2-3-4 baby schedule people

[bananapancakes]

How old was your LO when you started with this pattern? 

I've been trying this for the last few days but I think L is still too little (5.5 months) and might still need a short late afternoon/early evening nap. He definitely can't 't make it 4 hours before bed so it ends up being 2-3-3 and an early bedtime which means an early morning.

Yesterday he was up at 6:00 and napped 8-10:20 and 1:30-2:45. I started bedtime routine at 6:00 and he was asleep by 6:30. He was wide awake at 5:30 this morning.

I started putting him down for a nap at 7:30 but he didn't fall asleep until about 8:10.

Anyway, when did your LO go from 3 naps to 2?

[everafter07]

Probably around 8-9 months? She took three short naps a day for a looooooong time. She's still on 234 or very close to it at nearly 15 mo.

[dulcemariamar]

Closer to 7 months

[hermione]

Around 6 months. We were on that schedule for a long time...sometimes we're still on it.

[humpforfree]

Almost exactly 6 months he fell into it on his own. Wake up 6/7ish, nap 8/9ish-9 or 10ish, nap 1-3/3:30, bedtime at 7. So not quite 4 hours before bed but he is whipped by then and often goes to sleep even at 6:30 or so.

[toesie]

7-8 months for us.

[shelbyann]

About a week ago! So right at 7 months.

I have my fingers and toes crossed that she keeps it up...after 7 months of crappy napping it feels amazing to have a couple of hour-plus chunks of free time. Life changing, seriously.

We dropped the third nap when the second one started getting longer.

Our days have been looking something like this: 7:30 wake up, 10-11:30 nap, 3-4:30 nap, 8:30 bedtime.

It's pretty awesome!

[formerlyllizzyb]

9 ish months. He didn't fully drop the third nap until 9 months.

Of course, he never napped very long so it often turned into a 2.5-3-5 schedule.

[leonard131]

Around 6 months when he began to be able to consistenly nap. It coincided with nap sleep training.

[bananapancakes]

Yes, I love having the more substantial naps but I don't love the 5:30 wake up time. If he does the same as yesterday, he'll nap til 10:30ish and again 1:30-3:00. He can't make it until 7:00 so has been going down between 6-6:30 which is really early, no? I feel like everything I'm doing related to sleep is wrong these days!

[cricketwife]

You could try a short 30-45 minutes nap around 4 if you want to have him stay up later. It may or may not work

[shelbyann]

I would try getting him to take a third nap, a short one, from like 5-5:30. Then bedtime a little later, 8-8:30.

[hermione]

Oct 1, 2014 8:23:54 GMT -5 bananapancakes said:

Yes, I love having the more substantial naps but I don't love the 5:30 wake up time. If he does the same as yesterday, he'll nap til 10:30ish and again 1:30-3:00. He can't make it until 7:00 so has been going down between 6-6:30 which is really early, no? I feel like everything I'm doing related to sleep is wrong these days!

When we first started 2-3-4 bedtime was necessary at 6:30pm. It sucked. But it is really short lived. 

[rex]

well, we still can't get to that 4 at the end. it was 2-3-2 for a long time and is now like 2-3-3.

L dropped to 2 naps sometime after 6 months. i don't anticipate she will need 2 for a few more months.

we are at a 630 bedtime and i LOVE it so i am no help because i think you should roll with it and enjoy sweet freedom at night.

[bananapancakes]

Oct 1, 2014 8:50:09 GMT -5 rex said:

well, we still can't get to that 4 at the end. it was 2-3-2 for a long time and is now like 2-3-3.

L dropped to 2 naps sometime after 6 months. i don't anticipate she will need 2 for a few more months.

we are at a 630 bedtime and i LOVE it so i am no help because i think you should roll with it and enjoy sweet freedom at night.

I do enjoy the sweet freedom at night. It's the 5:30 wake up time I don't enjoy!

Today he was up at 5:30. I put him down at 7:30 but he played around for a bit and fell asleep just after 8:00. Napped til 9:30. Awake 9:30-12:30 and napping now. If he wakes at 2:00 and I try to keep him up 4 hours that will be a 6:00 bedtime and a 5:00 morning tomorrow! No thanks!

Perhaps I'll try a nap around 4:30 or so.

[catbus]

Similar to others--6-7 months, IIRC. Up ~7, first nap at 9, second nap 2ish, bed around 7.

[kershnic]

At 7 months my girls still usually need a short 3rd nap. If they sleep like 5:30-6ish or so, then bedtime can be more like 8. If they don't nap sometime in that early evening range then they crash around 7. I don't really notice much difference in their morning wake up time based on what time bedtime happened - it varies, but it seems to depend much more on how much sunlight sneaks in than what time they went to bed.

[rex]

Oct 1, 2014 11:57:35 GMT -5 bananapancakes said:

Oct 1, 2014 8:50:09 GMT -5 rex said:

well, we still can't get to that 4 at the end. it was 2-3-2 for a long time and is now like 2-3-3.

L dropped to 2 naps sometime after 6 months. i don't anticipate she will need 2 for a few more months.

we are at a 630 bedtime and i LOVE it so i am no help because i think you should roll with it and enjoy sweet freedom at night.

I do enjoy the sweet freedom at night. It's the 5:30 wake up time I don't enjoy!

Today he was up at 5:30. I put him down at 7:30 but he played around for a bit and fell asleep just after 8:00. Napped til 9:30. Awake 9:30-12:30 and napping now. If he wakes at 2:00 and I try to keep him up 4 hours that will be a 6:00 bedtime and a 5:00 morning tomorrow! No thanks!

Perhaps I'll try a nap around 4:30 or so.

when L naps too much during the day she wakes up super early too. otherwise i can keep her in her crib until 630a. i know that seems weird as most babies who nap too much don't go to bed on time.

also remember 2-3-4 is a guideline. if he's not tired in the am after 2 hrs, wait a bit. or maybe he's not ready for 2 naps.

[greencrayon]

I'd never heard of this before. DD only naps once a day, usually around noon. Maybe I should try this, because I wish she would nap more.

[spanikopita]

J was 2-3-3 from 5 months to 11 months. Then she went to one nap.

[arch01]

about 9m.

FWIW we started it then as well. it was more like 1.5-3-1.5-1.5 for awhile. we called the little catnap (it was 15-20 min) his attitude adjustment nap.

i am a huge advocate for this routine. but, as with all routines, it has to have a little play in it.

[Velar Fricative]

Around 9 months for that schedule and for 2 naps, which is when she finally started to nap in her crib instead of on us. It's actually around 3-3-4 though, but I don't care because the predictability is nice!

[jenn248]

I think she was around 6 months? It wasn't an exact 2-3-4, however. She would wake up anywhere between 5:00 - 6:00, take a morning nap around 9:00, take an afternoon nap around 1:00, and then take a catnap around 4:00-5:00 (usually in the car on the way home from daycare). She dropped the third nap around 8-9 months.

[tela]

8-9 months. my kids suck at having a consistent nap schedule but I noticed dd2 dropped the 3rd nap when she was up longer than 2 hours after wake up for the day.

and dd2 could prob go to bed earlier but we just make her push through to her normal bed time (parents of the year here!) because its a our routine (bath time and getting ready for bed with dd1). thankfully this hasn't backfired on us yet.

[kategm]

Around 7 months when we sleep trained. Naps just kind of miraculously fell into place. However, she still takes a 15-30 minute snooze around 5pm every few days which helps get us through till bedtime.

[heygrey]

we're so close at 7 months, but not there yet. he's more of a 1.5, 2.5, 3.5. lol.

rough schedule:
6:30am - up for the day
8:00 - first nap
10:30 - wake up
1:00 pm - second nap
3:00 - wake up
6:30-7 - bedtime
then he wakes up 1-3 times over night!

it's obvious that my kid needs a lot of sleep and we're doing SO much better after sleep training. even though he wakes up motn, he goes to sleep for naps and bed without much fuss. we still have bad days, and you'll here me bitch about them, but they are few and far between lately. i think he was heading towards this pattern at 5.5-6m and we sleep trained at 6m which really solidified it. even though i feel like he's not awake a whole lot during the day, he's actually a pleasant person to be around because he's rested. we're getting much more quality time together even though the quantity is shorter.

[bananapancakes]

He woke up at 1:45 (napped 1.25 hours) so there is no way that he will make it to bedtime. I see a catnap in our future.

[lmb5109]

DD took 3 naps till she was 11 months old but her 3 naps were maybe an hour each.

Up at 6:30am
Nap 8-9
Nap 12-1
Nap 4-5
Bed at 8pm.

Then she dropped the morning nap at 16 months and it took till 20 months to get her to sleep 2 hours on a regular basis. Naps have always been a struggle but she mostly STTN so I didn't stress over the naps.

[mae141]

We started it before 6 months, but I can't remember how much before 6 months. I just tried it one day and it worked really well, so we stuck with it. There was a while probably around 5 months there that she would wake up at 5 or 5:30 no matter what time we put her to bed or how perfect her naps were. It was so annoying.

[sent]

On the rare days my almost 10 month old does this, I tell myself she's being like the other internet babies today.

The past few days she's been getting up between 7 - 7:30 and going off to take that first nap around 10:30 - 11. So her first interval is a 3. The rest of the day is a crap shoot.  Sometimes there is a decent second nap, many times there isn't like today when she just did 20 minutes in the car for the second nap.  

Occasionally she will sneak in a third snooze and that throws bedtime back by at least another hour driving me nuts.  Like we were on a 15 minute drive home the other day and she slept for 10 minutes and was good to go.  I tried so hard to keep her awake but on days like that I curse rear facing.  She had a 7 am - 9:30 pm day that day and by the end I was exhausted.