12 Weeks old, how long for naps?

[Jazmyn]

My baby boy is on the 3 hour EASY at the moment. 

There are some issues here that I dont really understand, and not too sure what to do.

His day is sort of like this:-

7.15am - Feed
7.30am - A
8.15am - Sleep (but usually for only 30 - 40 minutes)
9am - awake with 1hr 15 minutes till next feed by that time he is tired and grumpy.
10.15am - Feed then wants to sleep, which will only be again for another 40 minutes



This is how it carries on during the day.  He is a quick eater, it only takes him 15 minutes to finish his feed, then we change him and have a little play but he is generally tired after an hour of being up but takes really short naps.  If I try to keep him awake he fusses and gets upset, so I rarely bother I just let him sleep.

I am using TH's typical 4 week old 3 Hour EASY, but obviously the cluster feeds are different. Should it be changing with a 12 week old?  After his 30 - 40 minute nap he is wide awake again, but then is really tired by the time his next feed is due so wants to sleep straight after which is kind of throwing the whole thing off. 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

Hi Jazmyn

My dd is almost 15 months old now but reading your post took me right back.  This is exactly what Mia used to do - up until about 4 months she could only nap for 45 minutes at a time which meant she would be dropping off on the bottle at her 1pm feed - oh I remember it well!

I think you are doing the right thing by letting him sleep - trying to keep an already tired baby awake is not going to help things at all.  What I did was stick to my routine - even though Mia was 45 minute napping.  So I'd feed her every 3 hours and if she dropped off I'd except she needed the rest.

I used to be a regular on this board when she was just a few weeks old trying to find a solution for her 45minute naps.  In the end I excepted it and by the time she was 4 months old she very gradually began to extend them herself - and that was what happened with all the other moms in my birth club at that time.

Having said that there are things you can do such as wake to sleep - there's loads of info on it on these boards, just have a look around.

HTH

[kcasey]

My DD is doing almost the same routine with the 45 minute naps.  She is 11 weeks old and I am trying to get her to sleep through the night.  She wakes up at 3:00am every morning.  I try to hold her off putting her to bed until 10pm,  but she is so sleepy after the 7pm feeding.

Any suggestions? 

[Shellha]

Hi Jazmyn

My DS is 6 mo next week and like you we battled the 45 min nap monster for most of his 3/4/5 months! I can't really offer any advice, other than using W2S which I found worked most of the time if you get the timing right.

All I can say that it DOES get better, and I think it is just a stage your LO has to grow out of! As an example, my DS had a 1.5 hr nap in the am, and then a 2 hour nap over lunch - and this from the King of 45 min naps!!

Hang in there

M x

[Jazmyn]

Thanks for that Mias mom, good to know I am not the only one here!! 

kcasey i was told my LO was too young to expect to go thru the night at 11 weeks.  He is only just 12 weeks and he is waking up at 3am every morning also.  He has his last feed at 6pm and goes to bed at 6.30 ish, and has a dream feed at 10pm.

I think thats pretty good actually, considering others have babies waking up 2 or 3 times a night.

Shellha, thank you.  You have been a source of great distress!!!  lol

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

To kcasey - bw whisperer advice is to set a bedtime of between 7 and 730pm.  10pm is very late.  Could you not put lo down at 7pm after their feed and then do a dream feed at 10 or 11?  It may be that they are waking at 3am out of overtiredness as well as hunger.

[Layla]

Kcasey - I also think that 10pm is a very late bedtime. Its absolutely normal for her to wake up even twice to feed at night. My 1st used to have 1 or 2 feeds until she was 9 months and did not sleep straight through until then. Dd2 is doing the same thing, sometimes 1/2 night feeds. Holding her past her bedtime to get her to sleep till later in the morning will not work, it might backfire and then you might have more frequent night wakings and earlier wake/up calls (like 4/5am). She will become overtired instead.

Jazmyn - mine was doing the 45min nap thing until only about a few weeks ago. Still not all days are the same. About 3 days ago, she did a perfect 1hr in the am, 2hrs in the afternoon and a catnap in the evening. I was praying to God that night for that day to repeat but with no luck  . She does 45mins in the am, 1.5-2hrs in the afternoon and a catnap in the pm. Dd1 always had a short am and evening nap but did alright with just that. Dd2 seems to follow the same pattern and I don't think she will ever sleep longern than 45mins in the morning. But I do compensate by putting her to bed earlier for the night which helps alot.

HTH
Layla

[Jazmyn]

Thanks. 

To be perfectly honest, he DOES go to bed at 6pm every evening.  So perhaps I am expecting too much of him to have such long naps in the day time.  By 6 - 6.30pm every evening he is shattered and ready to sleep for the night, so perhaps I should just keep the naps short for that reason?

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

Jazymn - 6 - 6.30 is a perfectly normal bedtime - so don't worry!!  Especially with him only 45 minute napping he is going to be shattered.  When the naps lengthen then you could push his bedtime forward to 7 or 7.30.

Babies work on their night sleep first and when they've sorted how to sleep consistently through the night they turn their attention to their naps and that's when they start to lengthen them

[Layla]

You took the words out of my mouth - 6/6.30 bedtime is very normal and dd1 goes to bed at 6ish every night and she has for the past year. She has always been an early sleeper and wakes at around 6.30 in the morning. I think I've read it somewhere on this site as well that they work on night sleep from week 6 till about 3 months and on daytime sleep/naps from 3-6 naps. The naps will lengthen and then eventually you could try pushing the bedtime or if he is happy, just stay on the early bedtime. My family/in laws has often criticized the early bedtime insisting that she does not need to sleep that much at night but I just followed her cues and if I'd try to keep her up longer it would just lead to one cranky/tired baby.

Good luck
Layla

[mccoyj]

Hi
  My DD started getting more short nap during the day around 10 weeks.  I wasn't sure what it was.  Then our typical 5 AM night waking started to move closer to 2am until there was 2 night wakings.  I was finding that these waking weren't for food, more habitual.  Because I alway used the soother to see if she was actually hungry.  If she took the soother then I didn't feed her.  Then, while looking through the message board I figured out it more had to do with her soother dependence.  Although I thought I was using the soother correctly.  It my DH that was just replugging in the soother whenever she woke up (on the weekends during the night or day) and me whenever I was in the car with her I would just replug in the soother to keep her quite.  Well, she was waking because she didn't have her soother in her mouth and didn't know how to get back to sleep without it.  So instead of plugging it back in I decided to ween her off the soother.  There is a lot of advice about this in the prop section of the message board.  It's tough the first couple of days.  I started last Wednesday and now my typical day looks exactally like the textbook, with long 1 1/2 to 2 hour naps.  There's no more waking because there is no more soother.  Out of the last 7 days, she has slept through the night 4 times.  And that means 6 - 7 bedtime, with a 10 - 10:30 dreamfeed and wake up between 6- 7:30.  When I started the weening process (and it's a process), I used the clock to strictly schedule her routine and now she determines what happens next (she's 12 weeks old now).  Well it's something to think about.  Now, she'll use her wrists to self soothe when she needs it and sometimes she sucks her tongue.  She'll still wake from naps and during the night occasionally, but she'll put herself back to sleep, which I think is a personal life saver.

[kbella]

Just wanted to say that I'm glad to see that 6-6:30 bedtime is a good thing and can be normal.  Some of my friends/family cannot believe my 3 month old is sometimes in bed at that time.  They think I'm crazy for putting her to bed so before 8 p.m. (I guess their idea of the 'right' bedtime).  Maybe I'll point them to this thread next time they give me grief...   

[Jazmyn]

The thing is my LO is READY for bed at 6-6.30pm.  HE wants to go to sleep and once he is down he doesnt wake up until sometimes 4-5am with his dream feed at 10-10.30pm.  Except for last night he woke at 2.35am and downed another 4oz.  He is STILL waking in the night but seems to be getting better.  He usually wakes because he has gotten out of his swaddle and wants to be reswaddled so he can go back to sleep.

Thats another thing, I cant wean him off the paci if he is swaddled as he cant suck his fist or anything.  Which seems to present another problem.  Maybe I should wean him off swaddling him I dont know.

Arent babies complicated sometimes?? 

[Layla]

Oh yeah!!! I still get funny looks and all sorts of comments when people find out that my lo's bedtime is 6.30 (#1) and 5.30 (#2). The 5.30 bedtime for #2 actually surprised me as well but if she is happy with it, why change that. I think people don't realise just how much sleep children need, especially in the 1st year. I just tell them that its all developmental - they grow at such a fast rate in their 1st year and therefore they need to sleep so much. I get funny looks but who cares... they are not the ones having to deal with an overtired baby at the end of the day.

Jazmyn, I think the props forum will you lots of ideas about weaning from swaddle and/or dummy.

Layla

[Jazmyn]

Actually after my last post things seem to have gotten worse.  He has always had this cranky time from about 5pm and its really hard to get him to feed in that period.  Well for the last few nights he has been impossible after 5pm so has only managed to get a little feed in him, and woken at 8pm, 12am, 4am etc. etc.  I feel like I am back to square one!!!