Bad napper- what to do?

[Anonymous]

3 month old has been taking these awful 35-45 min long naps all day for a week now. His wake window is 90 min. Do I need to extend his wake window? He starts to get grabby around the 70 min mark already so that would be a stretch. He is also held to sleep but used to be able to take these lovely 2 hour naps while lying on me. His longest nap in the past week has been 1 hr 20 minutes or so.

Separately, do people nap train? If so, what’s an appropriate age to start this?

[Anonymous]

3-4 months is haaaaard! You may be hitting 4 month regression. But 35-45 mins is developmentally normal for a nap at 3 months and it sucks. SO MUCH. I think 70-90 minute wake windows are still normal at 3 months so not necessarily a ww issue. Our crappy naps showed up at 6 weeks (though he was always better when held, even during the regression), were absolutely AWFUL battles during the 4 month regression, and didn't disappear til 6 months when we dropped to 2. And even still his second nap is sometimes sh-tty and needs to be rocked back down after the first sleep cycle. We held to extend every nap after the 30 minute intruder until we nap trained.

Yes you can nap train and our ped said we could do it at 4 months, though she typically recommended it at 6 months. We nap trained at 5 months and it kinda helped, but really what helped was dropping to 2 naps.

Baby naps suuuuuuuck, and this is the best kept secret of parenting. SO much harder than night sleep for us.

[Anonymous]

Mine didn't become a good napper until about 9 months. To get a GOOD nap in, we'd take a 1.5 hour walk during nap time. Baby would sleep way longer that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3-4 months is haaaaard! You may be hitting 4 month regression. But 35-45 mins is developmentally normal for a nap at 3 months and it sucks. SO MUCH. I think 70-90 minute wake windows are still normal at 3 months so not necessarily a ww issue. Our crappy naps showed up at 6 weeks (though he was always better when held, even during the regression), were absolutely AWFUL battles during the 4 month regression, and didn't disappear til 6 months when we dropped to 2. And even still his second nap is sometimes sh-tty and needs to be rocked back down after the first sleep cycle. We held to extend every nap after the 30 minute intruder until we nap trained.

Yes you can nap train and our ped said we could do it at 4 months, though she typically recommended it at 6 months. We nap trained at 5 months and it kinda helped, but really what helped was dropping to 2 naps.

Baby naps suuuuuuuck, and this is the best kept secret of parenting. SO much harder than night sleep for us.

What this person said. Best kept secret ever.

[Anonymous]

I'm a hardass about baby sleep, but bad naps are unfortunately normal at this age. My daughter was an amazing sleeper (8h at night at 6 weeks, fully through the night at 3 months) but not for naps until later.

I did Ferber-style training for naps at 6mos and just kept at it. I rarely ever held her for naps but family members occasionally did. It didn't ruin anything.

My one piece of advice - don't be too afraid of inflexibility. Napping in a dark quiet room can do more than you might think. I am (was, sigh) a big traveler and didn't want a finicky sleeper dependent on blackout blinds, but heavy blinds and darkness work wonders, and it didn't really make her dependent on those things. I never used a noise machine though, bridge too far IMO

[Anonymous]

If anything, 90 minutes might be a bit long. Maybe try 80?

Otherwise, yeah, you might just be hitting the 4 month sleep regression a bit early. Keep on keeping on.

You can definitely nap train, but you've gotta wait until 4 months, unfortunately.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s a regression. It’s just a phase. My very good sleeper and all around easy going baby is just now at nearly 6 months getting 1-2 consistently >60 minute naps.

[Anonymous]

Join the fb group ‘responsible sleep training/learning”. Very well established group and they have a file on naps that is super helpful. You can nap train now no need to wait. We did so at 2 months and while we faced the same nap shortening around this time, we got through it with consistency and patience and the occasional ‘extreme rescue’ (wearing baby with a wrap to get him to sleep longer)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Join the fb group ‘responsible sleep training/learning”. Very well established group and they have a file on naps that is super helpful. You can nap train now no need to wait. We did so at 2 months and while we faced the same nap shortening around this time, we got through it with consistency and patience and the occasional ‘extreme rescue’ (wearing baby with a wrap to get him to sleep longer)

Respectful sleep training/learning. We follow them too. Has been insanely helpful for both kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine didn't become a good napper until about 9 months. To get a GOOD nap in, we'd take a 1.5 hour walk during nap time. Baby would sleep way longer that way.

+1