To think baby should not be kept awake in day in the hope she will sleep better at night?

[SleepWarfare]

We have a little three month old. She can easily become overtired as she is very active in the day and tends to wake each sleep cycle at night ie every 45 minutes (although over the last few days we’ve seen more 1, 2 and 3 hour sleeps so I hope it’s gradually improving with the increased day sleep)

We’re not on a strict routine but I try my best to limit her awake time to 2 hours and have an approximate bedtime. She’s breastfed on demand. By keeping an eye on her awake time I’ve gradually been able to get her day sleep up to about 3 hours on average, yesterday she managed 4.

DH believes that she sleeps too much in the day which is why she isn’t sleeping longer periods at night. He hasn’t done any reading on the subject and has never had her overnight (or for long stretches in the day) so although I’m open to suggestions I find this frustrating. When she has less sleep in the day she is miserable and difficult to settle, whereas at the moment she’s a happy smiley baby a lot of the time. I am pretty tired but generally coping so I think we just need to be patient.

Please can you help me explain why keeping her up all day wouldn’t be helpful? I know the science behind it but am obviously not articulating it effectively! I worry that when he sometimes looks after her for a couple of hours so I can nap he might be keeping her up and fibbing when he says she has slept the whole time!

When I say “keeping her up” - to be fair she doesn’t need keeping up as would stay awake all day if left to her own devices! So I suppose I mean not helped to sleep

You have it right and are doing what’s best for her development. We have an obsession in this country about getting tiny babies to sleep through the night - it’s not what they’re designed to do.

Sleep breeds sleep in little ones. They can't regulate themselves the way adults can so can't focus in on sounds for example, which is utterly exhausting for them. Hence the cycle you have described, which is normal and average for a baby of 3 months.
Regarding night time sleep: she doesn't know its nighttime. She will learn, but it's a slow process. Compare it to learning how to drive as an adult - how well would DH do at that if he was forced to practise past the point of comfort and into feeling overwhelmed and upset?
Fwiw, I think you are right, DH is wrong, and when he does the research, he gets to make the call.

My ds is 10 months old, and I find the better he sleeps during the day, the better he sleeps at night.

If she gets a benefit from the day time sleep then let her continue. Otherwise she may get to a very overtired and grizzly place come the evening and that is not pleasant for anyone. Babies are designed to nap during the day, she is not a robot programmed to an adult schedule.

I think the OP is after links to research or other reading matter that she can show to her DH, that he will listen to.
Good luck OP. It’s annoying when people have this “aha! I’ve figured out what nobody else has thought of, and I’ve cracked it!” attitude. When actually his opinion is the default, and the truth is a little more counter-intuitive.

Babies need help napping so you are correct and sleeping in the day helps them sleep better at night.

He’s assuming babies sleep the way adults sleep. He’s wrong.

www.isisonline.org.uk/how_babies_sleep/normal_sleep_development/

If a baby (or anyone) is overtired, the body produces adrenaline and cortisol as a stress response, making it even harder to settle the baby. The body essentially goes "well I guess we're not sleeping because there is some danger about, better produce some adrenalin so we can stay awake EVEN LONGER!"

Yes she needs sleep in the day. Just don't let her nap too late which I'm sure you wouldn't. Also make sure the length of naps are age appropriate as too much will start to impact on night time.

Have you tried keeping her awake during the day apart from a quick nap? The sooner they sleep through the night the easier it is for everyone

I think it’s been explained pretty well by others so just wanted to say I had this conversation with my mil repeatedly when she would constantly talk about tiring DD out in the day and keeping her awake to give her a good nights sleep despite this not working for her own children.

Yep - you are 100% right. Not sleeping in the day will just increase stress hormone and prevent sleep at night also.

Enforced periods of zero stimulation (hopefully leading to sleep) during the day were the only thing that improved our babies sleep during the night.

My 6 month old sleeps basically 7 til 7, has a twilight feed at 11 where he doesnt really wake up and goes straight down, and has 2 naps. One 2 hrs and another 1 hr. Hes normally tired after 2 or 2half hrs. Before we napped in his cot he would power nap for 25mins ever hour half and didnt sleep well at night. Good quality long naps in the day did the job for is. If he get adequate naps in day he wakes every hour or so t night. Just moans or cries in his sleep.

doesn't get adequate naps that should read

She’s three months old. He needs to adjust his expectations of such a small child.

And that’s what I would tell him. If he can’t be arsed to even read one article or chapter of a book about baby development then he a) gets no say, and b) doesn’t get the benefit of my research.

I’m annoyed on your behalf!

I think the science behind it is to do with hormones like adrenaline and cortisol - if they are awake too long they produce too much of this when they get agitated and then they can't switch it off so it keeps them up later on. I'm sure you'll find plenty of research on it with a quick Google. I think a 3 month old can only stay up 1.5 hours ish at a.time without getting distressed. Lots of baby sleeping programs are based around day naps - look at the little ones website, it is all based around naps and awake times. I've never heard of anyone successfully getting a baby to sleep through the night by keeping them up in the day!

Am I misunderstanding or are you actively trying to increase the amount of sleep she has during the day? I'm just confused why you'd be helping her to sleep when she actually wants to stay up.

My daughter never napped until she was about 6 months old. She would wake at 8 in the morning, stay up until 8 in the evening and then sleep 12 hours straight through the night (athough until she was 2 weeks old she would wake maybe once in the night to be breastfed).

We tried to get her to nap because we thought that what babies should do, but she just wouldn't and she was perfectly happy not napping. I have no idea how she managed this and never got overtired but this sleep begets sleep was absolute crap for our baby.

All babies are different so maybe it wouldn't be so bad to try changing things slightly.

Thank you for these responses

I suppose I’ll just carry on as best I can and explain and discuss why

@youknowwherethecityis that sounds wonderful! I agree all babies different and if she was happy not napping I’d be more inclined to see things differently. I wouldn’t say she was wants to be awake per se, she just needs help settling to get to sleep. Self settling is probably a whole other discussion but even when she is rubbing her eyes and yawning she needs help to sleep, hence trying to increase when I do this (otherwise it’s easy to go shopping, go to baby class, so housework etc without her napping at all)

Unfortunately she has only ever managed around 7 or 8 hours at night and always broken (usually waking every 45 mins) so if she doesn’t nap in the day she gets increasingly miserable and overtired until she is inconsolable. I wouldn’t say it makes her night sleep worse but it does take ages to get her down for the night when she’s overtired.

We have an obsession in this country about getting tiny babies to sleep through the night - it’s not what they’re designed to do

Completely agree with this!

You are doing the right thing and I think there is unrealistic expectations put on parents that their babies should be sleeping all night. To be fair a lot of adults don’t even sleep all night so I try not to stress about it. newmumfun.com/2018/05/19/no-he-still-doesnt-sleep-through-the-night/

My first baby was a terrible sleeper I agree 100% with needing day naps. What I would work toward is self settling looking back I prevented ds1 from learning to settle because I always jumped in. Second baby I was a lot more hands off with getting to sleep he slept much better.

It's easy to become obsesses when they don't sleep my whole life revolved around ds1 sleeping and waking I was so anxious about it I think it rubbed off on him.

YANBU I have 3 and sleep promotes sleep

Less naps in mine resulted in more night wakings

My 3rd sleeps best as i think I have a “routine” forced upon me because of school run etc

And remember the pp point that babies are not designed to sleep though so when you let go of that notion it all becomes a bit more bearable- have a look at what constitutes “sleep through” and it’s no where near 12 hours!

Good luck x

The sleep begets sleep thing was nonsense for both of my kids. I read into it and pushed and pushed day naps and they slept terribly at night. My eldest gave up naps completely at 12 months and started sleeping through. My now 9 month old naps for maximum of 1.5 hours during day, and never later than 1pm else he just won’t settle at night. He starts to get a bit grumpy around 5pm then sleeps 6.30-6.30. I get the science behind the sleep but it doesn’t work for all babies.