4 month old day sleeps wont sleep past 45 mins

[Cookie29]

I have just weaned my 4 month old of his dummy in a hope that it would help with his day sleeps. He is fine to self settle to sleep but wakes after one cycle. I usually leave him for 5 - 10 mins before getting him up and can tell he needs more sleep so either pat in my arms or rock in the cot. Any ideas on how I can get him to self settle into the next sleep cycle.

Thanks

[kareve]

I'd love to know too. I have a two year old who has always been a brilliant sleeper. He sleeps through the night and still has a three hour nap duringthe day. HOWEVER, my 31/2 month old is completely different. She only ever sleeps an hour at a time during the day and is only up for 1 - 1.5 hours between naps. She's not bad at night (sleeps 6pm-6am with 1 or 2quick 15 min feeds). She has a dummy too and I haven't tried weanin her off it. (My son still has his).
But I can't get her sleeping longer during the day. I figure she's fallen into this routine herself and it seems to be working for her... (So long as she's doing well at night I'm not too fussed!! But interested to hear if anyone else has a bub with similar sleeping patterns!)

[trishalishous]

kareve, on 08 September 2010 - 03:31 PM, said:

I'd love to know too. I have a two year old who has always been a brilliant sleeper. He sleeps through the night and still has a three hour nap duringthe day. HOWEVER, my 31/2 month old is completely different. She only ever sleeps an hour at a time during the day and is only up for 1 - 1.5 hours between naps. She's not bad at night (sleeps 6pm-6am with 1 or 2quick 15 min feeds). She has a dummy too and I haven't tried weanin her off it. (My son still has his).
But I can't get her sleeping longer during the day. I figure she's fallen into this routine herself and it seems to be working for her... (So long as she's doing well at night I'm not too fussed!! But interested to hear if anyone else has a bub with similar sleeping patterns!)

I personally wouldnt mess with her day sleeps, it might affect her night sleep!
Our DD has only ever had around 15hrs sleep, to maybe 14 now at 4 months. she sleeps 8-12 hours over night, but only catnaps once or twice in the day.
She doesnt seem to need much sleep.
She IS a bit underweight for her height, but is advanced in development, today she was commando crawling on the bed for her teething toy! (shes 17 weeks today)

[Mummy22Boyz]

Unfortunately,some babies ARE just catnappers I tried EVERYTHING when DS was young - I fought with him for months & in the end just gave up. Wish I'd given up months before! As soon as I relaxed he actually started sleeping better! I spent so much time & energy trying to resettle him, when I could've been spending that time just enjoying him. Although I believe he needed a little more sleep than that, he was happy in between, so I just let him go. I'll give you the things I tried, but none of them worked for us (Apart from the white noise - that was reasonably effective )

* white noise (played continuously until nap time finished - we used Sounds For Silence CD)
* fed or rocked back to sleep
* went in there just before sleep cycle ended & started patting just before he woke up in the hope that would tip him over to the next cycle
* sat with him in his room with my eyes closed, hoping he'd go back to sleep
* played with his hair (he loved this), held his hands, anything else I could think of

It's very normal for babies to be catnappers - so try not to stress too much.......xx

[*Fiction*]

DS was always 40min asleep , 40min awake until about 5 months then we could stretch the awake time to about an hour . But he would always only nap for 40min at a time . Its just how some babies are . Once every 2 months or so he will sleep for an hour n a half , i get worried and have to keep checking on him .

He is 16 months now and sleeps 7pm-630am but stll only has a single catnap during the day.

[Ajplturner2]

Both my sons have done the 45 min catnapping and I find it very frustrating. I posted a discussion on here about it a few weeks ago and found it very annoying that people told me to accept it as a phase. I'm happy to do that but am at a loss as to what to do with him as he is so unhappy to be up if I get him up because he is overtired. He is not hungry for extra feeds either so it's very hard to figure out what to do - he ends up falling asleep in my arms which is not great when you have a very active four year old who needs you too. My second is now 3 months old and has been catnapping for about 6 weeks. He goes to sleep very easily - just wrapped but not aided in any other way so I don't understand why they then wake after that first sleep cycle. I try resettling but he only ever stays asleep for about 20 minutes if I am successful which is rarely. If anyone out there has some practical advice I'd appreciate it also!!!!

[3bubzandus]

My bub started doing 40 minute catnaps at 4 months. I had no luck resettling him. The only thing that ended up working for us was to keep him up longer between sleeps so that he was really really tired before putting him down. This seemed to be enough to get him over that first sleep cycle most of the time. Once he did it a few times he got the hang of it and then started having 3 hour day sleeps - hurrah!! I'm not sure if it works for all catnappers and I know some bubs are really hard to settle if they are over tired but luckily mine was okay at settling; just not resettling. Good luck :-)

[Mama Jellybean]

My 8mth old son was a funny sleeper as well, he would only cat-nap during the day and wake up still tired like he could've had another sleep cycle before waking. My sister who has 2 kids told me to look at the book "save our sleep" by Tizzie Hall, after reading the sleep section i tried a few of the techniques, putting more cotton blankets on for warmth, making certain he wasn't hungry, if he could have wind. I really reccommend the book as it helped me so much and i refer to it if my lil man ever has any issues, it also has structured routines as i found that hepled as well. Now my lil man is up at 6:30, goes for a sleep at 9.30, wakes up at 10.30 then back to sleep at 1.30, up at 3.00-3.30 then back to bed at 7pm. I hope this helps, it may not be a phase and just something simple that once you change it everything falls into place.