5 month old tired and sleeps alot

[Lisastevo82]

Hi.

For now I am blessed with a good sleeper (I’m not complaining!) He has 3 good naps a day, and sleeps 11 hours at night and has done from 12 weeks but he is still at 5 months old cannot be awake very long before he gets really cranky. He has 4 8oz bottles a day about 4ish hours apart depending on when he wakes and naps etc. Very content, seems to be hitting milestones. It just blows my mind that after 11 hours of solid night sleep he can wake for a bottle and within an hour he is back asleep and napping again. Should I be worried or just be thankful and roll with it?!

This is my second baby, eldest is 6 and he was nothing like this. This little guy is just super chilled and happy all the time, just not awake very much!!

Babies sleep needs are so varied and it sounds like you got an especially sleepy one! How much total sleep is he getting? You say he's ready for a nap after 1 hour awake time but unless he's having very long naps he must be managing longer wake periods than this during the day?

As long as he's managing a good few awake hours in the day and is gaining weight and developing well then I doubt it's any reason for concern.

Thank you for replying. The morning gap is the shortest and I think that’s what concerns me the most because I can fathom how he is still so tired after having a full long nights sleep. His schedule is pretty varied but it’s generally goes like this -

8am - Wake & Bottle
9am - Nap
11am - Wake
12pm - Bottle
1pm - Nap
3pm - Wake
4pm - Bottle
5pm - Nap
6pm - Wake
8pm - Bottle and Bed

Give or take half and hour either side of feeds and naps.

That routine looks pretty perfect to me. There is nothing to worry about.

It's normal that awake windows are shortest at the start of the day and longest at the end of the day, so your 1h 2h 2h 2h awake windows are perfect. A commonly used approximation for awake windows when dropped to 2 naps per day is "234" - 2h awake until morning nap, 3h between morning and afternoon naps, 4h from afternoon nap to bedtime. You can see the progression in stretching awake time through the day more obviously here.