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Parenting

09th Mar 2015

The nap of your baby’s life: Our Sleep Expert’s top tips on nailing naptime

"... some babies who start off sleeping well during the day, then out of nowhere, this changes"

Niamh O'Reilly

Ah, napping. That joyful time where your baby is asleep, and you get to have a cup of tea and catch up on your favourite TV show… NOT.

Naptimes are wonderful – for babies and parents – when children sleep for as long as they’re ‘supposed’ to. It’s all well and good for me to tell you your child should nap for a block of two hours during the day. You could get stuff done and know that your little one is getting enough sleep. The reality is often very different…

But what if they don’t nap well? What if your little one seems to be a cat-napper, catching half an hour here, there and everywhere during the day?

A cat-napper is not the end of the world. They can still be great sleepers at night. It can just seem a bit (well, hugely) frustrating when you hear of other babies going to sleep for hours at a time during the day. So, in one sense, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

There are some babies who start off sleeping well during the day, then out of nowhere, this changes. During the day, as children slip from an active sleep cycle into a deeper sleep cycle, some can have some difficulty settling between the two stages. They rouse, and we pick them up. They start to get used to this and so never really learn the art of resettling themselves during the day. Perhaps because of this your cat-napper is born.

One good idea for sorting out these mini-sleepers (who are also not sleeping well at night) is to try to rouse the baby a few minutes before they normally wake. So, if you can set your watch by your little one and they sleep for exactly thirty minutes every time, without fail, you could gently rouse them (not fully wake them though) after twenty-five minutes, and place him or her back down in the cot again. It is known as the ‘Wake to Sleep’ technique.

Another way of managing this is really to try to follow and maintain a routine, and to wake your little one from the morning nap to encourage sleeping a little longer at lunchtime. Here’s my suggested routine for a six-month-old:

Routine for Baby at six months and on three solids per day

7.00/7.30am – Wake and milk feed

8.00/8.30am – Breakfast

9.00am – SLEEP (40 mins max and NEVER past 10am)

11.00am – Milk feed

11.45am – Dinner/Lunch

12.00/12.15pm – SLEEP IN COT – up to 2 hrs

2.30/3.00pm – Milk feed

4.00/4.30pm – SLEEP (40 mins max and NEVER past 5pm)

5.30pm – Tea (lighter meal than lunchtime)

7.00/7.30pm – Milk feed and BED

10.45pm – Dream feed

When to start dropping naps

Usually, the first nap to go is the late afternoon nap. This will normally happen around the eight or nine-month mark. Little ones going through this adjustment will be tired in the evenings – so maybe you could get them down to bed a little earlier than normal. Even half an hour earlier should do the trick.

Then from around eleven or twelve months, you might find your little ones become a bit more resistant to going down for a snooze at midday or even start to sleep for a shorter time at that midday nap. I recommend that by 12-13 months, there is only one nap (at midday) for our little ones. Start cutting down the morning nap by a few minutes every few days, for a month until it is practically non-existent. Going cold turkey on naps isn’t always a good idea. Gradually getting used to being awake for longer is the best way.

Still, try not to stress too much about it. If you are trying to encourage your baby to take a longer nap (for example the midday nap), I suggest that you attempt to resettle baby for around ten to fifteen minutes. If, at that point, the little one is showing signs of falling asleep, then continue to ride it out. If not, then forget about it and get on with your day. Your baby will probably have a ‘catch-up’ nap later on.

For some babies, mini naps are simply their ‘normal’, but I do think it’s possible to turn your cat-napper into a long-napper over time.

Now, back to that pre-recorded episode of Downton Abbey…

Niamh O’Reilly is a sleep coach. She’s also a baby and childcare guru, a ‘parent nanny’ and the answer to many a weary parent’s woes. When it comes to baby and child issues, Niamh is your woman. Always on hand to offer a no-nonsense solution, in an approachable way. A regular in the Irish media, (most recently as TV3’s Late Lunch Show’s ‘parent nanny’) over the next while at HerFamily.ie, Niamh will share some of her experiences, helping you attain that ‘holy grail’ – nights of uninterrupted sleep for all of the family.