My baby barely sleeps during the day

[dcn]

Does anyone else have a catnapper or a baby who only sleeps 30 - 40 minutes at a time during the day?

Yesterday was the worst, he only slept for 30 min 3 times between 10 am and 8 pm. I feel like I spent HOURS trying to get him to sleep. He wasn't crying or upset, just AWAKE. I always do the 5 s's to get him down, I don't know what else to try. Without a swaddle, etc we've never been able to get him to sleep in a reasonable amount of time.

DH thinks I stress too much about his sleep and I should just go with the flow more. But seriously if I didn't actively try to put him to sleep he would be up for hours at a time. He is 11 weeks old so obviously he needs to be sleeping during the day, more than 90 minutes!

Maybe he's having a wonder week or something?

[Deleted]

Is he sleeping well at night?

I can only offer our experience with dd: bedtime routine starts at 7:45 and she's usually asleep by 8:30pm. Then up sometime between 1-2am and 3-4am to eat before waking up about 7am. She'll eat again, then snooze on and off all morning in her bouncy chair, on me, etc. she's definitely not taking dedicated afternoon naps yet.

[Deleted]

DS rarely napped until about 14 weeks. He'd take a few cat naps and I could usually get him to sleep for a while ON me, but just napping in his crib? Rarely. Around 14 weeks though something clicked and now he is a pretty decent napper.

I did use the EASY method - eat activity sleep you - from baby whisperer and I think it helped. Starting around 10 or 11 weeks I focused on getting him used to napping, and didn't worry about the length of the naps. 10 minutes? Ok great. And gradually he adjusted.

[CloudBee]

I don't have my baby yet, but honestly, if he's getting a decent amount of sleep at night, and is happy/fairly easy when he's awake during the day, I wouldn't stress.

[dcn]

He does ok at night. Last night he did 8-10:45, 11:30-1:50, 2:15-4:45, 6-9. He normally does longer stretches but this week has been rough so last night was an improvement over the last few days.

[jr009j]

DD was like that until about 7 months. I can count on one hand the number of naps not on me that were longer than 45 minutes. She always napped after every feeding. Something clicked around 7 months and now when she's home she takes an 1.5 nap in the morning and a 2.5 hour nap in the afternoon. At daycare, she sleeps less than an hour a day.

Don't worry too much, some babies need less daytime sleep than others.

[water*drop]

DD has never taken long naps - usually only about 30 minutes. She doesn't STTN yet, but her total amount of nighttime sleep plus her short daytime naps does almost always equals the total amount of sleep that she needs at her age (according to Ferber), so I don't stress over it, even though it'd be awesome for my productivity if she'd nap for longer...the book talks about it a lot, but this column addresses sleep distribution a little:

www.childrenshospital.org/views/june04/sleepless.html
How much sleep should children generally get?
Young infants may sleep 12 to 13 hours total. But by 6 months, most children sleep only 11 to 12 hours total, and this number changes only slowly as children grow. Even by mid-childhood the number usually has not dropped below 10.

How that sleep is distributed may vary. In the first few months, a third or more may still occur in the day. But after three months, certainly most should occur at night. Still, a child needing 12 hours may distribute it between the night and day as seven and five, eight and four, or nine and three. As the child gets to 5 months or so, he probably should be getting at least nine hours of sleep at night.

Sometimes people have cause and effect backwards. They say, "His problem is that he's not sleeping at night, so we let him sleep more during the day." But it's because he's sleeping so much during the day that he's not sleeping well at night. The opposite can also be also true. If a child is sleeping from 7 p.m. until 6:30 the next morning, he's getting more than 11 hours of sleep, which is enough sleep total, and he may not have enough sleep left to nap well during the day.

[huskymom]

I felt like I spent my entire maternity leave trying to get the baby to nap. Thank god for the swing.

[Deleted]

DD was like this. At 10 or 11 weeks I began getting frustrated with her short naps or non naps. I stressed about it a lot because she seriously was consistently bad about it. She continued to be a bad napper and eventually I stopped stressing. At about age 2 she gave up naps completely but she still sleeps 12-13 hours at night.

[Deleted]

DS was a GREAT sleeper. He STTN at 7 weeks. But he was a cat napper from 9 weeks- 5 months. He then transitioned to 2 45 minute-1 hour naps.

[MadamePresident]

It sounds like your baby isn't fussy even with short naps. I'd just go with the flow.

Have you tried wearing your baby? Sometimes my 12 week old will take excellent naps in the moby.

[arch01]

if he's not fussing, i'd go with it.

DS still has the nickname "no nap wonder". the problem is he gets cranky and refuses to sleep.

[knitty]

If he's happy I'd just relax. But my baby who took 45 minute naps took five of them a day at that age. Sometimes she was tired an hour after waking up. It's possibly you're missing his window of tiredness.

[Brie]

C is a catnapper like that.

[gibbinator]

Ds only napped 20-30 mins at a time until around 5mo when he started taking a 1x1hr nap in the middle of the day plus 2 catnaps.

[Deleted]

We have a catnapper too. But only at home...at daycare she takes one 2-3 hour nap. I'm not sure how this happens.

[catbus]

E has been on a 20-minute nap streak. It's so ridiculous. For day care I had to fill out a form that included his typical schedule. It looked ridiculous. Since his naps are so short, and he's ready for another one after only about an hour of awake time (gee, I wonder why!), he ends up with five naps every day.
I offer him naps constantly, and he'll often fall asleep easily, but he always wakes after 20-30 minutes. A long nap these days is 45 minutes, and that's miraculous. It wouldn't be a big deal if he weren't so tired between naps.

I don't know what to do. He can self-soothe; he's truly STTN four times in the last two weeks (as in, 10.5-12 hours without waking to eat). I really hope day care somehow whips him into shape.