Your child is sleeping so soundly! Maybe too soundly?? Anxiety starts to kick in, should you wake your baby if she’s sleeping too long? Should I wake my baby to preserve a schedule? Show It’s that feeling of uncertainty that feels terrible! Let me share with you how I coach a client on these types of scenarios. Here are three questions to ponder when you are jittery with angst and unsure what to do about this long nap or morning “sleep in”. 1. How old is your baby? Are you in those first few weeks of life and concerned about weight gain? Or is this a toddler who took forever to fall asleep and now is having a late nap? The answer is different for both. 2. Do you have proof that letting them sleep will be detrimental to your schedule? For example, will letting the last nap run late interfere with bedtiming? 3. Do you have actually have a fixed schedule? Your child’s age is a factorNewborns: Your baby is a newborn a couple of months old
Babies on 2-4 naps, ages 4 months to 14 monthsYour child is between the ages of 4 months and ~14 months, when she starts to transition to 1 nap.
Toddlers on 1 nap:
Tips on waking your toddler up
Let’s take a little walk through the months and look at all the change happening with bedtimes. From 0-4 months, your baby is sleeping on and off throughout the day and night and isn’t even awake for more than about 1-1.75 hours at a time. You have no set schedule. What you have is a flexible routine of eating, sleeping, and pooping. I would only ever wake a baby during the day if he has been napping more than 3-4 hours and is sleeping through a feed. I want to make sure that he is getting regular feeds during the day, to set him up for success at night time. This is a rare phenomenon. At 5 months, your baby will be in the 4-3 nap transition where some days she’ll have 4 naps, and other days 3 naps. The number of naps all depends on the length of her naps and how long she can comfortably stay awake between naps before becoming fussy. At 5 months, your child needs 3-4 hours of total daily nap hours. Whenever you are in a nap transition, your bedtime fluctuates to accommodate the last nap. I would never wake a baby up during this period because there is no set bedtime. Bedtime fluctuates based on when the last nap is. Its is very common to have a 30-40 minute cat nap around 4:30 or 5:00 pm at this age. At 6 months, your baby will consistently be on 3 naps and require 2-3 hours of total daily nap hours. There is a window here, that could last 1-2 months, where your bedtime is relatively consistent. Once you are into 7-10 months, you’ll be going through the 3-2 nap transition where your baby drops down to 2 naps. Again, when you are dropping a nap, your bedtime will be bumped up a bit earlier because you are losing some daytime sleep and don’t want her to be overtired by bedtime. From ~ 10- 14 months, your baby will be on 2 day time naps. Sometime between 14-18 months, your baby will drop down to 1 daily nap. Again, bedtime fluctuates. “Should I wake my baby to preserve a schedule?”Here’s my cardinal rule: I don’t wake up a baby to preserve a schedule unless I have proof that letting them sleep too long during the day has disrupted nighttime sleep. Usually, this is a rare phenomenon. I have only advised a handful of clients to wake a sleeping baby, after we have monitored and logged, the child’s daily nap hours and found they were surpassing their daily suggested nap hours AND it was causing either a late bedtime or an early morning wake up, both of which are cutting into the total suggested 11-12 hours of nighttime sleep. In these cases, these children are stealing sleep from the night time and using it during the daytime. Another theory is that you should wake your child up every day at the same time. I have found that most kids generally wake up with the sun somewhere between 6 and 7 am. This waking your child up and keeping them on a fixed schedule is a “BabyWise” phenomenon. There are positive things to take from everything we read, but in general, I find BabyWise can set a gal up for failure. These fixed schedules don’t account for long naps on days following rough nights, or short naps due to teething, or illness. Fixed schedules can leave a Mom feeling like a failure or very anxious when the schedule goes sideways…as life does. In the rare case that these late morning wakings are happening past 6 months of age. It is usually because the child is feeding frequently through the night, and usually has a sleep crutch of nursing back to sleep. I don’t like to wake a sleeping baby because if they are sleeping, they need it! Who knows what biological process their little bodies are working on in that restorative sleep session. Maybe they are fighting a cold, working on language development or processing the activities of the day. I would only want to interrupt that if I have evidence that it will have a negative effect on other sleep patterns in their life. Let the sleeping baby lie but a late napping toddler should be woken up.My thoughts, Sarah Ever wonder how much sleep your baby needs and when? Worried you're not getting nap hours in? Download my free sleep timing and quantity chart and see how much sleep they should be getting for their age.
Also, Check out Sustainable Products for Babies: Recommended by Baby Sleep Expert Dr. Sarah Mitchell. Read Next:
Should I let my 3 month old nap longer than 3 hours?It might be tempting to let your baby sleep longer than three hours, because let's be honest, having that much time to yourself is wonderful. But naps that go longer than three hours (at any age) are typically an indication that your baby is crashing, either from a night of poor sleep or prior short naps.
How long should I let my 3 month baby nap?How long should a 3 month old nap? Ideally, your 3 month old will get an average of 4 - 5 hours of daytime sleep, broken up into 3 - 5 naps. Short naps are still developmentally appropriate at this age, so it's common to see 30 - 45 minute naps, as well as longer 1 - 2 hour naps.
Is a 30 minute nap OK for a 3 month old?By 3 months old you should begin to notice a more consistent sleep pattern and can expect a more predictable schedule. At this age babies generally need 4 - 5 naps per day and nap length can be anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours. We encourage families to try for at least 2 naps per day in the crib or cot.
Is a 3 hour nap too long for a 4 month old?How long should a 4 month old nap? At this age, we can expect to see 3.5 - 4.5 hours of daytime sleep. Try not to feel discouraged if you're seeing a lot of short naps — it's common to see naps of 30 - 45 minutes. The first nap or two of the day may start to lengthen around this time.
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