Will longer night sleep come with time?

[Floopyandtired]

DS is 18 weeks and honestly has been quite a dreamy sleeper (compared to my eldest anyway!). He still wakes once or twice a night to feed. A “normal” night currently looks like this:
7:30/8pm bed
10:30/11am feed
3:30/4am feed
5/5:30am awake for the day

I can’t seem to persuade him back to sleep after the 5:30 feed no matter what I try so we end up getting up and our whole day is shifted forward. Is this normal? Everything I read online says he should be having 2-3 hours of day sleep plus 12 hours over night at this age but he’s getting no more than 10 hours over night. He gets 3-4 hours day sleep over 4 naps. Should I be aiming to reduce naps at this age or just go with the flow and assume he’ll get there at some point?

For what it’s worth I’m very happy with his over night wakings and am not looking for those to magically stop. Just wondering if I could be doing more to help him sleep in a bit longer in the morning. Thanks 😊

12h overnight sleep us unusual at this age. 10-11h more realistic.

What's his naps during the day? Maybe try reducing/consolidating to three - however mine could never be pursuaded past 5/5.30 no matter what we did! It's come in time around 3.5ish now we're generally 6.30 and if we're lucky 7!

Yes need to know what naps are like during the day as it's all related at this age. Is they regular every day? Longer night time sleep comes with their ability to not need food at night time which tends to hit the mark around 6 months but I also found to have to tweak as they develop between day and night sleep to get the right balance.

I’m afraid that sounds like my youngest - he’s just turned 7, and no matter what time he goes to bed, he always wakes at 5-5.30

He gets about 4 hours of naps during the day split across 4 naps. 3 x 30 min naps plus a 2.5ish hour nap over lunch. The last few days he’s been fighting the last nap - I have up the battle after half an hour today so he only had 3! As a result he’s just fallen asleep so we’ll see what affect has on his wake time… will update tomorrow 🤞🏼

What time are his 30 min naps? You could try the 2/3/4 method... first nap 2 hours have wake, second nap 3 hours after that and third 4hrs or bedtime at that point.

18weeks is still pretty young though I think I was moved to 2 one hour naps by then and 6:30 bedtime, then we moved to 234 approach then we merged the naps to one lunch time.

@YoBeaches so his nap times are variable depending on what time the day starts but I work to wake windows of 1.5-2 hours. He can’t really go longer than 2 hours.

So last night he slept 6:30-00:30, then a quick feed and back to sleep until 04:30. He then took an hour to resettle and fell asleep 5:30-7:25. So this is a real improvement but he seemed pretty determined to start the day at half 4. Took a lot of very determined rocking to get him back to sleep!

Great news glad it was better. It is hard though, just when you think you've got it nailed, they change!

Use the Huckleberry app xxx

Mike did this for she’s and then about 22 weeks started sleeping till 6 and staying in bed till 6.30 babbling.

She always cries drying off but loved the bath itself so we do it nightly (hot country so it’s nice to wash daily especially now she has solids).

4 naps is a lot especially when they have a good lunch nap. Since 4 months we did a 40 min in the morning. 1.5-2 lunch and maybe another 30 in the arvo, Bed at 6.40/7. More than 3 hours of naps in the day affects my ones night sleep but I know others comfortably do 4+.

I think that this tricky period of early waking is linked to the transition from 4 naps to 3. The last few days he’s really fought that last nap and today he stayed down all of 5 minutes for it. Saying that though how is he meant to get through 13-14 hours of the day with only 3 naps totalling no more than 3 hours when he can’t stay awake for longer than two hours?! The mind boggles 😀