What are your daytime routines for your 4 mo??

[louloupoo]

My ds is 17 wks and seems to sleep quite a bit during the day. Often he is tired after only an hour and a half and has to go down for a nap or becomes incredibly grumpy. Is this not a little unusual for his age? This can be the same all day until his bedtime at 7pm.

Generally he goes down easily at bedtime after a few rocks in his moses basket and is then left awake to settle himself. Currently he tends to wake at around 10.30 - 11pm for a feed and then sleeps till around 4.30am. At which point he will either feed and go back off or stay awake

I'd love to try and establish some kind of routine whereby he has the same wake up time each day and same nap times but he's so erratic I dont know where to start.

Any thoughts, advice or general comments appreciated xx

[stayinbed]

When my DD3 was a newborn I read very briefly about one of those routines, the initials are all i remember - they were EASY - the baby wakes and then he should East, do an activity (5 minutes to any time longer than that, depends on age), then go back to Sleep, then it is You time.

I can tell you that until about 5 months of age, there was no point. I stuck to it but Activity was so short it didn't seem to matter.

Past 5 months I continued to make this the routine and it started working into one, especially when dd started weaning.

so don't worry about it! but start with a little something that is easy to stick to, and in a few months you'll see its worked out..

[AngelDog]

1.5 hours awake before needing another nap sounds absolutely normal for that age IME.

It sounds like he sleeps pretty well at night when he goes back to sleep!

Most babies' biological clocks only start maturing around 4 months, and don't get fully in synch with the 24 hour day until about 10 months, so it's early days yet to be doing things at the same time each day.

You could try waking him up at the same time each day if he's not already up. It doesn't work if he's already up though - and I know that well from experience!

I'd stick with trying for naps at roughly the same intervals each day. The length of awake time often increases slightly during the day, so the time between waking & first nap is likely to be shorter than the time between first & second nap.

[agirlcalledvicky]

We sound really similar - I am hoping that DS will find his own way with time. He wakes about 7am ish and goes to bed at 7pm but our days are all very different. He also needs a nap about every 1.5-2 hours through the day but these are completely random in length anything from 30 mins to 2.5 hours so its impossible to have naps at the same times during the day. Saying that this past week we've been napping 9-10am, 12-2.30pm and 5-5.30pm VERY roughly but I am sure it'll all change next week. AT night he wakes for a feed at 3.30am and quite often a couple of other times and settles himself back down. But then sometimes throws a 5am start into the mix too!

I have come to the conclusion they are still random little creatures at this age. I have had a few rubbish attempts at a routine but its never worked and made me stressed. We are going with the flow for now I think! Sorry I can't help more!

[gentlemantobed]

i can't help but just to say my 13wk old generally follows this pattern:

wakes 6-7am

awake for 1 to 1.5 hours

naps for 40mins 8-9am (fed to sleep)

awake for 1 hour

naps for 2 hours plus at 10am (pram to sleep)

awake for varying length in afternoon but can include 1-2x 40min naps before 6.30pm (fed or pram to sleep) when we slowly start the bedtime routine.

i'm starting to go with the 'never wake a sleeping baby' philosophy this week so will let you know how i get on...