How long should a 15 week old be napping during the day?

[ElmMum]

My DD has been in a good routine for the past 2 weeks or so...going to bed around 7pm, being woken for dream feed at 11pm and then going through to 6.30am. Miracle!

She'd been having a short nap sometime after each feed (about 45mins each time), with one bigger nap in the morning, sometimes as long as 2.5 hours. I follow her lead re eating and napping, and that's the routine she got into.

Each feed she's been getting 180ml.

Then suddenly she's starting waking up around 5am wanting to feed, so we've upped the amount she gets in the day to 190ml each feed (for info, the first feed of the day is a breastfeed, then 2x EBM and 2x formula for the other day time feeds).

The extra food doesn't seem to have made any difference. She's just had a hap for nearly 3 hours, and I'm wondering if I should limit her day time sleeping?

Any advice?

[bubblagirl]

bumping for you to long ago for me to remember now but i remember my ds was quite lively at that age and didnt sleep much in day

[WhyIsItRaining]

Mine's also 15 weeks old. He's my first so I'm sort of making it up as I go along but this is where we are at;

5 feeds a day of 180 each (mixture of EBM and formula). Wakes at 6am for first feed. Back to bed at 8am for nap which can last anywhere between an hour and two hours. Basically, if he wakes up crying I assume he is still tired and encourage him to go back to sleep. If he wakes up alert and looking around then I get him up.

We then feed every four hours during the day. So next feed is around 10am which usually coincides with him waking up from nap. After this, we usually have a good two hours of awake and alert play time. Between 1230 and 1pm ish he is usually dropping off again. Quite often I am out and about so he falls asleep in the sling/pushchair. If we are at home, I put him down. This is a short nap - an hour at most, usually 45 mins.

Wakes up for 2pm ish feed and we play again most of the afternoon. He gets really tired again late afternoon and usually gets another couple of hours from around 5pm. At 7ish we bathe him and feed him and put him down. Wake up for dream feed as we go to bed and then through to 6am....

Hope this helps. It sounds pretty similar to what you have written.

(Oh also we do have weird days where he sleeps non stop - we had one of those earlier this week and he slept from about 1pm one day to 1pm the next, waking only to feed. I just assume these are growth spurts and go with it.)

[penona]

Sounds like maybe a little growth spurt? They do go through these phases of sleeping in late/waking early. Or is there a noise somewhere waking her - boiler going on, etc.

Does she go back to sleep after her 5am feed? Or does she want to start the day?

[pudding25]

At 15 wks, she needs 3hrs, max 3.5 hrs during the day. My dd is 4mths today. She gets by on 2hrs per day and sleeps well at night but I am in the process of trying to sort out her naps.

At their age (if you can do this), a good napping routine would be 40/45 mins in the morning (9am-9.40approx), a lunch nap 12-2 approx and a small nap of 15-30 mins around 4ish, then bed at 7pm.
The lunch nap is the hardest to sort out so I just make sure that dd has a nap 2 hrs after she has last woken if I can't get her to nap at the right times.

[Megglevache]

Maybe agrowth spurt and there isn't really a"set" time for how long. Mine never slept for more than 15 minutes at a time but were fantastic at night, like their mother they were way too beaky!

[happycamper10180]

At 15 weeks most babies can't really be awake more than 2 hours without getting overtired.

Ideally they should have two 1.5 - 2 hour naps (morning and lunchtime) and one 45 min nap (late afternoon). Unfortunately most babies seem to be unaware of this advice DS is 15 weeks and he has never managed to follow this pattern yet.

[Becky77]

My DD naps 3 times between 30-60 minutes... usually 45... I'm trying to stretch out her lunchtime nap but she's having none of it... She's gone from sleeping really well at night to waking quite a lot this week. Not sure if it's because she's had her jabs on Tuesday...