15 week daytime sleep

[ravenwheeler]

I've been reading threads in this topic but hoping to get some advice.

My 15 week old used to nap really well in his bouncy chair (among other places) until a couple weeks ago - he'd stir, bounce a bit with that motion, fall back asleep again - but now wakes completely after what seems like 26 minutes, which I'm guessing is daytime his sleep cycle duration. I've been trying the technique of bouncing through the transitions and it works kind of inconsistently right now (mostly I can get 2 in a row, but naps of 1.5+ hours are challenging).

He sleeps roughly 12 hours overnight, sometimes with 1 feed in the early hours and a feed around 4/5 am where he sometimes takes a bit longer to drift back to sleep, then up for the day around 7.

What I'm unsure of is how hard to try to extend naps right now, and whether 4 or 5 really short naps are "okay" for him? I understand that I want to teach him the pattern of longer naps so that he can learn to do it himself when he's developmentally ready to do so, but is it worth starting that relatively "early"? Or is there a number of "longer" naps I should be aiming for in the day right now? And how do I adjust wake time (if at all) based on nap length on a given day? It seems that no matter how early I try to send him off he nods off right around 1.5 hours after his last wake up (so can't eg. go earlier because his last nap was only 26 min).

Always try to extend the nap, every time. But initially it won't work much and so loads of shorter naps are ok. But always try because the more you try the more it will be successful.

Awake time, as a general rule, wants to be :
● Double nap length
● Plus or minus 15 minutes
● Never longer than 2h until naps are consistantly 90m plus.

So, for example, 25 minute naps want around 50 minutes awake time, in the range of 35-65 minutes. 90 minutes is way too long awake for such short naps.

How long does settling baby to sleep take?

@FATEdestiny

Thank you so much for the response! That's exactly what I thought so I'm a little perplexed. He takes 5-10 minutes to settle if I start at 1h30 - 10 minutes is the extreme and I start worrying it isn't working if it takes that long. The thing is that if I start at say 1h15, he then take 20-25 minutes to settle. Yesterday I started at an hour and it took until the "usual" time for him to drift off.

He doesn't have a dummy (trying to work on this but not sure if it's too late) and he doesn't cry or anything, just looks around and only goes glassy eyed and zoned out right before he nods off. I'm wondering if it's the fact that I usually manage a couple longer naps a day that saves it -- or maybe he transitions more easily at some times than others - the second nap at around 10/11 tends to be longer. Yesterday was the first day that he had two such short naps in a row and made me realise that his sleep cycle was actually that short.

I should probably mention that I'm a FTM and I'm possibly unreasonably worried that if I don't do this "right" on a daily basis he'll be miserable or something. He's a very alert/interactive baby and almost never cries, so I take it a bit personally when he does.

Sorry, I realised I probably misunderstood. Does awake time change for each nap of a different length during a single day? So eg. only 35-65 min after a 25 min nap, but then if the next is longer awake time can be longer, but definitely not longer than 2 hours at this stage?

That's right, yes.

Awake window depends on the previous nap length. So when baby wakes from a nap You can use the length of that nap to predict when the next nap wants to be. A longer nap means a longer awake time.

Thank you again for your patience. I think we're getting better - got him napping within just over an hour of a 30-odd minute nap today, and he seems to be falling asleep faster too. I seem to have some kind of PND so it really helps to have something that works reasonably consistently and to know that I'm not just bouncing him fruitlessly at the wrong time. I'm trying really hard to relax about it too.

Regarding the future and moving naps to a cot way down the line - right now he doesn't seem to find falling asleep in the bouncy chair upsetting at all, but I imagine that without a dummy cot naps will likely entail some crying?

He sucks on both my finger and more recently his own for comfort already so I really think a dummy would be a good tool for us in general. I've been trying but although I can often get him to take it in the same way he would usually latch, but he screws up his face and doesn't suck, or sucks very briefly before ejecting it, but the ejection is almost like he's sucking too balistically? I'll keep trying but any tips would be wonderful.