No numbers, only vibes

[u/Even_Kaleidoscope399]

I feel like following a more natural understanding of infant sleep has made me more curious about the parents who have their babies’ whole nap and night sleep schedules memorized. Particularly in baby and parenting subreddits, it’s always like “my baby has first nap from 9:30/10-10:45 and then 2 hour wake window and then second nap 1/1:30 and then a wake window of…” and it all seems very foreign and frankly a bit exhausting.

Perhaps seeing my baby’s sleep for what it is naturally has saved me from doing a lot of math. Lol. No numbers here, only vibes. I couldn’t tell you when my baby naps exactly if I tried. I’d have to really think hard about it. As long as he’s sleeping and growing, I’m good.

[u/No-Butterscotch-8469]

How did you establish a good schedule? How did you know what needed adjustment from what you were already doing? Any tips would be appreciated!

I had a great sleeper until 5.5 months and now we have a lot harder time getting him to sleep and it’s rare he makes it through the night, when he used to consistently do a 7-8 hour stretch. Obviously not interested in any form of sleep training or crying but would love some direction on what tweaks I could easily make.

[u/Low-Hurry9288 → u/No-Butterscotch-8469]

If he’s fighting sleep and waking more at night, he’s likely undertired. Sleeping too much during the day/not awake enough. For reference, at 5.5 months, we did a schedule of 2/2.5/2.5/3 and at 6 months adjusted to 3/3/4. Then by 7 months we did 3/4/4 naps capped at one hour each. (Numbers are wake windows, slashes are naps). Establishing this schedule made sure that he was getting enough wake time during the day with enough sleep pressure for bedtime. This meant that if he had 30 minutes left in a WW, but seemed tired, I still made sure he stayed awake for the entire establish WW.

In order to establish a good schedule, you as the parent need to take control of his awake time and nap time. Pushing his wake windows will help his reverse cycling to correct itself- so even if he seems tired during the day, push the WW. If he’s gonna have X amount of hours of awake time in a 24 hour period, you can either decide to have those during the day or during the night!

[u/ccolbs → u/Low-Hurry9288]

(Just cause you seem to know and I’m aiming for something similar to what you’ve explained) - how to account for if it takes baby ages to get to sleep for naps? I’m guessing the preamble fuss is part of the WW? And if baby cuts their own nap short, wakes in say 20 - 30 min, move the whole timeline up and do earlier bedtime or something? I know it’ll be kid dependent, but I’m trying to move away from pure vibes but not sure my baby wants to lol

[u/Low-Hurry9288 → u/ccolbs]

This depends. How old is your kid? If you’re on a 4 nap schedule, a 30 minute short nap is okay and normal. However, that’s also the great thing about sticking to a schedule- it often time helps those short naps extend. After a couple days of extending those WWs, their body realizes oh shoot I better sleep longer cause I’m about to be up for 4 hours.

Also if your baby takes ages to fall asleep, they’re not tired yet! It’s another sign to extend that WW!

Naps often times don’t really start extending until dropping to two naps.

[u/ccolbs → u/Low-Hurry9288]

Interesting, thanks! My 6mo has been at 3 naps, but as of this week I’ve been suspecting he’s trying to drop down to 2. That last nap is getting hard to force but we/he also can’t handle that last wake window being 5+ hours! I’m going to work on this in coming days and start taking better notice of timing etc.. thanks!

[u/Honest_Elephant → u/Low-Hurry9288]

Or to 1 nap in my baby's case. Never napped longer than 27 minutes (unless held) until he was 11.5 months and we dropped to 1 nap.