on the book, she may be getting overtired as one option... but really, she just may not be a napper
I agree with V - right around 3 months is certainly when C started to fall into a pattern (although he changes it up a bit every few weeks). Sometimes making a nap happen was a bit of a fight in the beginning, but he clearly needed it.
I think around 3 months, I started being able to get him to go down for an hour or so nap about 2 hours (give or take) after he got up in the morning. Then a few hours after he woke up from that (usually early afternoon), he'd go down for another LONG nap (about 3 hours). The napping has morphed some, and we've had phases of naps of roughly equal length (2-ish hours). Last week he threw me a few days of the shorter morning nap and the longer afternoon nap again. I'm waiting to see what he's going to do this week. But he's pretty consistently ready for the first nap about 2 hours post-wake-up, and the afternoon nap 2-3 hours after he gets up from the morning nap.
Sometimes there's a little bit of "protesting" involved when I put him down, but he's gotten pretty good about seeming to realize "okay, I need to go to sleep now" if he's still awake when I put him down (some days he falls asleep nursing beforehand, other days he's awake so we rock and read a story first, then he gets laid down awake).
Like the others said, I'm not sure what's normal. Cooper would nap on demand when I was home and for the first month or two at daycare. In the last month he pretty well naps for an hour around 9am and 2 hours at noon.
He'll also take a catnap in the evening for us around 7, for about 1/2 an hour. We tried skipping it and putting him to bed earlier, but he needs to eat around 8pm to sleep until 5:30-6. If he doesn't, then he's up at 4:30 and that means I'm up from 4:30 on...WAY too early for us.
Does she nap in the car? Some days that was the only solution for us.
we had a major phase of this but in the end it was worth it b/c he learned that he likes to sleep and that napping is part of his "normal" routine. i would literally drive from the heights to brookshire some days. i cashed in a bunch of cc miles to get some starbucks GCs and would treat myself to the drive thru.
BFP #3 -mm/c @ 7wks, discovered at 9wks, D&C 9/28
BFP #4 5/29 EDD 2/9 - please be our rainbow
Not sure what's normal...but I think an average of 10-14 hours a day is recommended for a baby that age range. Not exactly sure where I read that though.
For Ally, she sleeps from 7:30p until 6am (sometimes 5:30am) - lately she's been waking up here and there throughout the night though. She typically has 3 naps a day at around 9am, 1pm, and 4:30pm (but they range from 30 mins to 1.5 hours). She pretty much set that schedule herself and I just recently noticed the pattern a couple of weeks ago. She normally gets grumpy when she needs a nap and if I don't bounce her REALLY fast or rock and pat her really fast with a paci or bottle in her mouth, then she won't sleep and she'll just stays awake and is tired and grumpy. She does cry when she wakes up though because I think she feels like she's missing out on all the fun when she's asleep! She constantly wants to be upright too!
Thanks for the input.
She and I rarely go out during the day but she will sleep in a moving car. Maybe we should hop in the car for a daily quick trip around the neighborhood or to the bookstore. Getting out would probably do Mommy a little good, too.
three months is an odd time for sleeping. they usually start to fall into a pattern then the 4 month wakeful sends it all to hades. LOL.
def trying sleeping in the car. pick a time every day and take her for a drive and see if you can get her in the habit of falling asleep at a certain time and see if that doesn't help her get used to falling asleep at that time.
also, if you think she's not getting enough total sleep during the day, try putting her down earlier (in half hour increments.) I'm of the camp that more sleep makes them sleep more, so if she can get more sleep at night, that might encourage her to sleep during the day.
Oh, also, at that age, she fell into a rough 2- 3- 4- pattern. Two hours after waking in the morning, she'd go down for her morning nap. Three hours after she was up from her morning nap, she'd go down for her afternoon nap. Then four hours after that, she was down in bed for the night. Even if she didn't always sleep at that time, we at least tried putting her down (or actually, wearing her down in the wrap.)
j+k+m+e | running with needles
At 3 months this is what my kiddos were doing (roughly)
7:00 am - wake
9:00-11:00 - morning nap
2:00-4:00 - afternoon nap
5:30-6:00 - possible cat nap but I wouldn't let it go longer than 30 min.
7:00 (or earlier) - bedtime
The car is why I scheduled DS1's swim lessons for 9:30 the next couple of weeks. We get in the car, and DS2 falls asleep for morning nap and stays asleep in the car seat/stroller at the lesson. The days we don't get out early just don't go as well. He needs a morning nap by 9 AM at the latest.
He needs another nap after lunch. If all works out, DS1 goes down for his nap around 1:30ish, and so does DS2... the past few days I have been napping with him.
He usually takes another nap around 5 PM, and that is occasionally car related.
Gracias a Dios I found this post! Elena started STTN exactly at 2 mo. She went to sleep at 10 and woke up at 7 am for a full week and now she's going to sleep at 1 am! She falls sleep at 1, wakes up at 8, eats, and sleeps until noon or so. Not good. Then she doesn't sleep at all until it's 1 a.m again.
I'm gonna try to push her schedule back 30 minutes every day and also I'm going to try the 2-3-4 schedule for naps.
I'll have to wait until my ILs leave this weekend though because I think it's their constant playing that keeps her awake in the afternoon.