4 month old sleeping too much?

[peg90]

Hi

I'm fully prepared to get questioned about why I'm asking/worried about this and know I should probably just count myself lucky, but my 4 month (19wk) old seems to sleep too much.

She goes to bed around 6am, sleeps until 5 ish, up for bottle and bum change then back to sleep until 8am. Then she'll have at least 3 naps during the day, some of which can be 2.5 hours long!

She's fully alert, happy and feeding properly when she's awake so I probably don't have much reason to be worried. I just didn't think babies slept this long at this age!

We've tried to keep her up later at night but she's ready to go down for the night at 5.30/6pm most nights and has an awful night's sleep if she's kept awake. We thought of making her sleep at this time just a nap but this makes her have a rubbish big sleep too.

Does anyone have any advice or should I just shut up and be grateful?

Thanks

[CityDweller]

Shut up and be grateful (and don't necessarily be surprised if it doesn't last)

[FATEdestiny]

You may just need to go with her body clock.

If you do want to manipulate bedtime slightly, you do that by moving around daytime naps rather than just having her awake longer. For example if you move all three daytime naps forward by 20 minutes, that should mean she wakes from her last nap 1 hour later than usual (this is assuming your nap times are routine), so that bedtime can move forward an hour to 7pm.

I wouldn't expect her morning wake-up to adjust immediately. You may have a few nights of 7pm bedtime but still waking at 5am. It sometimes takes a week or two of consistency to affect (effect?) a change.

[Skiptonlass]

:: weeps quietly as ds wakes for the third time already this evening..::

[peg90]

Thanks ladies, seems the biggest vote is to just be happy with it. I can guarantee in a few weeks/months I'll probably be wishing she would sleep this much!

[StopShoutingAtYourBrother]

My ds was very similar to this. Sounds like that's the sleep she needs. Enjoy it!! I worried needlessly with my son (why oh why!) Now as a 6 year old he still needs his sleep. His sister on the other hand.... She always needed half the sleep of him.

[Thisismyfirsttime]

Leave it as is. If she's sleeping in the daytime and at night she's just getting the sleep she needs. Personally I wouldn't mess with it unless she was fighting sleep or really early waking. You have a sleeper! Rejoice and long may it last!

[Pinkheart5915]

my baby boy is 5 months old, sleeps from around 6:30pm until 6am the next next morning his breast feed then sleeps again until 7:30am. In the day he generally takes two 1 hour naps.
When his awake he is happy, feeds well and is nice and calm so I don't worry about how often he sleeps.

[StopShoutingAtYourBrother]

Wanted to add although dd didn't sleep as much life got much easier when I realised her natural bedtime (until 11 months when she just naturally changed) was 610pm. Any later and she was a mess.

So enjoy having an early and good sleeper :)

[peg90]

Thanks all for your reassurance. It's just so strange as I thought babies weren't really meant to sleep. Won't complain though as the next 1 probably won't sleep at all