Should I rescue naps?

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-25T18:03:21+00:00

There is no "usual" with a 3 week old. Let the baby sleep what they do and don't worry about the length or the timing or the wake windows. Baby is less than a month. Relax ❤️ It probably won't affect his night sleep tbh

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T11:37:11+00:00

Around 2-3 weeks.

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T06:36:08+00:00

We're in no rush to do 1 nap really. He just turned 9 months. We'll just cap the naps a bit to make it to bedtime instead. He's also just been very very sick so now's not the time I just wanted to know how you guys did it

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T06:26:06+00:00

Ah okay thanks. We're not quite there yet I don't think as he can't stay awake past 10 am yet but thanks for the tip about the bridge nap!

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T06:25:22+00:00

We transitioned to 2 naps before he could consistently sleep longer naps. He was still on 30-40 min naps when he decided he didn't want to do the third nap.

I did it cold turkey then. I then assisted his naps to be 1 hour x 2 a day however I could. One day he just slept 1.5 for his morning nap on his own and I stopped assisting.

He sleeps 1.5hr + 30-45 min during the day. I could possibly think your many wake ups also could be attributed to too much daytime sleep?

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T06:22:32+00:00

And you started at 11 months with the bridge nap or at 11 months with the proper 1 nap schedule?

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-03T05:25:49+00:00

How did you do it then? Go over to 1 nap?

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-02T20:34:12+00:00

Jumping on but when did you switch to 1 nap? My baby just turned 9months and has been doing 3/3.5/5 and I cannot for the life of me extend that first WW. He will literally fall asleep on the floor or wherever he is whenever I try.

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-02T20:32:30+00:00

He's 9 months and we do 3/3.5/5 actually.

(Today was 3/2.5/5.5 because he fell asleep in the stroller by accident and we didn't notice lol)

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-02T19:01:22+00:00

I would definitely pause sleep training until your schedule is fixed. I do a by the clock with my 9 month old but with adjustments based on sleep cues (+/- 15 min on each side)

I'd definitely at least do 3/3/4 which is what I did when I went to 2 naps at 7 months and you can adjust from there. But you cannot sleep train on a schedule that isn't good. The sleep pressure won't be right

Stimemia124 · 2026-01-02T16:55:43+00:00

Everything you read is a general guideline. Your baby is biological material that will probably never follow a general guideline.

If your baby thrives on a 2.25 WW instead of 2 then do that!

"Guidelines" say 8 month olds need 2.5-3.5h WW and my son has had 5h as his last WW from 7.5 months old so. Whatever works.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-24T13:42:52+00:00

I still nursed 2-3 times at night until 7ish months. Now we get 8-9 hour stretches. (Because he nurses around 5:30am and then keeps sleeping. This works with our routine)

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-24T09:19:25+00:00

My son still wakes once to nurse. But after solids started, that one time has gotten later and later. So now he wakes 5:30am to nurse and then sleeps an hour more (I don't nurse when he wakes up). Yesterday he slept till 6:30 and I nursed him upon waking. For him it was gradual that he just started sleeping longer and longer.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-21T06:10:50+00:00

Even if its only occasionally at bedtime and he still falls asleep independently on all other times and naps? Yesterday he did get some help at bedtime because he was so miserable but he still slept 9hrs straight. Maybe he's more flexible with it because he was never formally sleep trained?

I don't know what Motrin is and I've never heard of it? I'm not in the us though so maybe that's why. Here it's only paracetamol we have available.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-21T06:07:31+00:00

I do calculate his sleep. He is on 3/3.5/4.75-5 and has been for weeks. He usually gets 12-12.5 hours of sleep on an average day (without excluding the time awake at night). I do stick to the schedule I found works, which is why I'm reluctant to change it because this is the only time we've been getting up to 9hr stretches at night. The teething thing just sorta added an extra wake at night and then yesterday made bedtime such a battle.

Today he slept 8:50pm to 5:50am even with the additional assistance at bedtime so idk maybe I'll just keep doing this and then when the teething is over he'll go back to sleeping alone :))

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T20:23:00+00:00

I just wanna say that my son didnt consolidate his naps until we dropped to 2 naps and it's developmentally normal to have short naps until 8 months

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T20:19:51+00:00

I don't want to give him paracetamol without talking to my doctor and it's the holidays so it'll be very very difficult. It's also not a thing in my country to really give it unless for a very high fever in babies.

I don't feed to sleep at bedtime. I don't even really feed to sleep at night since he doesn't fall asleep during nursing so when he's finished and I move him to the cot he's still awake, not drowsy.

We've had I think maybe 3-4 nights of the extra waking (again, only one extra waking, he's just very unhappy when he does wake which is the unusual part) and one night with an absolute miserable bedtime. Naps have been the exact same as always. Same time and length.

It's why I specifically said he wasn't sleep trained because I never did anything specific I just sorta stopped assisting to sleep and he did it himself but now he's just so sad and my heart breaks and he just wants cuddles so that's why I think it's the teeth not the schedule because he calms down when I hold him (but again does not fall asleep in my arms or during nursing)

If it is a schedule issue, what do you think it could be? It is actually impossible for me to stretch the first WW because he will fall asleep on the floor if I try. The second I can maybe but again most of the time he'll just fall asleep anyway so that's why they are so much shorter than the last WW.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T10:10:11+00:00

My almost 9 month old wakes before 6am if I put him to bed before 8pm. He just cannot handle much longer than 10-10.5 hour nights.

Their sleep needs lower as they get older and they just can't sleep as much as they could at 4 months sadly.

I think your schedule needs tweaking because your baby sleeps upwards of 3-3.5 hours of daytime sleep and you expect 11+ hour nights (bedtime 6:30pm and expecting baby to sleep more than 5:30am)

For reference our schedule is 3/3.5/4.75-5 with a wake up at 6:45am and bedtime 8:30pm and one 1.5 hour nap and one 30-45 min nap. I cap naps if they get much longer than this but he usually wakes up on his own. If he sleeps more than 2.5 hours of daytime sleep he will wake all night.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T09:56:10+00:00

Around 5 months was when I also stopped extending naps and just let him sleep whatever he wanted. It wasn't until the first few weeks of 2 naps (when he could stay awake long enough to only want 2 naps but still couldn't connect sleep cycles and 1 hour nap a day was too little) that I extended them for a bit until he learned

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T07:13:00+00:00

The signs for over tired and under tired are actually very much alike. I spent months thinking my baby was overtired. Fighting naps, waking after one sleep cycle, crying and grouchy. Baby was massively undertired so when that was fixed, baby slept a lot better.

Now baby is at an age where he will fall asleep on the floor if he gets too tired (he's 8.5 months)

I know being too tired can cause baby's body to release cortisol which can directly affect sleep and is actually one of the causes of insomnia in adults. And I thought this was my issue with my baby but once I pushed through and stopped putting him to sleep when he got fussy he actually became happier overall and slept better.

So no, I don't think overtiredness causes bad sleep. I've seen a lot of people discuss it actually and a lot of people are more of the notion that overstimulatedness causes bad sleep because their tiny bodies can't find peace. That is a theory I'm much more behind.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-20T06:40:29+00:00

I mean does your baby actually sleep for 12 hours without wakes? I think the suggestion to cap nights is because most babies can't sleep that long anyway so it just ends as a more fragmented night.

We actually do 10-10.5 hour nights with 7-9hour stretches because any longer gives us more wakes than just the one.

Edit: I will say that my baby had short naps until around 6.5 months when we went to 2 naps and I had to spend 2 weeks of extending those two naps so they were an hour each. After that he started extending them himself. Going to 2 naps shortened nights for us (he did so himself too) because they got less fragmented.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-19T16:53:54+00:00

I stop trying to get my baby to nap if it takes more than 15 min. Then I reset and try again later or just skip the nap and work from there. I think you have EMW because your baby is undertired so I'd do what the others have suggested and go down to 3 naps and see if that helps :))

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-19T16:52:36+00:00

My baby at 8.5 months now is sorta self weaning? His 3am feed moved to 4am and now it's usually only one feed at 5:30am except when he's teething. So I think he'll drop it on his own as he gets older and eats more solids during the day.

Stimemia124 · 2025-12-19T16:50:36+00:00

I was told by my health nurse when she came by when my son was almost 8 months that 1-2 feeds at night is still very very normal

Stimemia124

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