Avoiding evening naps for 3 month old

[EmmaRose26]

DD is nearly 13 weeks and on the whole is a good sleeper and napper (or has been!)

The last few weeks she’s been sleeping from 7pm, we’ve woken her up for a nappy change and feed at 10, then only had one wake up for a quick feed somewhere around 3am before sleeping until 8am. We have obviously been very happy with this set up!

However this week she increasingly is not napping for very long in the day, and a lot longer in the evening which is affecting how well she sleeps at night.

This week she’ll go down fairly easily for a morning nap 9-10ish and sleep for maybe half and hour. Then at lunchtime she doesn’t nap as easily and when she does it’s still quite short, maybe 40 minutes tops. Then come 3pm she’s very cranky and if I let her she’ll be pretty much asleep for the rest of the evening. Then at night she is a lot more unsettled with multiple wake ups around every 1-2 hours.

In terms of how she’ll go down for a nap, she’s pretty flexible - sometimes in her bouncer or cot or on my bed, or if out in her pram or sling. I’ve also tried putting her down swaddled with white noise while awake and we’ve had some success that way too. Similar length naps regardless of how/ where she’s gone to sleep.

Is there something I can do to encourage longer naps in the day, fewer in the evenings and get my glorious 5 hour stretches of sleep back??

If she's going to sleep at 7pm then it's not a nap, that's her bedtime! Their sleep patterns change all the time unfortunately. I'd focus on getting making sure she has a nap every couple of hours, my LO was a terrible cat napper until about 10 months. He used to have 3-4 short naps per day, I'd make sure he never slept later than 4pm and would go to sleep for the night fairly reliably from 7pm.

My DD is also nearly 13 weeks and I have exactly the same problem! She’s naps reliably well in the mornings but not in the afternoon, she is then overtired and grumpy from 4-7. I don’t wake her for a feed or anything though so she’s then sleeping from 7-7:30 until somewhere between 4-5. She is then usually wide awake and ready for the day then though so I’ve been going to bed at 9:00 to try and make sure I get a decent chunk in ready for my early start!

I want to try and get her to have a nap in the afternoon then push her bedtime back a bit to more like 8-9ish with the hope she’d then sleep till 6:00 but it’s not happening!! I’m painfully aware we have the 4 month sleep regression approaching which will probably cock everything up anyway so for now I’m just happy with the fact she’s sleeping so well at night and just going with it

After her lunchtime nap keep her awake until 4.30pm then let her nap till 5pm then awake till bed time at 7pm. Lunchtime naps may then start getting longer which is fine. How long is she napping for in morning, if too long may be why not napping at lunchtime for long enough.

4 month sleep regression didn't happen to line was the opposite started sleeping all. Night from then

Yes I’d say 7 is her bedtime at the moment for sure.

How do you keep them awake past 4? If I try to stop her sleeping she just screams and works herself up until a feed is the only thing that’ll calm her, and that puts her to sleep!

Last night was the worst one yet - unsettled every hour from 10. I only fed her at 10, 2 and just now at 8, so she’s not hungry each time just unhappy at being awake!

Is it the lack of good naps in the day, or maybe something at night that is waking her (we might be disturbing her when we’re sleeping at the same time?). She’s been such a good sleeper naturally before this we haven’t really thought about good routines or developed strategies to help her...

Hopefully trying to sort day time naps will have good results and stop me going and sinking a bunch of money into a sleepyhead or anything like that!

Her morning nap is usually no longer than half an hour.

I had to really invest in DD's naps. She needed a lot of help to learn how to nap in the day. I eventually got to the end of my tether when she was 4 months old and went a whole day with literally no nap and was still awake at 9pm in a terrible state.

I read up on things then and found reading about the balance between melatonin and cortisol useful. Basically if they go too long without a nap the stress hormone kicks in and they struggle even more to nap.

I started using the 2-3-4 method. It uses increasing gaps between naps as the day goes on. I was surprised to find that DD would nap easily and well only 2 hours after waking in the morning.

I had to work really hard on the 2nd nap of the day. GP who I mentioned it to told me that if I could persevere for 10 days that is how long it takes to form a habit, so I cleared 10 days in my diary to be at home late morning and put DD in her cot. By day 6 she was used to the idea and stopped fighting it.

The afternoon nap came quite easily after the middle of the day nap was in place.

I think it's easy to end up out and about every day doing one thing or another which makes it difficult to form routine/habits. Once the habit has been firmly formed you can readily break routine and baby will likely just nap in their pushchair/carrier/car or it won't matter so much if they miss a nap as they'll be generally otherwise well rested.

At this age their awake time is still quite short so I would try and get her off to sleep after 1.5 hours

This might be useful. It's really worth putting the effort in with the naps as it pays off hugely with night sleep.



Thank you - this just confirms my thoughts that the day time naps are key! Annoyingly DH is off work this week so we’re out and about quite a lot, but from next week I think I will make nailing her naps my focus.

Yes it's the out of kilter day time naps. If she's asleep from 3pm then of course she'll be up all night. You can keep her awake by, for example, giving her a bath (bathtime doesn't need to be at bedtime it can be any time of day), singing to her, playing, baby gym etc. If you can get her awake from afternoon nap till say 4.30pm and then just a half hour nap you'll have more chance of getting a 7pm till 7am night sleep. Good luck.

Hi there, it could be a mental development leap, as they have these at around 12 weeks? X

We’ve had better success with longer daytime naps and she’s lovely and awake now. Going to try a bath in half an hour or so too. Wish us luck!

For daytime naps are you putting her to her cot in a dark room? We found this worked for a good solid day time nap. Ours napped, 9-9.30, 12.30-2.30 ish and when very young would have a short nap before dinner then bed at 7. Is much harder when you’re out and about though.

This ^^^is against sids advice for 3 months olds.

So after going to bed just before 7, she has woken up every hour since. It just seems to have gotten worse each night this week.

It’s making me hugely anxious and I just don’t know what to do save co-sleeping, which our bed isn’t big enough for and I wake up every hour or so in a blind panic to check on her anyways when she’s in bed with me.

At that age I just let mine sleep when they wanted. They are so little and developing rapidly it’s not surprising that sleep patterns change often. I also found just going with the flow and not worrying about a routine made me less stressed.

That was the worst night we’be had yet. DD was literally awake and screaming every hour. She had good naps throughout yesterday, wasn’t awake for longer than 2 hours, then was nice and awake from 5 before bedtime... help

That was the worst night we’be had yet. DD was literally awake and screaming every hour. She had good naps throughout yesterday, wasn’t awake for longer than 2 hours, then was nice and awake from 5 before bedtime... help

Is she teething?

She might be, she has been very drooly but I’ve had a quick peek in her mouth and her gums are pink with no hard bumps so I am not sure.
I’ve rung our health visitor to see if they have any advice. Otherwise I’ve been googling expensive swaddle sleeping bags (although she is already in the swaddle up bag) and sleepyheads in desperation!

Sorry you had a bad night. One day of good naps isn't enough to 'fix' it. Sleep deprivation is accumulative so it takes time to get on top of it. Keep going with the naps.

I would give some calpol at night if you think she's in pain, see if it helps.