Short naps - 5 Month old

My baby!!! We are lucky if he even naps for 45 minutes. He’s also the world’s lightest sleeper, so every little noise wakes him up. 😭

I’m glad I’m not alone!! And same! My baby is also the lightest sleeper! I read that’s normal for babies this age to take shorter naps till their sleep matures more closer to 6 months.

I don’t get how some ppl have a baby that sleeps 10-12 hours at night at this age. Mine has become so consistent, I fear his habits won’t ever change.

@Alexis im one of that people who has baby sleeping 10 hrs at night. Idk how its just a blessing tbh, first was nightmare and second is my favorite because i got my sleep back 😭😭

Mine is also taking pretty short naps but he’s down to 3 naps a day, his longest is also about 1.5 hours (with help- like me going back in to rock him). I think at this age, 3-4 hours of nap time is the aim throughout the day.

“Sleeping through the night” has different meanings, I’ve found. 😅 My baby’s bedtime is anywhere from 7-8pm, but we still choose to wake him up around 10pm for his dream feed. He’s usually up and ready to start the day around 6:30am. He mainly sleeps through the night, but sometimes we have to put his pacifier back in and more recently we’ve had to get up to rock him for a few minutes.

What time is your baby’s bedtime right now? And what time is he waking up in the morning?

Hang in there! This is such a big learning curve. And by the time we figure out their routine, something else changes! 😁

Our schedule looks like:
Wake 0730-0800ish
Awake for 1.5-2 hours
Then 30-45 minute naps
On repeat until bedtime around 9p-9:30p

When I go to work, he does 1.5-2 hour naps while held with my parents, but they admit it's usually patting him back to sleep every 30-45 minutes. And i just can't do that with my toddler.

My first slept even less despite the fact that I held her for her sleep every single time after embracing she did not fit the mold of the sleep trainers like TCB. She's always been short naps except for a little period in time when she did 1.5 hour naps when she dropped down to one nap a day.

I figured that’s amount of time of sleep they get throughout day. I don’t do any dream feeds and don’t use a pacifier which is why I don’t see making a bed time earlier happen. Sometimes I get to 8:30om but that’s the earliest.

He generally goes to bed btw 8:30pm-9pm and sleeps straight through till 5:30am-6am.

And gah your so right that’s nice we get through a routine another skill or new event is happening! 🤣

I’m just hoping the older he gets his sleep will mature too. I got to 4 maps once the other day but it was a bit of a struggle. Gonna not force it and just gage it as it goes.

Thanks for all your answers! All so helpful and supportive 🥰❤️

My baby is usually asleep by 8:45pm and wakes up around 5-6am (sometimes 2am), but when he wakes up I treat it like night time still and nurse him back to sleep so he’ll usually nurse for 10mins then knock out and go back to sleep until 8am-ish. On weekends I bring him in bed if he wakes around 7:30 and I can usually nurse him back to sleep (takes a little longer cuz he’s more awake so I usually have to switch sides and it takes like 30-45mins for him to go back to sleep) and I can get 1-2 more hours of sleep so we’ll be up for the day around 8:30-10am. During the day he only sleeps around 30mins for his naps, maybeeeee 1-1.5hrs for his first nap if I’m lucky, but I’m ok with it cuz of his night sleep (I am NOT an early riser so I’ll take the lack of naps during the day than early wake ups lol). He also only takes 3 naps a day but it works for us!

When he was a newborn I used to try to force longer naps and spend all day every day just trying to get him to nap but it was frustrating both of us so I just elongated his night sleep and let him have his short naps. Sometimes they were frequent naps since they were short he’d get fussy, but I would just go with how he was feeling and now we go with short naps and elongate his night sleep! Honestly it works with us when we take him out cuz I know now if he sleeps for half an hour he’ll be ok. He truly is a FOMO baby haha