Naps- do you wake up your baby?

[Folicacid]

We have a 16 week old boy. He is on day three of sleeping in cot in own room. He usually gets up three or four times in the night which is wearing me down.

First night in own cot in own room and he slept from 7pm feed to 5.15am with a small fuss about half ten. Unbelievable. I actually thought he'd stopped breathing and was panic stricken.

However, this appears to e a one off as he s now back to waking every two or three hours, although only feeds once.

So that's the background, my lack of sleep addled brain will finally get to the question...

...do you wake your baby after a set time when they nap? I used to wake him after 45 mins in morning but now leave him to sleep and he usually sleeps an hour and a half. Is this too long a this time? I started to leave him as sometimes after a cut short nap he wouldn't sleep well later on (unrelated I think) s a least I know he s getting the hour and a half in the morning.

I don't know whether i should go back to waking him from naps? His total daytime sleep is around three and a half hours and I keep him away after five pm so he is awake two hours before I try to put him down to sleep.

Yes, I did, because I wanted to get my dc into some sort of routine (nothing like GF - don't worry!).

At 16 weeks they probably had 3 naps a day, they didn't all have to be at home in a cot (I would time car trips or walks in the pram) but I definitely didn't want the last one to go on much past 4pm/4.30pm, because I wanted them to have a proper bed time by that age.

Btw, it is quite unusual for a 16 week old to sleep through the night, so try not to think of it as a big thing (hard, I know, when you are sleep deprived).

Thanks bibbity. We do a bath and bed routine to try and signal night time. I don't really count car journeys, not strictly anyway so maybe he is sleeping longer than I am accounting for.

It's so hard to keep a sleepy and fractious baby wake during day ut the equally hard to get to stay asleep at night! Argh. He did one three hour stint last night but that was when I was up eating dinner!

I've always gone with the mantra "sleep makes sleep". I wouldn't wake him

Personally I wouldn't wake him. I went through a phase of waking (admittedly younger) son ~8wks during naps and I think it made him over-tired, as he then ended up really struggling to get to sleep and waking up every 45 mins. I realised my ds needs more sleep than the average baby, so he was probably sleeping at least 3 hrs naps + 13 hrs at night. Even now at nearly 10 months he sleeps 13 hr at night and 2-3 hrs in 2 naps. He is definitely in a routine, but his routine just involves having lots of naps. I would worry that if you're having to wake him he is not getting the naps he needs.

If my 6mo old is tired he goes for a nap and sleeps til he wakes, sometimes it can be 45mins, sometimes 2/3 hour. He sometimes naps 5pm til 6ish as well and he sleeps 7-7 and has done since about 3 month. He's kind of set his own routine rather than us forcing one on him.

I would hate someone to wake me when I was sleeping so I would never wake a baby when they are sleeping. If they need sleep they need sleep and nothing is to be gained from a grizzly over tired baby