4 month old doesn’t nap during the day

[Madesuchamessofit]

My 4 month old is not a fan of daytime naps. He’ll sleep fine at night (from about 10pm to 8am, including waking up for 2 or 3 feeds and falling asleep again) but during the day is a different story!

The only circumstances he will fall asleep are in the car (he wakes up as soon as the journey ends), out for a walk (he wakes up as soon as we enter the house) or during a feed (he wakes up as soon as I try to move him or after approx 15 minutes of napping, whichever comes first!). I’ve timed it, most days he will be awake from 8am until 10pm with a maximum of 1hr 45mins of sleep split into 15-30 minute sections with that time.

Unsurprisingly, he gets quite cranky, but meets my attempts to encourage him to sleep with loud, screaming resistance. I really don’t want to do any sort of full-on sleep training, so I’ve been letting him follow his own schedule. Now, however, he seems to be getting angrier and grouchier during the day when he hasn’t napped, and I wonder if I’m doing him a disservice by not being more insistent! Should I be doing more to ‘make’ him nap at this age, or will he grow in to it? All advice is gratefully received, Thank you!

Totally normal. My first DD the same. We use to drive her on what we called a "snooze loop" (around a ring road), in the sling and in pram until we sleep trained at 10 months.

How often does he feed? Mine had a phase where she was feeding too often, resulting in drinking less per feed and being constantly a bit too hungry to nap. I needed to slowly stretch out the time between feeds till I hit 2.5 hours and she felt full enough to nap.

Also, 4 months is a bit infamous for sleep to go haywire for a while.

My babies have always been quite sleep resistant, but I work hard at getting then naps, in the car if feeling lazy or walking in the wrap because it makes life easier in the long run because I'm not constantly trying to console a crying baby.

Some babies just need a little more help to nap than others

At least he’s not the only one! Thank you for replying. That’s really interesting about the feeding - he’s combination feeding but it’s mostly BF and it’s still really frequent. I’ll try encouraging him to take more at each feed. We’ll keep going with the walks and drives and hopefully he’ll start to find it a bit easier 😊

It is normal but once the four month leap happens they are much more aware of their surroundings so you may find you need a nap routine to help sleep. From 4 months I started reducing stimulation, putting baby in a sleeping bag, closing the curtains then offering the boob about 20 mins before I thought it had been 2 hours since waking up, putting white noise on etc, just like a mini bedtime routine. This really helped and baby would usually sleep on me really well for naps then at home. I still do this routine now at 8 months, just the wake windows are longer and baby will go in the cot if we're home for naps. I also put white noise on my phone and tuck it in the footmuff storage pouch for the pram on walks when it's roughly time for a nap.

You don't need to make baby nap, but you do need to create the right conditions for baby to drift off if tired if that makes sense.