how much should a nine-week-old be napping in the day?

[AdeleVarens]

Hi all,
Confused first-time mother here. I have an adorable, very alert 9 week old who generally sleeps well at night - I feed him to sleep in a darkened room (he's formula-fed) at 8 or 9 pm and he sometimes sleeps through till five before waking for a feed, and often manages till 3 am - but he tends to go into meltdown from 6 pm or so onwards because he's overtired from no daytime naps.

He will occasionally doze off when out in his pushchair, but not for long at a time, and will generally wake up as soon as the pushchair stops. He won't nap in a sling, as he wriggles in it and gets cross because he can't see out.

How long should the average nine-week-old be spending asleep during the day? Would like to hear other people's daytime sleeping routines for babies of roughly the same age. And any tips on how to encourage him to nap in the daytime?

I will be shot down in flames for this but I found the Gina Ford Contented Baby book really useful for estimating sleep needs and I now have two children that always go to bed when I want them to and don't get up until I go through in the morning. Take the rest of the book with a pinch of salt but it does give a good guidance for sleep needs as your baby matures into a toddler.

Agree with pp re GF's guidance for sleep needs & routines for older babies/toddlers (post 6 months), but I found that as a younger baby my DS needed much more sleep than she suggests. At a younger age I found the BW suggested awake times to be incredibly accurate & at 2 months old they suggest 1h 15-20 as being the total amount of time awake between waking from one nap & falling asleep at the next. This includes time spent feeding/changing etc. So if your baby is awake for much longer than that, I would suggest trying to get her down sooner. BW was also very helpful in alerting me to the tired signs my baby would display & when I needed to act in getting him down, so at the first sign of an eye rub or yawn, or if you see your baby start to stare with eyes glazed over, you need to get her down right away.

HTH.x

Thanks for your responses, code and omama. I think I have a GF lying about unread somewhere, and will have a look at it, but am raising my eyebrows sky-high at the 'BW' awake times (is this 'Baby Whisperer'?). My baby is frequently awake for six or eight hours at a time! And I mentioned these timings to the others in my NCT group, and none of our babies sleep anywhere near that much!

Any advice on how to get a non-napping baby into the habit of napping? Do I need to replicate our night-time routine of darkened room etc?

I used to write down everything for my DTs otherwise I would have forgotten who fed/pooed when etc so I have dug my book out for the first time in months.

Our days went something like this (was mix feeding, bf with ff tops ups each time)

7am feed
930 am nap for 1 hr (usually in their cots in nursery so dark room etc)
11am feed
12pm nap for 2-2.5 hours (usually in pram as I was often out of the house, if not then in travelcot in living room)

3pm feed
5pm nap for 1 hr (travel cot in living room)
7pm bath, feed,bed in cots in nursery
11pm dreamfeed
Sometime between 3-5am feed

Wow it is quite odd looking back at this all written down now as I don't really remember in the skeep deprived haze. If you'd like to know how many poos they did in the first 12 weeks of their lives let me know and I'll count them!

My DD is 10 weeks and I discovered by accident that darkness and a secure, enclosed space seems to help. So, I bought a snoozeshade for the pram (about £20) which is breathable but blocks 94% of light. I find that this keeps him asleep for longer even when the pram has stopped moving. Also bought a cot canopy for naps at home which helps. Might be worth a try if you have a super-alert baby to minimise distractions? Good luck!