regular naps

When did you see that your babies were waking up at a normal wake up time -- between 6am - 8am? That's about the time that regular naps will begin, right? I feel like I'm doing something wrong with our routine -- our babies are only 3 months and they sleep/nap about 4x a day. Is this ok? There's no regularly though (and I hate that there's no routine -- like a 9am, 12pm and 3pm nap)..all I know is that they can be up for 1.5 hours, and then back down. Sometimes they are only down for an hour, sometimes two...if they are only down for an hour I usually try to extend their nap on the swing so that they aren't crabby for the next feeding. PLUS, I noticed they are still sleepy when they wake up from their naps so apparently we are running to their rescue to fast.

I feel that hte naps will be sorted out as soon as they sleep until a regular hour on a regular basis. Is that right?

 

We've been on a sleep/wake/nap schedule for a few weeks now. Here's what we do..

0730-0830 Wake up
play for two hrs - then go down for AM nap [usually around 1000]
Wake up from nap [lasting 1-3 hrs] and play for two hrs
go down for PM nap [usually around 1400-1330] and sleep for 1-3 hrs
They usually stay awake until 2030-2100 bedtime.. they might take a 20-30 min cat nap an hr before bed

Note: If they only sleep for one hr in the AM, they usually nap pretty good for the PM one.

They've been pretty good about going down for naps too. Only a few times I've had rebelion, lol. Also, if company is over I've noticed they want to stay awake longer and play [or get attention], lol.

As far as WHEN the nap schedule is sorted out.. I have no idea :huh: They kinda created their own schedule since I'm here with them all day. I put them down when they start to get cranky [with a small bottle to top them off if they'd eaten and hr prior to crankiness].

 

we JUST started a more predictible sleep schedule, but it varies by up to an hour depending on what time they wake up, how long naps are, etc. i go with them. dd took 4 decent naps today (usually its only 3- 9ish, 1ish, 5ish), and went to bed at 6:30 on her own, so i guess she just needed a lil more today? good luck i hope they start falling into a pattern of some sort for you!

 

At that age my babies were napping between 5-6x/day! They couldn't be awake more then an hour, and more often it was like only 45min before they needed to go down for a nap. And, most of their naps were 45min. So for us - we just had more naps in a day. I don't think you are doing anything wrong, not all babies nap 3x/day.
Plus, we didn't see a schedule with actual nap times becoming more predictable until around 5months, so you may have a little while to wait still.
I always said that I wanted a schedule - instead for those first 4-5months what I settled for was a routine - I knew they would wake up, eat, and then be back down to sleep within about an hour, I just didn't know what time of day those things would happen.

hang in there - the schedule will come!

 

At that age mine needed to go down after 1.5 hour top. So they still had four naps a day.

We're still not on a real schedule, I usually put them to bed 2.5 hour after they woke up still, but DS has been fighting the last nap so I'm going to try to stick to 9.30am and 2pm naps... We'll see how that goes.

 

At about 4 months the morning nap got much more predicable about 1.5 hours after they got up in the morning. At that point we were still probably doing 4 naps a day.

 

I'm soooo glad to hear that other people's babies are taking more than 2 naps a day. I was beginning to think I was doing something wrong! My babies nap 3 times a day...they have been getting up between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning after sleeping well overnight (we usually get up once). Some of their naps have been shorter this week, but I think that DD is going through a growth spurt and she is waking DS up when she wants to eat! Thanks for posting...good responses!