Napping is really important, for babies and toddlers,
but how much should we reasonably expect your little one
to sleep per nap?
Today, I am answering your sleep question,
my five-month-old can't seem to sleep longer
than 1 1/2 hours for his long naps.
Any ideas?
And the good news is,
yes, I have lots of ideas,
so stay tuned.
But first, let me quickly introduce myself.
My name is Nicky, and I'm one of the founders
of a company called Little Ones.
At Little Ones, we specialize
in infant and toddler sleep solutions,
which we deliver through our mobile app.
Being parents ourselves,
we understand how hard sleep deprivation can be
for you and your whole family.
And we also know how difficult it is
to find reliable, trusted advice out there
on the wide world of the internet.
We would love to help you and your family
on your sleep journey,
through our comprehensive sleep programs.
So please check out our website,
www.littleones.co, to see how we can help you.
So to your sleep question, with your five-month-old,
first of all, I'm going to say a nap
of 1 1/2 hours is still a really great nap.
And I know there'll be a lot of people out there saying:
I wish my baby would sleep for 1 1/2 hours.
I think the trap that a lot
of parents fall into is worrying
that their little ones should be sleeping
for x amount of time, and they should be doing this,
and they should be doing that.
Unfortunately, when it comes to babies,
there can be no hard-and-fast rules for every single baby,
because every situation and every family is different.
Every baby, to an extent,
needs slightly different sleep needs
than another baby of the same age.
That said, there is still a general amount of sleep
that we would expect to see, at each different age,
allowing for variation.
So at five months, what you would ideally be seeing
is your little on having three naps a day,
the first nap being about 30 to 40 minutes long,
then a nice long sleep across the middle of the day
of ideally two hours,
followed by a shorter late afternoon nap,
to get them through to bedtime.
So the structure that we like
to use is short nap, long nap, short snap.
If you are worrying that your little one is only sleeping
for 1 1/2 hours per nap,
my first thought around that is it really depends
what nap of the day it is.
If it's that first morning nap,
you probably don't actually want them
to be sleeping for that long,
so they're already sleeping for a really long time.
If it's that lunchtime sleep,
you want them to be having a nice long nap,
ideally, two hours, but that said,
1 1/2 hours is still a really great nap
for your little one to achieve.
So if your little one is having an hour-and-a-half,
at that lunchtime sleep and you're aiming for two hours,
what I would look at doing is pulling back the length
of their morning nap.
So if they're having more than say 40 minutes
in the morning, you might want to trim the length
of that nap back, because sleeping less
on that morning nap will definitely encourage them
to sleep longer on the next nap.
What you can also do here is extend the awake time
between those naps.
So if your morning nap is sounding like it's the right
length to encourage a nice long lunchtime sleep,
then the next step would be to push
that lunchtime sleep back a bit,
over the course of a couple of days,
to let your little one adjust
and give them some more awake time between naps,
so your little one is good and tired
that they're going to have a longer, more restorative nap.
Also at this age, you would be wanting to make sure
that your little one has had a really good feed
before the nap, because getting closer to six months,
their appetites definitely ramp up
as they start getting ready for the introduction of solids.
So it could just be
that your little one is waking earlier from that nap,
because they are genuinely hungry,
and you are heading, like I said,
toward that six-month mark.
So that's something to think about there, as well.
So that's definitely where I would start,
with trying to get a longer nap
than an hour and a half for that lunchtime sleep,
shorten the morning nap, and extend, if necessary,
the awake time between the morning and the midday nap
and see how you get on, but like I said,
if you're worrying about an hour and a half,
at every single one of the three naps,
then you shouldn't be.
I would be worried if your little one was sleeping
for an hour and a half for three naps a day, at this age,
because that's actually a little bit too much daytime sleep,
and you're probably experiencing some battles at bedtime
and, potentially, quite a lot of night-waking caused
from the heavy amount of sleep during the daytime.
So it is a bit of a balance, and sometimes,
it can be a bit tricky getting it right.
If you'd like a little bit more help
around the ideal nap structure
for your little one at any age,
make sure you visit our website,
and we can help you a lot further, from there.
Thank you very much for watching today,
and I'll talk to you again soon.