You see a sleep routine that states that your baby "should be napping for X amount of time"; however, your baby doesn't. You ask yourself why? A long uninterrupted lunch sounds great, but my baby only does 30-45 mins. How can I fix this?
✅ Here is your checklist:
Are you allowing them the opportunity to resettle? If you are rushing in and attending to your little one, you might interrupt the process of them trying to resettle.
-Can they self-settle? (Settle to sleep without your assistance)
-Are they hungry? When was their last feed?
-Are they too hot or too cold? Ideal room temp should be between 19-21degress
-Are they overtired or under-tired? Awake window before too short or too long?
-Are there any external sounds that might be waking them? We encourage white noise to be played for the full duration of the nap.
-Are they having all their naps on the go? eg in the car, pram out and about? We would always encourage to focus on the lunchtime nap to be at home in their cot to encourage that restorative nap.
Tried everything. Can your baby be happy on a catnapping routine??
Catnapping would be one of our top requests. Having a baby that takes short naps can feel like a long day with no time to do anything. However, this can be very normal between 6 weeks to 5 months. Some babies often manage well with four short naps a day, and it has no effect on disrupting nighttime sleep. This is when you might find yourself wasting a lot of time and energy worrying about catnapping when really it can just be a matter of time, age and development.
Try to avoid getting too fixated on calculating how many hours your baby sleeps during the day, yes, we have age-appropriate routines; however, if your baby has yet to learn to resettle, it can be hard to stick to a routine.
Could your baby be happy enough on a catnapping routine?? Let's take a look:
- They wake after 30-45 minutes, no matter what you do
-They wake up happy and don't show any tired signs until their next scheduled sleep
-Their night-time sleep isn't affected
- They feed well during the day
- It's working for you
Keep in mind all babies will always wake after 45-50mins, some might have a grizzle and resettle back to sleep, we would always recommend sitting on your hands and listening before getting them up and offering a feed or social interaction.
