Tired cues- what are they?!

[icecreamforbreakfast]

Aiming to start getting my 10 week old to nap properly in the day as previously she's just dozed on me after feeding and that's it (I naively had no idea babies needed to sleep so much) so I think she's generally quite overtired.

How do I work out what her optimum 'awake time' periods are and when she should be napping/how long for? This may sound stupid but other than yawning what should I look for?

Both my dc get hot hands when they are tired.

Rubbing eyes.

Mine couldn't manage more than about 1hr20 awake at that age, it'll be less than you think.

Really by the time they show tired signs they're already overtired. I just used to put mine down every x amount of time according to his age and that worked nicely for us.

My gran always said rubbing their ears was a sign of tiredness. This was actually often true for my babies

Rubbing their face or eyes, staring into space, grizzling, crying, yawning. My DD gets very hyperactive when tired. And she hiccoughs.

Different for everyone. To be honest it took a long time for me to notice my little ones. I now know it's when she's SUPER hyper and laughing lots and jolting her body, well thats overtired usually. But now she's 7 months I've started spotting it early. I also loosely follow the timings so at 7 months her awake time is about 2/2.5 hours so I keep an eye out x

www.babysleepsite.com/schedules/baby-sleep-wake-time-formula/

These were the wake times I used.

Crying

I always fed baby upon waking so knew awake time cries were tiredness, not hunger. Then after winding put baby on floor to roll around. First cry and I'd check for a specific reason (ie stuck on tummy). Second cry/grumble and baby is going to sleep.

Awake time was around an hour at that age (in the range of 45-75 mins). I agree with PP who said it will be a lot shorter than you are expecting.

I work on the basis that baby should be happy at all awake times, never crying or upset at all, and happy to play independantly without whining to be held/carried.

Any clinginess, any crying, any grumps = sleep time.

Outward tired signs (red eyes, yawning, pulling ear, glazed eyes, "wired" hyper) all actually mean baby is over tired to some degree.

Ideally you want to predict when baby will be tired, anticipate tiredness before it happens and start getting baby to sleep 10 minutes or so before this. So that baby is fully asleep before any tired signs were shown.