What's your 4 month old routine?

[Lemondrop99]

So my 16 week old seems to have finally beaten the catnaps after 8 long weeks!! He's now consistently napping anywhere been 1hr 20 mins up to 2hrs at a time.

But now I'm worried he's having too much daytime sleep!

We're having a problem that he's waking around 5.30 for a feed, taking ages to settle back to sleep then not really getting up until 8am (which is fine by me!). However I'm not sure if he thinks he's getting up at 5.30am and the next sleep is just a nap!!

He then wants to sleep around 1.5hrs in the morning, 1.5 hrs - 2hrs at lunch and then he was doing a catnap late afternoon. But the last few days he's started doing a massive nap of 1+ hr in the late afternoon! As a result, he then doesn't go to bed until 8pm.

Ideally I'd love to run an 8-8 day, but my gut feeling says that actually this is probably too late for him and contributing to the 5.30am party?

He went through a growth spurt/sleep regression (who knows?!) over the last few weeks and was waking every 90 mins to 2 hours. It was awful. However on the last two nights when he's gone to sleep at 8pm he's only woken up twice to feed. First night was 2am and 5.30am. Last night was 12am and 5.30 am. Again, would be great if not for the 5.30am party......

I know text books say that he should be having
45 mins AM
2 hrs lunch
30-45 mins PM

But I haven't the heart to wake him! He's so grumpy and really seems to need the extra sleep. He stirs crying after the first cycle AM then resettled himself so I'm sure he's not ready to wake up. So not sure what to do. Should I get tough on his extended AM and PM naps or go with the flow for now?

The 5.30am party is causing an issue re: breastmilk. Basically he's double feeding between 5.30-7am when my husband used to give an expressed bottle at 7, so he runs out of milk early and it impacts on my time to express (used to do it 7am but now need to feed).

Anyway, I'm waffling. Please share your 4 month olds routines. I'm particularly interested to see if anyone manages a longer morning nap and it doesn't impact on sleep....

Go with the flow. If only my 4 month old would nap that long! I don’t think you can keep a baby awake if they don’t want to be, just go with the flow if he’s happy and healthy and it works for you.

How did U beat the catnaps?!
I have no routine as baby cranky all day due to catnaps :(

Thanks Autumnal, that's why I haven't woken him yet. He's so unhappy when he wakes early, I guess he knows what he needs? And after weeks of catnaps and then the 2 hrly wakes, I really should be happy that we're currently are where we are! The only problem is he won't nap well out and about so we're stuck at home a lot (although I'm going to attempt today's lunch nap in a sling....eeep)

Trying, you have my sympathy. It's awful. Cat naps drove me loopy! Sadly I have no magic answer for you I don't think it's anything I did. He was impossible to resettle when he didn't want to. I think he just grew out of them. The only things I think had an impact are

1. If I rushed to feed him and then to bed (if we'd been out), he would wake after 20 mins without fail. Now I make sure I feed him 20-30 mins before the nap, burp him, lay him down do a bit and burp him a second time before the nap. This definitely helped with the early waking.
2. If he woke after 1 cycle and wasn't crying, I'd leave him there. I was giving up after 10 mins and/or when he started to make noise. I've since learned that it could take him up to 20 mins to resettle himself, and the grizzling was actually the start of him putting himself back to sleep. I now leave him to it, intervening only if he starts to actually cry or has been awake longer than 20 mins with no sign of going back to sleep. After a week or so of that, he started to link cycles
3. We ditched the dummy when he started waking for it and also kept pulling it out of his mouth and getting hysterical about it.

Hope that helps a bit.

Oh and in the interim, I just made sure he wasn't awake long than 1hr 30/40 min before another nap. Sometimes he had 5 naps in a day, but it was the only way to stop him getting overtired. Soooooo frustrating though!

Thanks lemon
That’s interesting about leaving him there for that long! I rush in and try pat or pick up and put back to sleep

He’s exhausted after his stupid naps and my happy baby is slowly disappearing!

I’ve taken to spending 2 hours in a dark room at lunch time as he seems to manage 2 hours on me with a bit of jigging when he stirs! but it’s no fun :(

He yawns about 30 Mins after being up and his night sleep is pants too so he’s just chronically overtired. I give him 2 30-45 in am and one 2 hour then one more 45 later. Prob too much sleep? I dunno!

Anyways! This wasn’t about cat naps ! Hopefully someone will let u know their routine! Well done for breaking it, I wish I could :(

Gosh that's a lot of worrying over a baby that is sleeping brilliantly! I would relax and enjoy it. My ds is 14 weeks and is terrible at napping but sleeps ok at night so we go with the flow. My dd was a sleeper...she always had long naps and needed lots of sleep, still does. They are all different, go with what works for your child.

Sounds like hes doing great! Wish my nearly 4 month old would ditch the cat naps.

My DS now 2.5 was a good napper once he stopped the cat naps and his routine once it got set at about 6 months was a 1.5 hour nap in morning and then another 1.5 hour nap in afternoon. We did 2,3,4 routine which worked great. Any nap transition is difficult and you end up having some days with 2 naps and an early bedtime and some with 3 and a later bedtime until it settles down.

You could try waking him in the evening so he goes to bed earlier? I usually wake DD so that she’s not sleeping past 5.30 for a 7pm bedtime. If it doesn’t work then don’t do it the next day, eventually it’ll work itself out