Author Topic: 4 months old - short midday nap  (Read 1433 times)

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Offline BCMommy

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4 months old - short midday nap
« on: November 19, 2018, 10:25:14 am »
My baby is 4 months and 7 days old and we’ve been working on having an EASY routine since 2 months old. I think we have finally overcome the 30 minute short naps (thanks to the suggestions from previous posts) by making sure that his awake time is around 1 hour and 37 minutes to 1 hour and 52 minutes. It seems like he’s currently on a 3.5 hour easy routine. He wakes up around 1am for a feed still.

However, I can’t figure out why his midday nap is always shorter at approximately 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes no matter what I try. I’m wondering if I should be waking him up early from his morning nap so he can take a longer midday nap?

Please see below a sample of his schedule from today:

7:05am wake and feed
8:52am sleep
10:45am wake and feed
12:33pm sleep
1:30pm wake and feed
3:00pm sleep
4:20pm wake and feed
5:55pm sleep
6:35pm wake and feed
7:45pm sleep
1:05 am night waking and feed

Any tips to extend his midday nap or to make his 3 naps more even would be appreciated! Thanks!








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Re: 4 months old - short midday nap
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2018, 20:12:26 pm »
Hi there

A more common routine at 4 months is to have just 3naps.  A times are as a guidance 1hr 45 to 2hrs which is not far from the A times you mentioned but at this age 10 mins can make quite a difference to a LO and could mean the difference between transitioning between cycles and having a longer nap or taking a shorter nap due to being a little bit UT (under tired).
As you are already comfortable with 1hr 52 I would suggest increasing A times to 2hrs and holding at that time.  If one of the A times is a little shorter (for instance if you always get a good long nap of almost 2 hrs on the A time you are using which is a little under 2hrs) that's fine but then try to hold out after a good nap to the full A time of 1hr 52 to 2hrs to encourage the next nap to be equally as long.
With the slightly longer A time and the longer naps you will hopefully get through the day on 3 naps, there is no harm in doing an EBT (early bed time) to prevent the last A time getting too long.  Around nap drops times EBT is very useful to help avoid OT.

A warning too, at this age A times increase quite rapidly. At 6 months the A time will be as long as 3hrs...you are only about 6 wks away from this and time flies.  6 months is usually the time when naps drop from 3-2 so there is another transition phase for that too.

hope this helps