disrupted naps at 8 weeks

[sav]

My almost 9 week old has changed his nap pattern fairly dramatically over the past week, used to take 1 1/2 hr naps 3x/day and suddenly, almost overnight, can't seem to sleep more than 30-45 mins at a time.  He still remains pretty cheerful during most of the day but I am puzzled.  In Tracy's book she says some little ones are ok w/ only 30-45 min power naps-how do you know if that is the case or if we are getting into bad habits?  Should we be forcing the 1 1/2 hr nap?  Sometimes it is hard to figure out what is just 'your kid' when they are deviating from 'the book'!

[Kitsmom]

Both of mine went through the short nap phase at this age.  It actually goes on for a bit.  I think that mine were 5 months before the naps lengthened? 

With my first, I obsessed and tried everything to lengthen the naps.  It really stressed me out.  With my youngest, I just let it be.  I think that they both grew out of it about the same time.  Seemed to coincide to when they started to sit up with support.

Good luck.  Whatever you choose to do, don't stress out.  Especially if your lo is happy.  I would just put mine down real early for the night until the naps lengthened.

[Taylor's Mommy]

HI Sav.  Taylor started teh short naps OVERNIGHT at 7 weeks and they didn't start to lengthen again until she was about 14 weeks.  At this age, it is very common for them to start taking short naps as they are organizing their night time sleep and then will start to organize day time sleep during the 3rd and 4th months.  So I would probably guess that your ds is not a short napper by nature (only about 5% of all babies are truly short nappers), but just going through this developmental change in his body clock.

Every day I worked on extending her naps because she was NOT happy on just 45 minute naps and it was very stressful.  So if you want to try and extend them, we can help you give it a go.  If not and ds is pretty easy going with the short naps, then don't worry about it.  It is your call.

Taylor's naps started lengthening when we moved her to a 4 hour easy routine at 4 months and she finally learned to fall asleep independently.

[sav]

thanks to both of you for the help, advice, ideas...as a first time mom i definitely can come unglued pretty quickly when things change.  my little guy is back to his regular nap pattern and last night slept through the night (9-5) for the first time so i am feeling much better today.  the definite law of parenting seems to be that change is always in the air, so i'll have to try to remember that tommorow when everything changes again.
i love the baby whisperer approach and have recommended the book to several friends.  this website rocks!