Evening Naps

[ahayden1230]

Whose babies are still taking evening naps (meaning sfter5:00). How long do you let them sleep?? do you wake them if it's been 2 or 3 hours?

[shannjohnston]

I let her sleep whenever. She's one month today. The sleep training method I followed with DS said that the first month is a cluster fuck no matter what you do. Month two you can start observing their natural schedule and see how you can manipulate it to fit a more structured schedule, so that's the plan for the next few weeks.

[udontevenknow]

I let him sleep whenever. I think I will follow the above advice though.

[heidih21]

I let him sleep whenever but after 7 if he's awake I won't try and get him back asleep. We will do tummy time and I'll just sit with him. But if he falls asleep oh well. We do a feeding at 11 and go to bed. If we do this usually he doesn't wake up until around 5. This seems to work best for us. Otherwise I'm up most of the night

[llambrose]

I just let mine sleep whenever. He is one month but sleeps a lot. We don't really have a bedtime or anything so it is really just go with the flow around here.

[shehulk723]

Yeah I just let her sleep when she wants to and be awake when she wants to. I'm not on a schedule really so there's no point in me getting her on one just yet. I'll probably start trying after a few more weeks.

[megpie5]

F is only 3 weeks old today, and like shannjohnston said, everything I've read says the first 4-6 weeks you can't establish a schedule, so we just go with the flow. She usually naps around dinner time, falls back asleep around 10pm and then eats every 2-3 hours between midnight and 8am.

[hazelnut]

I let her sleep when she wants to and she'll be 6 weeks tomorrow. I'm on maternity leave another 6 weeks, so I'm not too worried about being on a schedule at this point. She's getting better at sleeping at night even when she naps in the evening.

[kellimark]

Go with the flow too but when she is awake I'll get her on the floor after eating. It seems that if she kicks her feet just for a few minutes her quality of sleep is better meaning she sleeps more soundly and doesn't grunt as much

[grommom]

We're only at just over a week so baby eats and sleeps on demand. The only one that's not allowed to nap after 5 is my son who 2 years and 9 months because if he naps late he does not go to bed. This little guy is barely awake...just sleeping and eating and pooping and I swear he can do it all in his sleep too!

[backseatdriver]

I've been waking her to feed if it gets to 3.5 hours. In the evening she is pretty much screaming the entire time and if I can get her to sleep I dare not wake her. But my son used to naturally want a bedtime of 6:30 (at maybe 4 months when his sleep was more consistently following a routine) As he got older we pushed it back.

[lola918]

Same here, my son is almost 4 weeks old and he sleeps whenever he wants for as long as he wants. Right now this unfortunately means some day-night confusion, but that's normal. I've also read you can't set a schedule so early and we haven't tried.

When he does fall asleep after 6 pm we try to go to bed too!

[rodiesmum]

I just let her sleep

[tomorrowisanotherday]

Mine will be 4 weeks tomorrow and he has tentatively started to create his own routine. He feeds every two hours and naps in between in the morning and early afternoon, then is awake more and feeds every hour in the evenings. He finally settles down around 830 and then sleeps until 12 and then eats and back to sleep until 330, eats and back to sleep until 630 when we start our daytime schedule. I don't make him keep a set schedule though because less sleep during the day doesn't necessarily translate to more sleep at night! Babies sleep when they need rest from stimulation; my advice is enjoy evening nap time and eat dinner in peace

[LaBellaVida]

Liam does. I let him sleep when he wants, and for how long he wants.
He's been more awake at night (prior to us going to bed.) So far he's sleeping ok during the night. I'm still up between every 1.5 hours to 3 hours to nurse, but he'll go right back to sleep.

[ashlantic]

Our lo has been pretty awake during the afternoon so he gets pretty tired during the evening. He cat naps and nurses and if we get lucky his cat nap will coincide with dinner so DH and I can eat together (too bad it doesn't usually happen like that.) Then he settles down and typically sleeps from 8 or 9ish til 12 or 1, wakes up for a feed/change, then back down until 4 or 5ish.

shannjohnston, what sleep training method are you using?

[shannjohnston]

It's called The Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Guirdano. It can be intense at times - especially in month three - but it guarantees your LO will sleep twelve hours by twelve weeks. It worked for DS, so we'll give it another go this time around.

[laceysbryan]

Our LO has an evening nap from around 6:30 (or whenever he's done eating around that time) to 9:30, and then we'll change him and he'll have what I consider his "last" feeding of the day. I will wake him up for this if he's still asleep. Then he'll generally wake up twice in the MOTN.

[funinthenorth]

Lo sleeps when he wants. At 3 weeks he's just starting to want to stay awake for awhile after feedings to check out his surroundings. Up until last night he only did this during the day and motn feedings were still pretty quick. Feed and back to sleep. Last night, not so much. I had a little party animal on my hands at 3 am. Not my idea of a great party these days.

12hrs sleep at 12 weeks sounds really great right now. I'm going to have to look into this. It might be that light that gets me through a few nights.

[CoffeeOnIce]

Ok I've posted before about my LO being tough to get to nap, but can anyone share what helped get their babe to sleep in their bassinets/cribs? Sound machines? Does everybody swaddle? I try putting her down after she falls asleep in my arms and inevitably she wakes up like 5 minutes later and I just give in and hold her some more. I'm starting to feel like a failure and seriously need to sleep without her on me for more than 30 minutes. She's 18 days old BTW.

[elleswarth]

Feb 11, 2015 18:08:09 GMT -5 CoffeeOnIce said:

Ok I've posted before about my LO being tough to get to nap, but can anyone share what helped get their babe to sleep in their bassinets/cribs? Sound machines? Does everybody swaddle? I try putting her down after she falls asleep in my arms and inevitably she wakes up like 5 minutes later and I just give in and hold her some more. I'm starting to feel like a failure and seriously need to sleep without her on me for more than 30 minutes. She's 18 days old BTW.

Ours was doing this too when we were laying her flat in the pack and play. We've switched over to the Rock and play which has a bit of an incline and she suddenly started sleeping for 4-6 hours at a time. I assume she's got a little reflux going on and laying flat upsets her. We will try to wean her back to laying flat eventually, but we're currently just enjoying the sleep. Every baby is different, but maybe give something like this a try and see how she does?

[funinthenorth]

Feb 11, 2015 18:08:09 GMT -5 CoffeeOnIce said:

Ok I've posted before about my LO being tough to get to nap, but can anyone share what helped get their babe to sleep in their bassinets/cribs? Sound machines? Does everybody swaddle? I try putting her down after she falls asleep in my arms and inevitably she wakes up like 5 minutes later and I just give in and hold her some more. I'm starting to feel like a failure and seriously need to sleep without her on me for more than 30 minutes. She's 18 days old BTW.

We have to wait until lo is in a deep sleep, meaning I can get up, walk up the stairs with the bright light on and open the bedroom door without him opening his eyes.  If I don't make it in the room without him waking up there is no way it's staying in his cradle.  Once he's in there he is swaddled, with a blanket on him for a little weight.  He seems to like a little weight on him.  I suppose it makes him feel more secure.  We also put a towel under the mattress, under his head to put it on a slight incline.  Also, we turn a fan on in the room to make some noise.  

So essentially - we do every trick we have ever heard of working.  It all seems to working ok.  Lo is 22 days old and sleeping in 2-4 hour stretches. Wish I could say it was longer stretches, I could really use it, but I'm sure it will come.

Don't feel like a failure - we are all doing whatever we can to get ourselves to the next day.  You are doing the best you can and I'm sure you are doing great.

[mmooki]

He will be 8 weeks on Friday and I still feel like we do whatever. It took a long time to get dd on a schedule but we eventually got it.

[nemomof2]

LO is only a little over 3 weeks old, so we let him make his own schedule. The only thing is during the day we make sure the lights are on and there is noise. At night it is dark and quiet. Our thinking is he will hopefully start figuring out his days/nights.

[kcrus]

Just rolling with the punches around here. C is 5 weeks but has 3 school aged siblings. We run around a lot during the day/after school and if we are out too much she is a fussy nightmare. I'm working on balancing the big kid schedule vs the LO schedule (or lack thereof).