Do you limit your baby's naps durring the day

[hayleylou]

Just wondered if anyone does? Would it be better to do this so they sleep better at night or doesn't that work.

Not when dd was a baby - to be honest I never found any correlation between daytime and nighttime sleep, except that sometimes I found she actually slept longer at night if she'd slept well during the day!

From about 6 months I did make sure she didn't nap after 4pm for a 7pm bedtime.

And now she's 2.5 I restrict her afternoon nap to 2 hours and generally going on no later than 3.30pm for a 7.15pm bedtime.

Am finding that at nearly 3 dd doesn't always need a nap. Tends not to have one if we are all home and want to got out in the afternoon but try to get her to have one if we are on our own (ie, on a Tuesday) so I can get some stuff done. I usually suggest she has a little snooze but if she isn't asleep in 20 mins I let her get up again and we read a book or something - just for some quiet time! If she does sleep she has a max of 2 hours and I always get her up at 3.30 at the very latest no matter what time she went to sleep. She doesn't always have one a nursery either! Must admit will really miss the time to myself! If she does have a nap it doesn't seem to make any difference to her night time sleep!

Like Pidge. DD 9 months. Make sure she does not sleep after 4.30 pm for a 7.30 pm bedtime. Also agree that good naps encourage good nighttime sleep (same with DS as a baby). When she was younger (ie under 6 months) I used to try and make sure that she had half an hour at about 5ish (usually achieved by a walk or a cuddle) or else she would be overtired and a nightmare by bedtime.

How old's your baby, hayleylou?

Dd's nearly 2.5 and I'm exactly the same as pidge. When dd was younger, especially under 1, I let her sleep as much as she wanted to although if she sometimes had a mega 3-hour nap I'd wake her up.

It depends on the age of the baby. I wouldn't limit a newborn, except to make sure they were feeding often enough. But as they get a little older, then definitely yes. Not to the point where they are really tired and cranky, but as you get to know your child you get to know how much daytime sleep they need.

DS is 2.2 yrs which I not really worried about. My dd is 7 months, I know it seems odd but I cannot remember what we used to do when ds was that age, so I wondered should I limit!!! Hope that makes sense!!

hi hayleylou - i found the opposite was true. The more they slept in the day the better they slept at night - definitely made life easier all around!

ive always given baba 2 hrs nap in the afternoon adn 2 hours nap in the evening (altogether give her no more than 4 hrs nap from when she woke up in the mornings) and then she is in bed by midnite (im on maternity leave at the mo so thats why bed late) and baba have 9 hrs skip thru the night...

i remembered once she had too much sleep and her sleeping patterns was all over the place (as one point it was 4.30am in the morning for 2 days on the wrong coz of my mistake of her sleeping too much) took me 3 weeks to get back in the sleeping pattern - never again !!

baba is 4 months old BTW

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