How to consolidate naps?

laurapaine2003@yahoo.com · January 2016

My LO is 16 1/2 weeks and takes five naps a day, each 30 min long. It appears most other babies at this age are taking 3 naps per day that are an hour or more. I am wondering if a lot of my LO's fussiness is because she is not getting the restorative nap sleep during the day like she should and instead doing these catnaps that leave her tired and unsatisfied. How did you guys get your LO's to take longer but less naps?! Did they just naturally do it? After researching a bit, it appears my LO wakes after her sleep cycle and doesn't know how to put herself back down, which is why the nap is just 30 min. Any tips? Should I just try to soothe her enough to see if she will go back down? She seems so wide awake tho, I worry there's no way I'll get her to go back down. Oddly enough during the nighttime she self soothes! Just not for naps. I also tried keeping her awake for longer hoping that would make her sleep longer for the nap, yikes, did not work and just created an overtired angry demon-baby. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!

shelbydd · January 2016

You maybe dealing with a transitional phase like 4th leap or something. My LO naturally started taking less naps but longer ones on his own. Before that though he went through a phase where he didn't nap much or well at all during the day. It lasted a couple of weeks then he just started napping well.

No advice, I'm sorry. Hopefully someone has some for you.

ElleMF728 · January 2016

Its a natural process that happens when naps just get longer. You will end up at bedtime without that 4th or 5th nap. Usually it will be back and forth for a few days or a week before it becomes the new norm. There really isn't a way to "make" it happen. DS1 took short naps until he was much older and nap consolidation happened for us later than what is typical.

ETA: What you have described is pretty typical for cat nappers. Transitioning through that first sleep cycle is more difficult during the day for some reason. Some babies will struggle through the first transition of the night and then sleep normally. Cat naps are also tough because there isn't a ton you can do about them since it is part of a sleep maturation process that a lot of babies just struggle with. LO can be very difficult to soothe because they have gotten enough sleep to have a hard time falling back asleep but not enough to stop being cranky. The only thing that has work for me is the bouncer or swing. You know when LO is going to wake up most likely so start bouncing or soothing during that time, the goal is to prevent baby from becoming to alert and help through the transition. The swing is great because it does the soothing for you and allows baby to stay in that dreamy state until he has entered into deeper sleep.

jen83mn · January 2016

My almost 19-week-old is all over the board with naps. We put him to bed after 2 hours of wake time consistently, but sometimes he'll take a 2 hour nap and sometimes it's only 30 minutes. The longer naps didn't start happening in his crib until a few weeks ago (he's always been able to nap longer when being held but we're transitioning to him taking every nap in the crib). The longer naps just happened naturally ... we didn't do anything different.

We do put him in his sleep sack and turn the white noise machine on and have the room dark for naps, just like at bedtime. I think that helps, but I think a lot of it is just an age thing and they'll start taking longer naps once they're developmentally ready and their sleep cycles mature

lmbrandt · January 2016

So happy I read this, I was also wondering how the consolidation works. If it was something we had to help with for the transition, or if they would eventually just do it on their own. Our LO is about 16.5 weeks and takes 4-5 short (45 min) naps a day.

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