When did your baby’s naps consolidate?

[countrymousesussex]

Just wondered when your babies went from frequent short naps to fewer longer naps?

Our DD is 4.5 months, sleeping really well at night - goes down awake after bath and bottle at around 6.30, then usually sleeps to 6.30 with one night feed. Sometimes she wakes at 5/5.30 but if she’s not hungry will just chatter herself back off to sleep again so long as the white noise comes on. I am aware that this will probably all go to pot soon with the 4 month sleep regression though!

She is a TERRIBLE cat napper. Goes down well (in pram, bedroom too light for her in day, plus we’re in and out - pram doesn’t have to be moving, just needs Snoozeshade and white noise) but only ever manages 30 mins. Have tried various tricks of pushing her around to try and get her to go back off/keeping her up longer/putting her down earlier and have concluded that it’s just developmental and we’re stuck with 4 x 30 min naps until she’s ready for longer awake times and longer naps.

So, I’m just wondering....when did this happen for other babies? Friends keep telling me they had babies that took 2 x 2 hour naps a day from 12 weeks or similar.....

I have a 6 month old, and it's just in the past few weeks that she has started taking longer naps... Not every day, but quite often she is now having an hour and a half morning nap when it has previously always been 30 minutes in the dot!

That’s it - it’s literally 30 minutes on the dot! I can’t get over how weirdly specific that is....

None of my family beleived it till they experienced my highly accurate wake up predictions!

I’m just placemarking as I could literally have written this!! My 5 month old DD is exactly the same!!

Glad I’m not the only one! All the books/websites say that the cat napping issue is because of not being able to self-settle.....well T can, so clearly she hasn’t read that information!

Yea I’m also very interested in this. My dd is 9 weeks today and although she sleeps well at night and doesn’t usually wake up from 10:30-5am but during the day she’ll have 20-30 mins max.

WHy are you trying to get her to nap for longer during the day?

It was somewhere between 6 and 9 months with my eldest, I think? Before that they were exactly 45 minutes, you could set your watch by them.

I’m not bothered about the 30 minute naps myself - she’s pretty independent in nature and is happy to entertain herself while I do jobs/eat/shower etc - but it’s just that she gets rattier and more grizzly as the day goes on, so I worry that she’s getting overtired.

When she’s grizzling she’s then not spending time kicking about on the floor practising rolling, learning to grasp things etc so the teacher in me is wondering if she’s going to miss milestones. Overthinking it clearly, but I can’t switch the teacher brain off!

30-45 mins is a standard sleep cycle, and it takes time for them to learn to get to that point and keep on sleeping. Naps are a lighter sleep than bedtimes so it does take some time.

As the Babywhisperer said, ‘Sleeping is a learnt art’. That is something I found very useful to keep in mind when at my wits end!

She self settles at night. Perfection!!!

You will hate me, my DS self settled from birth, 7pm-7am with one short feed at night and two long (2 hour) naps in the day, but I was strict about following a GF routine which I know is not popular on Mumsnet.

All 4 of my children self settled. It took a few weeks for them to sleep through the night. Breast fed every bloody hour during the night for the first few weeks. Still haven’t gotten over that lol. They slept as and when the liked during the day. Cot, pram, car seat, swing, floor for however long they wanted and I didn’t care as long as they slept through the night

Ok, I’m starting to see a lot of variation here! She’s not a baby who will just nod off when she’s tired - she has to have darkness (because she’s a nosey parker) and white noise to block out sudden sounds so therefore I have to actively plan for her naps....which is why I guess I wonder if I’m doing them ‘right’.

On the days I have left her to see if she’ll nap when she’s tired, she’s gone 4+ hours and then screamed in tiredness until she’s sick 🙈

If only each baby came with a troubleshooting guide!

Mine started taking longer naps at 10 months. Till then he used to wake up after 30 mins, no matter what I tried. I think babies just learn to consolidate sleep eventually.