Napping

The reason for all the hundreds (if not thousands) of baby sleep books on the market is that no matter which book or sleep schedule/method you choose, as long as you stick with it, your baby will eventually bend to your sleeping will. It is when families go back and forth from one method to another because they had a few bad naps or nighttime sleeps that babies get confused and families get frustrated.  

Is there one right way to approach napping in babies? Of course not. But families usually fall into one of two categories: families that start babies on strict napping schedules from day one and families who just let baby nap when they want for how long they want.  

Both approaches have their merits and pitfalls. Having the ability to schedule your day around baby naps makes for an easier way to plan out your day but also means you are beholden to the young napping prince/princess. Those who let baby sleep whenever give that family the flexibility to not have to plan out their day as much but will periodically have baby miss naps leading to more meltdowns.  

Another thing that throws a wrench in the works is that all babies need different amounts of sleep, no matter what the sleep training books tell you. They also differ in how they prefer varying amounts during the day in the form of naps and at night in the form of a longer sleep.  

This leads to my general observation over the years. Some babies are just awesome sleepers and will sleep whenever, wherever, with or without a schedule. Those families know who they are, and those families know who they aren’t. But with the families that don’t have miracle sleeping babies, the most successful of those are the families that take into consideration their own babies’ preferences and sleep needs and do their best to fit those into their family’s schedule. If they miss a nap, they take it in stride knowing that baby may be a bit more cranky this afternoon. A trend we see as pediatricians is that if a baby is ready to sleep, they will sleep with very minimal soothing, rocking, or cajoling. If you are spending 30 minutes trying to get your baby to sleep, maybe we should have tried to put baby down 30 minutes later than the scheduled time.  We want to help baby fall asleep not have them rely on us to fall asleep.  

What separates the last nap of the day from the start of nighttime sleep? We try to have the last nap of the day end with enough time so that the longest stretch of awake time is the time from when the last nap ends to the start of bedtime/nighttime sleep.

Naps tend to transition in number around the age of 15-18 months, when many kids move from 2-3 naps a day to 1 nap a day. Once this occurs, it also allows us to better adjust our nighttime bed routine to aim for the same amount of total hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. Let’s say at 14 months, Johnny was getting two naps at about 1.5 hours each for a total of 3 hours of napping during the day. This allowed for a nice bedtime of 8 PM for Johnny with a wake-up at 6 AM, making a total of 13 hours in a 24-hour period. But now that he is 18 months old and getting only a single 2-hour nap during the day, we can start making bedtime 30 min to 1 hour earlier to get that same amount of 12-13 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.  

As toddlers get older, the more they can fight their naps. If they are acting tired, it is around normal nap time, and you put them in their crib, and instead of resting soundly, they are screaming for 15-30 minutes. Then we can just say to ourselves that they got some good energy out, but that nap is not happening today. We can pick them up when they are starting to calm down and resume our day knowing that we will try to put little Johnny to bed earlier that night than usual to make up for that lost nap.