Naps and CIO

I was wondering too about letting him sleep as long as he wanted to in the morning. Some of the sleep experts say that an overtired baby will sleep less, not more. So it’s possible that waking him from his morning nap is making him overtired so that he can’t sleep well during his afternoon nap.

I know you said that when he misses his morning nap like he does at church he sleeps better in the afternoon, but my experience with my own babies is that it usually only works ocassionally.

I think it was Dr. Weissbluth who says “sleep begets sleep”, meaning the more a baby sleeps and the more well rested a baby is, the more he will sleep.

I would suggest the same, just let him sleep and see what happens. Our little ones are the same age, so maybe he’ll be getting into a better routine soon?? I was really getting worried about naps, and just in the last week or 2 Dagney’s started taking 2 decent naps each day!! The am nap is usually now 1 1/2 hours, or maybe even 2 hours long, and the afternoon nap is about 1- 1 1/4 hours long. She also takes about a 1/2 hour nap around 5ish, then goes down for the night around 7:30-7:45. There have been a couple of times here and there where she still only sleeps 1/2 hour, but the longer naps have kind of become the norm!! YAAAY!!

shane does the same thing.. usually his morning nap is longer than the afternoon one! and i too think it has to do with how tired they are.. on sundays as well.. he misses his morning nap..and than will take one 2 hr- 3 hr nap when we get home! but sometimes if i take him for a walk and really get him tired .. than in the afternoon he will press through the wake up time and sleep longer.

Brianna was the same way as Shane…morning nap was almost always an hour or more…usually closer to 2, but afternoon was almost always only 30-45 min. It used to make me so sad that she wouldn’t sleep in the PM, becuase then we were putting her down at like 6:30 because she was so tired. I know you don’t want to hear this, but letting her cry one day was what changed this (well, we were also transitioning to one nap). When she woke up before I would try everything…sometimes I could get her to go back to sleep and sometimes not, but I think she got so used to me coming to get her that she never learned how to get back to sleep on her own. Now she is getting to be a great napper (on most days at least). She still wakes up sometimes…and sometimes she will wake up and cry for a few seconds, but within 5 mins she is back to sleep. Don’t think that I am saying you should CIO…it took me until Brianna was a year to be able to try it. Good luck!

I think what you’re doing is fine! Part of sleep training is letting the baby learn to be comfortable and content alone in his crib. He seems to be doing that. Right now it’s a novelty to him that he wakes up and you don’t come right away. With time the novelty will wear off and he’ll probably start putting himself back to sleep with a short time of self soothing. It’s a great start that he puts himself back to sleep at night and in the morning. I think the nap thing will fall into place with time.

This is not the advice I would normally give but at around that age I started cutting Myles’ morning nap down (by waking him earlier) and putting him down for a longer nap in the afternoon. My girls still needed an afternoon nap and I was having the same problem as you. Myles would keep them up and then they’d all be miserable. We had a few flukey days with doctor’s appointments or something so his morning nap was cut short and he slept so much better those afternoons, so I decided to try it on regular days at home. It worked pretty well for us but I think it’s a long shot for most babies that young. Maybe worth a try though.

Usually I’d let him sleep 45 minutes. When he got older I cut it to 30 minutes. I used to run errands sometimes and he’d snooze in the car, but I had to make sure I wasn’t letting him sleep too much so I sometimes had to cut my errands short.

At home I’d let him fall asleep and then around 30 – 45 minutes later I’d open his door so he’s start to stir. I felt like a bad mom for a while, but it actually worked out really well for us. I had two older children who were at the mercy of Myles’ nap schedule, so once he was more on their schedule they could have a life again, iykwim. And began to take very long afternoon naps which was great for him and for the rest of us. He used to sleep 3 – 3.5 hours!! Now he’s down to 2 – 2.5 hours but that’s because he’s much older and doesn’t need as much sleep.

I’m not a big fan of daylight savings. I hope he adapts soon.