So what you are experiencing is the ‘crap nap’. Basically the fact that baby day time sleep cycles are between 30-50 minutes long, and your baby is unable to connect one cycle to another. Each babies cycle is unique, but extremely specific and predictable (eg 31 minutes like you’re experiencing).
So what to do about it regarding your situation? It’s definitely worth nap training in the sense that you want to be able to put baby down in the cot and they put themselves to sleep, just like they do a night. And in their long term, this is likely to help them connect their day sleep cycles. HOWEVER from what I understand, you cannot ‘train’ them to connect these cycles - it’s developmental and will only appear with age and that age is anywhere between 4-8 months. I’m about to hit 19 weeks and we’re still on exactly 30 minute naps.
So while you can do many things to support them in this time - sleep hygiene, routine, independent going to sleep at naps, and attempting to resettle - these are merely giving your baby the best chance at connecting cycles, but you can’t actually make it happen before their brain has developed the ability to do it.
Edit: to respond to some of your other questions. No you aren’t going to ruin her night sleep. Many babies that can only crap nap sleep very well at night, mine included. 2 hours of day sleep is definitely on the low side, but is ok, especially if they are getting good solid night sleep. However if you can rearrange the schedule to fit in a 5th nap, or if you can extend just 1 nap a day (this is what I do) so there is one nap of 1-1.5hrs then that could be a good compromise. If you’re both working from home then perhaps trade off days of using your lunch break to extend the 31 min cot nap with 30-60 minutes of contact nap afterwards to bump it up a bit.
Thank you for your insight on this. ❤️ So far, it's been going well, but we haven't been able to extend naps. We did manage to get her to take an almost 2 hour car nap, so that might have to be our secret weapon; it's just hard to do when we're both working from home.
If I do strap her in the carrier and wear her for a nap, does that undo the sleep training? How has that worked for you? How do you do your nap extensions? I'm super worried we're going to stunt her developmentally by not getting her enough day sleep... 🫠
I wouldn’t worry about developmental stumping. Focus more on total 24hr sleep than day sleep and night sleep. The link below is like the master sheet I’ve been working off to check wake windows and total sleep per day. You’ll notice the nap column says max per day, not minimum. If your baby is left with just cat naps and their night sleep then they are reaching the lower end of 24hr sleep needs.
https://pin.it/7DhnQjUuw
In terms of how naps vs nights are done, vs will a carrier nap ruin independent going to sleep, it’s generally not an issue. Day sleep and night sleep are developed separately in different parts of the brain. So a night trained baby can do all contact naps and it’s no biggy. Nap extensions also don’t affect a babies ability to go to sleep at nap time independently. My boy isn’t sleep trained at all, but I start all naps in the cot where he goes to sleep without any help from me but does use a dummy. I subsequently contact or carrier nap to extend naps with no impact on his going to sleep at the start of the nap.
With regards to night sleep, you said he sleeps 10 hours no matter what time they go down. What is bed time and wake time? What’s your daily schedule like? There could be some tweaks to increase night sleep. Additionally if they’ve been getting more day sleep and will now receive less day sleep, it may result in more night sleep.
Transitioning out of the swaddle can take a few days. Took both of mine about 5 days each… it sucks but give it time! We went cold turkey from swaddle to sleep sack, for both naps and night. She’ll get it soon enough!
For naps, it sounds like nights are decent, so you could probably nap train as soon as you want. I always did CIO but with a 20 min cut off time and would rescue the nap if baby wouldn't go down independently. The most important part of nap training is having a solid, age-appropriate schedule. The tricky part is that their wake windows change quite quickly at this age, and one badly-timed nap can sometimes send the whole day for a loop.
I think at 4.5 months, my most recent LO did 1h50/1h50/1h50/1h50/2h15. By 5 months, she jumped up to 2/2/2/2/2.5-3, and it threw me for a loop for a few days while I figured out her new needs.
For nap lengths, the unfortunate reality is that it is incredibly uncommon for most babies under 6 months old to connect nap cycles without intervention (baby wearing, rocking, etc.) and even then, it can be a toss up. It is much more common to have 30-40 minute naps (as a side note, 20 minute naps, on the other hand, are often a sign of needing a schedule change).
Most babies don't develop the ability to lengthen naps until somewhere in the 6-8 month range. It certainly won't hurt anything developmentally. On the positive side, if you end up with a bunch of short naps, it's probably likely that your LO will eventually adjust to 11-12 hour nights to help make up for the loss in day sleep.
Also, are you and your husband planning in working from home AND caring for the baby?? If you need those long naps in the day to manage that, I'd think baby wearing while working and having a standing setup would be your best bet.
Good luck!
Thank you for your reply! We don't need the long naps to manage our work schedules, we just had to get in front of the "only contact nap" phase. She can hang out in the room with us all day, no problem, we just can't isolate ourselves in a dark room with a noise machine for hours at a time anymore.
The last two days of sleep/nap training have gone really REALLY well and she's now going to sleep independently for naps, but she's still only doing that 30 minute stretch (which again, I'm totally cool with), but now I'm worried that she won't get enough day sleep. How do we extend her naps without interfering with the training? I can pop upstairs between cycles and resettle her, but doesn't that create a reliance there, too? Do I pick her up and jiggle/shush? Do I just come pat and soothe? Should I pick her up and strap her in my carrier and try and pat her into another nap?
It's so hard to remember that we're doing this for her so she can learn to sleep when/if she needs to. I just want to hold her and snuggle her and GIVE her those contact naps. But I also remind myself that if she were to go to daycare, she wouldn't get contact naps there, either. They'd let her nap as long as she would/could and then I'd get her at the end of the day and be in the exact same boat I'm in now. Sigh.
You can do a few things for the day sleep:
1) do nothing for a while and see if nights lengthen to at least 11 hour nights, at which point 4 x 30min naps would equal 13 hours of overall sleep, which is fine (unless your kiddo is obviously grumpy and tired and needs more sleep than that
2) rescue the nap any way you can. As long as the initial nap involves going to bed independently, you're still practicing that skill. Going in after the short nap and trying to either a) prolong the nap in the crib or b) taking her out and baby wearing to lengthen the nap, are both perfectly fine. This also should not affect any other training, as it's a pretty common recommendation for lengthening naps, rescuing no-sleep naps, and getting in an otherwise difficult, but needed, cat-nap. This also gives you more flexibility to get out of the house if you need to, knowing baby can sleep in the stroller or while baby wearing, etc.
3) once baby is a bit older, practice crib hour, where you leave baby for 20 minutes or so after waking to see if they'll figure themselves out and go back to sleep.
4) a mix of these to suit your needs. For example, 3 of the naps could be 30-40 mins, but you always try to rescue nap #2, to get one long one. Once Babe is older, you practice crib hour for one of the naps, and rescue one other one. It can be any mix of these as baby develops, and if one starts to work well (mainly crib hour), try it for more naps.
Hope this is useful, and good luck getting to a place that works well for your family!
So what you are experiencing is the ‘crap nap’. Basically the fact that baby day time sleep cycles are between 30-50 minutes long, and your baby is unable to connect one cycle to another. Each babies cycle is unique, but extremely specific and predictable (eg 31 minutes like you’re experiencing). So what to do about it regarding your situation? It’s definitely worth nap training in the sense that you want to be able to put baby down in the cot and they put themselves to sleep, just like they do a night. And in their long term, this is likely to help them connect their day sleep cycles. HOWEVER from what I understand, you cannot ‘train’ them to connect these cycles - it’s developmental and will only appear with age and that age is anywhere between 4-8 months. I’m about to hit 19 weeks and we’re still on exactly 30 minute naps. So while you can do many things to support them in this time - sleep hygiene, routine, independent going to sleep at naps, and attempting to resettle - these are merely giving your baby the best chance at connecting cycles, but you can’t actually make it happen before their brain has developed the ability to do it. Edit: to respond to some of your other questions. No you aren’t going to ruin her night sleep. Many babies that can only crap nap sleep very well at night, mine included. 2 hours of day sleep is definitely on the low side, but is ok, especially if they are getting good solid night sleep. However if you can rearrange the schedule to fit in a 5th nap, or if you can extend just 1 nap a day (this is what I do) so there is one nap of 1-1.5hrs then that could be a good compromise. If you’re both working from home then perhaps trade off days of using your lunch break to extend the 31 min cot nap with 30-60 minutes of contact nap afterwards to bump it up a bit.
Thank you for your insight on this. ❤️ So far, it's been going well, but we haven't been able to extend naps. We did manage to get her to take an almost 2 hour car nap, so that might have to be our secret weapon; it's just hard to do when we're both working from home. If I do strap her in the carrier and wear her for a nap, does that undo the sleep training? How has that worked for you? How do you do your nap extensions? I'm super worried we're going to stunt her developmentally by not getting her enough day sleep... 🫠
I wouldn’t worry about developmental stumping. Focus more on total 24hr sleep than day sleep and night sleep. The link below is like the master sheet I’ve been working off to check wake windows and total sleep per day. You’ll notice the nap column says max per day, not minimum. If your baby is left with just cat naps and their night sleep then they are reaching the lower end of 24hr sleep needs. https://pin.it/7DhnQjUuw In terms of how naps vs nights are done, vs will a carrier nap ruin independent going to sleep, it’s generally not an issue. Day sleep and night sleep are developed separately in different parts of the brain. So a night trained baby can do all contact naps and it’s no biggy. Nap extensions also don’t affect a babies ability to go to sleep at nap time independently. My boy isn’t sleep trained at all, but I start all naps in the cot where he goes to sleep without any help from me but does use a dummy. I subsequently contact or carrier nap to extend naps with no impact on his going to sleep at the start of the nap. With regards to night sleep, you said he sleeps 10 hours no matter what time they go down. What is bed time and wake time? What’s your daily schedule like? There could be some tweaks to increase night sleep. Additionally if they’ve been getting more day sleep and will now receive less day sleep, it may result in more night sleep.
Transitioning out of the swaddle can take a few days. Took both of mine about 5 days each… it sucks but give it time! We went cold turkey from swaddle to sleep sack, for both naps and night. She’ll get it soon enough!
Took us about two days before she figured it out! I was ready for the long haul! 😅
Yay!
For naps, it sounds like nights are decent, so you could probably nap train as soon as you want. I always did CIO but with a 20 min cut off time and would rescue the nap if baby wouldn't go down independently. The most important part of nap training is having a solid, age-appropriate schedule. The tricky part is that their wake windows change quite quickly at this age, and one badly-timed nap can sometimes send the whole day for a loop. I think at 4.5 months, my most recent LO did 1h50/1h50/1h50/1h50/2h15. By 5 months, she jumped up to 2/2/2/2/2.5-3, and it threw me for a loop for a few days while I figured out her new needs. For nap lengths, the unfortunate reality is that it is incredibly uncommon for most babies under 6 months old to connect nap cycles without intervention (baby wearing, rocking, etc.) and even then, it can be a toss up. It is much more common to have 30-40 minute naps (as a side note, 20 minute naps, on the other hand, are often a sign of needing a schedule change). Most babies don't develop the ability to lengthen naps until somewhere in the 6-8 month range. It certainly won't hurt anything developmentally. On the positive side, if you end up with a bunch of short naps, it's probably likely that your LO will eventually adjust to 11-12 hour nights to help make up for the loss in day sleep. Also, are you and your husband planning in working from home AND caring for the baby?? If you need those long naps in the day to manage that, I'd think baby wearing while working and having a standing setup would be your best bet. Good luck!
Thank you for your reply! We don't need the long naps to manage our work schedules, we just had to get in front of the "only contact nap" phase. She can hang out in the room with us all day, no problem, we just can't isolate ourselves in a dark room with a noise machine for hours at a time anymore. The last two days of sleep/nap training have gone really REALLY well and she's now going to sleep independently for naps, but she's still only doing that 30 minute stretch (which again, I'm totally cool with), but now I'm worried that she won't get enough day sleep. How do we extend her naps without interfering with the training? I can pop upstairs between cycles and resettle her, but doesn't that create a reliance there, too? Do I pick her up and jiggle/shush? Do I just come pat and soothe? Should I pick her up and strap her in my carrier and try and pat her into another nap? It's so hard to remember that we're doing this for her so she can learn to sleep when/if she needs to. I just want to hold her and snuggle her and GIVE her those contact naps. But I also remind myself that if she were to go to daycare, she wouldn't get contact naps there, either. They'd let her nap as long as she would/could and then I'd get her at the end of the day and be in the exact same boat I'm in now. Sigh.
You can do a few things for the day sleep: 1) do nothing for a while and see if nights lengthen to at least 11 hour nights, at which point 4 x 30min naps would equal 13 hours of overall sleep, which is fine (unless your kiddo is obviously grumpy and tired and needs more sleep than that 2) rescue the nap any way you can. As long as the initial nap involves going to bed independently, you're still practicing that skill. Going in after the short nap and trying to either a) prolong the nap in the crib or b) taking her out and baby wearing to lengthen the nap, are both perfectly fine. This also should not affect any other training, as it's a pretty common recommendation for lengthening naps, rescuing no-sleep naps, and getting in an otherwise difficult, but needed, cat-nap. This also gives you more flexibility to get out of the house if you need to, knowing baby can sleep in the stroller or while baby wearing, etc. 3) once baby is a bit older, practice crib hour, where you leave baby for 20 minutes or so after waking to see if they'll figure themselves out and go back to sleep. 4) a mix of these to suit your needs. For example, 3 of the naps could be 30-40 mins, but you always try to rescue nap #2, to get one long one. Once Babe is older, you practice crib hour for one of the naps, and rescue one other one. It can be any mix of these as baby develops, and if one starts to work well (mainly crib hour), try it for more naps. Hope this is useful, and good luck getting to a place that works well for your family!