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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
marybeth1699
member
anyone else just give up on their catnapper?
marybeth1699
member
My LO turned into a catnapper around 10 weeks old. He wakes up happy from each nap and spends about 90-120 minutes awake before wanting to nap again. When he's awake he's generally pretty happy and interactive except for maybe the last 20-30 minutes or so when he wants quiet time so we read or walk or do low intensity stuff like that. He sleeps from 630 pm until 5 am. I tried really hard to get him on a 2 or 3 nap schedule of longer duration but he just won't sleep for more than 30 minutes (even in the car!). So I just gave up and deal with the short naps.
Sometimes I start to second guess myself. But I've read most of the books out there and nothing seems to get him to sleep longer. He used to sleep longer if I held him, but now even that doesn't work!
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Re: anyone else just give up on their catnapper?
We switched my DD to a 4 hour routine and almost immediately her naps went from 45 minutes to now 1.5-2 hours. She had been 45 minute napping since 8 weeks before this week. I'm amazed! She takes 7-8 oz every 4 hours, instead of her usual 5-6 every 3-3.5.
Also, if you have The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems, Hogg talks about switching to a 4 hour at 4 months to improve overall sleep.
I was about to, until I realized that she may be getting too much sleep to nap. I was trying to have her sleep 12 hours at night- as per the baby whisperer book and the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child books say, but we were really struggling with naps. I would not have been obsessing, but her days were not enjoyable for her because she was totally exhausted by 4pm and asleep by 6 or 6:30 pm. My husband never saw her- and when he did, she was too tired to enjoy it.
I read the Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems book by Richard Ferber. I thought this guy was the devil with the reputation with CIO he has. Surprisingly the book was extremely informative and well balanced in my opinion. I realized she may be sleeping too much. Instead of putting her to sleep at 6:30 and having her wake up at 5am, I worked to get her to nap at 5:30-6:30 pm and we were able to eat dinner while she slept and when she wakes we can take a walk, have family time etc for about an hour or two until we do her bedtime routine and put her in bed at 8:30. Naps became so much easier! 14 hours a day is a good amount of sleep for her, but I had to split it among the 24 hours- 10 or so at night, and now she naps 1 hour morning nap 2 hours afternoon nap and 1 hour evening nap. She is happier and so are we.
Sorry for the long post, but just wanted to put it out there for anyone else that is having this struggle (we used to only have 30-40min naps at most!
Our DCP has trouble logging his naps because they are so short! They usually get 1 45 min nap and on really good days, they get a 1 1/2 hr nap. This is very rare though. Today, he slept for almost 3 hrs and I asked what they drugged him with!
He sleeps from 8pm-6am most nights - sometimes he will wake up to eat, but he hasn't for about a week now... And DCP says he's happy after his naps. If he's fussy or he won't let them put him down, they know he's still tired and that's usually when he'll sleep for an hour or so. They also said that once he starts "meals" he may start sleeping better - they've noticed with other catnappers in the past that once they get breakfast/lunch, their naps form around that. I guess we'll see soon enough! I told them if they want to fight him on naps on their schedule to let me know, that I'd follow through at home... but they said they want to wait and see if he will fall into it once he starts food and then we can re-evaluate.
Picture courtesy of Heidi Keene Photography