What do you know about sleep cycles?

[flipflopsonfifthavenue]

DS2 is 16weeks and in recent weeks has started to only sleep for 30mins at a time during the day. To the minute. To the second almost...! He'll wake up clearly not rested but can generally be distracted out of a total tired meltdown. Unless he's in the car then it's scream central.

The exceptions to this are if I've fed him to sleep and he's still asleep on me or I'm still lying next to him. Then he'll occasionally stir and latch on again and sleep on through.

He wakes up in the buggy, sling, car, cot. I can rarely rarely get him back to sleep.

DS1 used to sleep for 45mins exactly til he was about 7mo when he started sleeping 1.5hrs suddenly.

My question is, if the conditions that he falls asleep in are EXACTLY the same when they wake after 30mins, why oh why won't he just go back to sleep?????

It's driving me potty and am sure he's not getting enough daytime sleep. He's averaging around 2 hrs sometimes more sometimes less over 3/4 naps.

Do I just hope he grows out of it? Until he started doing this he'd happily sleep upwards of 2 hrs in all these places.

At night he'll sleep 5/6hrs during first part of night then wake every 2hrs or so.

I had 45 min wake ups and discovered that if I left DD to cry for 2-3 mins, she went back to sleep for up to an hour and a half.
She was screaming her head off when she woke so I thought oh Jesus something is really wrong and galloped to get her up.
But actually she was screaming in frustration at being awake.
She is 5 months old today and now does 45 min at 9am and 2hrs+ at 12 every day.

Yes his crying when he wakes is DEFINITELY a frustrated I don't want to be awake cry

Yes. So leave him 2-3 min. If he's still screaming then so shush pat a few times. If still screaming then whack on loud white noise to calm him down

It's not too late for a dummy.

I'd question your baby waking according to sleep cycles.

Much as they are talked bout here as "The Reason" for shorter daytime naps. Two things strike me. (1) Your DS does not appear to be waking in cycles through the night, which suggests he can sleep through a cycle no problem at all. (2) An individuals sleep cycle length changes from day to day, hour to hour even and also person to person. They are not always 45 minutes.

I do second not immediately rushing to baby when he wakes though. A couple of minutes and some shush pat if needed is very good advise.

It is weird but my ds used to wake after exactly 40 minutes for his morning nap which was always in the buggy (school run) despite keeping moving. He would scream and only very occassionally go back to sleep aftee 10 minutes or so (normally just as i arrived home!). He has only started to outgrow this in the last month and is 8 months today.

For his lunch nap he goes through phases despite self settling in the cot. He jerks awake at the 20 minute mark and then goes back off to sleep himself but wakes again just before the hour mark and then is wide awake at 1hr 25 mins. Previously he has slept soundly for 30 minutes then cried and slept intermittently for the rest of the nap. I think they regress every month or so followed by making massive improvements. It is both fascinating and infuriating! Babies' sleep cycles mature all the time though.

The only advice i can give is to try to ensure they are tired enough for a nap before they sleep. It's easier for a baby to settle back to sleep if they are really tired I find!