My DS is 5 months old and has had a horrible cold for a few days, so I know that is effecting him. For the past three days, his naps have been sooo long, I've actually been waking him up from them, but since he's sick, I feel sort of guilty doing that. Yesterday he napped for about 5 1/2 hours total over three naps, he usually does between 4 and 4 1/2 hours. I woke him from all three naps. He went down for bed at 7:30pm and slept until 6:15am with one brief 45 minute waking from stuffiness. So today, I decided to see how long he would go for his first nap, without waking him. He slept for 2 1/2 hours, but not without a few little wake-ups where he put himself back to sleep after a short time of rolling around in his crib. I'm thinking this lengthened sleep is related to his cold, but is it also possible that his daytime naps will lengthen when he is getting ready to drop the third nap? I'm not sure what to look for and when is a nap going on too long? I know that if it's time to eat, I should wake him, but that doesn't ever seem to be the case. I worry that if he gets too much sleep during the day, he will shorten his night time sleep. In fact, he normally sleeps 12 hours at night and last night he did 11 hours. Maybe it was because of the longer naps by one hour?? There is so much controversy on this topic: don't wake a sleeping baby, don't let them sleep past 3 hours, sleep begets sleep, long naps could turn into confusion about night time sleep....what is true?? He does seem to sleep better when he has good long naps, but usually they last about 1.5 hours for the first two and about 45 minutes for the last. When should he start wanting to drop the last nap?
Jessica
