Combining Naps

[Schwalby]

My 12 week old baby sleeps 11 hours each night and takes a nap after every awake period on a 3 hour breastfed schedule.  She takes a 1 1/2 hour nap in morning and afternoon, and 30-45 naps at all other times.  When do babies typically combine their catnaps into one longer morning nap and one longer afternoon nap only. 

I'd like to start whenever typical to put her to bed a little earlier (8:00 pm instead of 9:00 pm), combine naps and do away with so many catnaps.  Any advice on how and when to do?

Schwalby

[debo620]

she should be taking about 3x1.5hr naps and a 30-40min catnap at about 5pm

so I would set the day up like this:
wake 7
nap 8:30-10
feed 10
nap 11:30-1
feed 1
nap 2:30-4
nap 5:15-5:45
bath, final BF at 7ish, in crib for 7:30ish and sleep shortely there after.

as she gets up to about 16weeks, she will be able to stay awake a little longer and the feeds then start to space out to a 4HR routine.
naps are the 2x1.5-2hrs each and catnap at 5pm or so.

I know its looks great on paper , but post back if you have any other questions, or if I havn't answered you at all....

[malialeanne]

Hi there. We did 5 short naps until 8-9 weeks or so. As awake times extended the 5th nap naturally dropped and we had a schedule similar to the one Deborah describes above. You may find it helpful to chart total awake time in the day. If you see that she can be awake for about 8 hours or so each day (or whatever your total is) you'll be able to figure out a correct bedtime when your schedule shifts. As you extend A times from (for example) 1 hr 15 mins to 1 hr 30 mins, those extra 15 mins each A time add up and result in her getting all the A time she needs with fewer "A" periods. So you move bedtime up a bit and voila! You've dropped a nap.

Of course in reality it's not quite that easy, but keeping track of total A times really does help.