What To Do About Short Naps

A new client asked me yesterday about her 5-month-old’s short naps. Her baby would only sleep 30-45 minutes unless a parent held her, in which case she could sleep as long as 2 hours. What should this parent do?

Short naps at 4 and 5-months-old are common and normal, unfortunately. So there’s nothing wrong with this baby. My 5-month-old daughter does the same, apart from her first nap of the day (which sometimes starts as early as 6:30 am, so is really just a continuation of night sleep).

Here are the options. 

1. Allow the short naps and shorten up your baby’s wake windows to compensate. If your baby only sleeps 30-45 minutes, which is exactly one sleep cycle, you can be confident that she will get tired again quickly, sometimes even before having another feed. It’s fine to put her down without a feeding if this is the case!
   
   With this approach, it’s important to know that your baby will need extra naps each day, to compensate for their brevity. Typically this is 4-5 naps a day. It could even be more with a very young baby.
   
   This is the approach I am used with my daughter. 
   
   
2. Help your baby to extend his naps. In this scenario, you would put the baby to sleep in his crib, preferably putting him down awake, but then rush in when you hear him start to stir at the 30-45 minute mark, then either hold him, feed him, insert the pacifier, or pat him back to sleep.
   
   This can be very effective for some babies. The trouble is, not all babies will cooperate with this plan. When my baby wakes up at 30-45 minutes, she’s often very smiley and alert. If this happens, she’s unlikely to go back to sleep. If she’s fussy, reinserting the pacifier can often buy us a few more minutes of sleep but it’s unlikely to lead to a nap longer than an hour (which is much more restful than 30-45 minutes).
   
   
3. Use sleep training to extend the naps. In this case, you must put your baby down awake and then use your preferred method to help her fall asleep (cry it out, timed checks, chair method, shush and pat, or pick up put down). Then, when your baby wakes up at the 30-45 minute mark, you use the exact same method to help them fall back to sleep.
   
   This method takes patience, as it’s harder for a baby to put herself back to sleep than it is to fall asleep independently at the start of the nap – her sleep pressure is low after 30-45 minutes.
   
   I recommend parents shoot for 60-90 minutes of crib time if choosing this method, so that you know there is a limit to how long you are working hard to extend the nap. It's important to give your baby enough time to succeed, though, so you don't want to make this crib time too short. 
   
   This method is also the most likely to be successful, long term, but again, it takes an investment of time, patience, and a willingness to listen to some crying.
   
   

If you choose method 1 or 2, or choose to contact nap for some naps, know that your baby is likely to have an improved ability to nap at least an hour as he gets older. By 6-7 months, as babies typically go to 3 naps a day on their own, the naps generally lengthen out (at least the first two naps of the day; the third nap of the day will remain short in most cases). If this doesn’t happen for your baby, I recommend you do some nap training at this point, so that your baby doesn’t get overtired.

If your baby is contact napping all or most of the time, or relying on motion (car or stroller), you will almost certainly need to do some nap training to achieve independent, restful naps. 

Nap training typically takes longer than night training, so don’t get discouraged if it takes at least a week to see some progress, and 2-4 weeks to get really great naps. Sleep pressure is low after a short nap, so consistency is key to achieving success.

PS If you’d like help getting your baby to achieve restful naps, I’m here to help. Schedule a free consult and find out how you can achieve amazing results in 2 weeks or less, guaranteed. 

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