[name_f]Do[/name_f] any of you more experienced moms start scheduling naps for your little tiny babes? (Like 1-3 months)My [name_f]Winnie[/name_f] is almost 2 months and so far I’ve just been following her cue on when a nap is needed and letting her sleep as much as she feels (meaning when I can tell she’s starting to get tired/fussy I encourage her to nap, and then when she wakes up, she’s awake) however this means she’s taken to napping for one REALLY long nap in the middle of the day (From 11-2ish) and then maybe one or two baby naps (10-20 min) for the rest of the day until bedtime at about 7.
She’s a pretty happy baby and is a decent sleeper most nights so I haven’t seen the need to change this but recently I’ve had other moms (and grandmas) tell me I need to break up her nap time or she’ll never sleep through the night?
We always followed their lead so early on. Around 6 months we would sleep train if necessary and move them into their own room. Other moms might have something different to share though, this is only based on my own experiences. And with the more kids you have that changes too, lol. My first sleep trained but then shared a room with his younger brother who just picked up routine from that. So we followed their lead once again. With my youngest (3.5 months) we’re letting her do her thing. We’ll see what happens this time around! Both boys started dropping naps really early too, so it depends on the child as well. I hope this helps. I’m right there with you!
Echoing “don’t worry what others think” – if what you’re doing is working for you, there is no need to change it.
In my own experience, I have let my kids sleep when they want to sleep – that said, I don’t have great sleepers. My first cat napped in 30 minute increments forever. She finally started having longer naps around the 12-15 month mark and first slept through the night at nearly two, but not regularly until 2.5, and now at 3.5 she is still up at least once probably 5 nights out of 7.
My second is now six months old and he has always been a fantastic napper. He has started to put himself on a recognizable schedule with 3-4 naps a day 1-2 hours long at roughly the same times, but I still watch for his cues. For instance, this morning he needed to go to sleep an hour earlier than I would have expected, but he needed to sleep. He is even worse than my daughter at night sleep – she at least would give me a good first stretch, he is still up every two hours like clockwork. I do sometimes wonder if he had less sleep during the day if he would sleep at night, but we have had a few short nap days recently due to being out and about and his night sleep was still terrible and he was miserable all day. So who knows.
I learned with my first that taking other people’s advice on board just made me stress out, so we’re just muddling through the best we know how. Sounds like your LO is doing very well for her age!
[name_f]Do[/name_f] what works for you. Now that you’re a parent, everybody’s going to have an opinion about everything, but you do you.
Personally I found looking at some schedules online eg the baby sleep site helpful for a general guide of the length of time between naps for different ages so I knew when to watch out for tiredness cues, but besides that I still just do our own thing (and Bubs is 10 months!) Also sleeping through the night is often not a linear thing, their sleep changes as they go through different developmental leaps.
We breastfeed on demand, nap when she’s tired, etc. We ended up co-sleeping when she hit the 4 month sleep regression (was sleeping 6 hrs straight before that and then suddenly had a couple of weeks waking every hour or two screaming and it was killing me!) and have ended up still co-sleeping ever since.
I haven’t found our day schedule to affect night sleep at all: some nights she sleeps from 7pm-7am, more often she has a small feed or two in the night but I don’t have to fully wake for it, and when teething there is some absolute awfulness of inconsolable screaming at random hours. Was so scared about co-sleeping to begin with all the warnings about SIDS etc (which aren’t justified to the extent they’re pushed on us at all), but absolutely love it now. No leaving her to cry it out, no battle to get her to bed, no having to stay fully awake with her for feeds in the night, and instead of a crying in a cot to let me know she’s awake she gently prods me in the face or gives a couple of coos for attention and then grins at me!
Other moms might have something different to share though, this is only based on my own experiences. And with the more kids you have that changes too, lol. My first sleep trained but then shared a room with his younger brother who just picked up routine from that. So we followed their lead once again.