Early to bed, early to rise....

[MissTwister]

My 4 month old seems to want to go to bed around 4pm! I let her have a nap then and wake her up around 5ish - if I didn't I think she would just carry on. As it is when she wakes at 5 she is just incredibly grumpy and whingy and upset until we bath and bed at 7pm. It's pretty tiring...

I don't want to let her go to bed earlier as surely she will just get up earlier. Currently she is doing 7-6ish.

Any tips?

You need to look at her daytime naps.

If you move her daytime naps earlier and try to make them longer then she is less likely to be exhausted by 4pm.

Being ready for bed at this time, when 4 months old, is everything to do with daytime naps and nothing to do with night time really. She needs more sleep in the daytime, then she wouldn't be tired by 4pm.

The early to bed/early to rise thing matters most once baby is not waking between going to bed and getting up in the morning. Or at least when any wake-ups are brief so that most of the night is spent sleeping.

My ds used to have a catnap at about that time. How much does she nap in the day?

She doesn't wake between 7pm and 6am though when she gets up. Sometimes she does a 5am feed and then sleeps for another hour.

Tonight she kept falling asleep up until her bath at 6:30 - then she was wide awake when I put her down at 7pm but fell asleep on her own by 7:30

She isn't a great daytime napper - she rarely does more than 45 mins at a time and if like today I am out if can be hard to get her enough sleep. I don't know what to do about that other than sit in all day every day because as I say she naps every 2 hours for 45 mins max.....

45 minute daytime naps are perfectly normal and usual at 4 months old. 45 minutes daytime sleep is every 2 hours is great!

Why not do bath/PJs etc at the 3pm awake time so that she is 'ready for bed' and doesn't have to be grumpy and upset when you do it at 6pm. Then let her to nap at 4pm. See what happens.

Much will change over the coming months so it really doesn't matter if you want to try things - it won't be set in stone so you can always change back.

When my DD was a tiny baby like yours, it wasn't usual that she'd have a 9pm-10pm 'playtime' when she was in a really good mood having woken from her latest nap. This was lovely timing for DH, because it was when our older children were in bed so we could enjoy some quality time with baby.

It's not like this lasts for ages, all will change again soon. So just go with the flow. Maybe try letting her stay asleep at 4pm. It may mean you have a later awake time. Or maybe an early morning awake time. But decide if it works or not once you've given it a go.

My DD was the same at that age. She only usually slept in short bursts of 30 mins during the day but would only wake up once at night during a 12 hour stretch. She used to get grumpy around 5 and sometimes I'd just let her have a wee 20 min nap to take the edge off. As she got older her daytime naps got fewer and longer naturally. She's 9 months now and will usually sleep for about an hour in the morning and 1-2 hours in the afternoon. I still need to be careful not to let her afternoon nap extend past 5pm though or she's wide awake at bedtime. I would just let the naps happen at this age and they'll naturally start to get more regular and predictable in time.

thanks for the advice. As I speak she's over an hour into her first nap so maybe things are changing as you say!