Can't Seem to Figure Out Afternoon Naps

[ceamoste]

Hey everyone! I'm new here, but I've been reading some of the posts, and everyone seems to be so helpful! So here goes:

LO is just about 3 months old. He's really tall, and therefore weighs a lot for his age. I'd estimate he's close to 18lbs now.
He sleeps FANTASTIC at night, usually puts himself down around 7-7:30pm, and sleeps through to about 8-8:30am, with one night time feed (that I initiate because all I hear is him smacking on his hand) around 2-4am. That'll last only around 7 minutes, so I'm wondering if he even still needs that feed, but he's right back down no problems.

We've been following a rough EASY. He usually wakes up, we change, eat, and then play, before winding down again. His first two naps, he'll have about an hour of awake time, before going down for about an hour.

Once we hit about 1:00pm, his nap shortens to maybe 30 minutes, and by 3:30pm he doesn't go down pretty much at all, but is so OT that he just sobs into my shoulders with his eyes closed.

I'm wondering if he sleeps so much at night that his body doesn't want to sleep anymore by the end of the day?

I know he's still young, and things are going to be up in the air for awhile, but poor daddy feels like he's unloved, since all he ever sees is a screaming baby, and the actual bedtime routine is just a lot of crying he is so tired. It can take up to an hour just to calm him down enough to feed.

Any help would be wonderful!

[Scottishmummy]

Hello and welcome to BW & congrats on the night sleep, a 13hr night sounds amazing (both mine are night wakers and only 11hrs night sleep on average)

With your naps..I wonder if you're getting into a bit of an UT/OT (under tired-over tired) loop.  At 3mo, typical time awake would be around 1.5hrs: Average A times- BOOKMARK ME! so you might be getting short-ish naps at the start of the day as he's not quite tired enough then he gets more tired from the short-ish naps as the day goes on and (ironically) the more tired they are, the shorter the naps get & the harder it is to get LOs to sleep!

I think I would try increasing his first A time by 10-15mins.  Either playing for 10 mins more, or doing 10 extra mins quiet activity/Wind down, depending on your baby's temperament and how tired he seems.  See if the longer A time gives you a longer first nap.  Try for 2-3 days but if no change, try another 10-15 min increase.

We'd usually suggest just pushing first A time at first, so if you still get a nap of an hour, keep his usual , or a slightly shorter A time for rest of the day.

I hope that helps. Here's another link that might be useful: What are A times and how do they fit into the EASY plan?
Xxx