4 month old and sleep - thoughts and advice please!

[andbabymakes3]

Ok, so my little miss has been pretty good with naps up until recently. Think we have gone a bit off kilter though and by the end of the day she is pretty tetchy and whingy.

So she wakes up most mornings at 6.30 - 7. She comes into bed for bf and we get up at 8. She then goes down for a nap around 9.30, some days will sleep for 45 mins, some days an hour - and on bad days we'll get 20 mins out of her!

She will then have two more 45ish min naps through the day, we try to get her to sleep longer but she wont. Very occasionally she will have one big long nap of 1.5/2 hours and two 45 min naps. On those days she is chilled out, no crying or anything.

We make sure she is awake by 5pm from her last nap, goes for bath at 6.30 and is in bed sleeping by 7. She has a dream feed around 11, then wakes at 3 - 4 when we give her a few oz of water (we are trying to get her to drop the night feed!).

So she has 13 hours through the night (minus prob 30 mins for the dreamfeed and middle of night drink). Then about 3 hours total naps through the day.

So my question is - does this sound normal? Any tips on getting her to take longer naps, cos she is so much happier when she does!

 

[juliespencer9]

thats sounds like i wrote that myself, my lo is 6 months and does the same apart from at different times, bed at 6.30pm, wakes to feed at 9.30pm which is ok cos im still awake and the about 1.20am, im also trying to get her to drop that feed as its habit i think!

also if im lucky like you i get her to nap for 45mins, or bad day 20mins then shes grumpy.

do you have to rock her to sleep or does she go to sleep alone in her cot?

 

[andbabymakes3]

No, she goes to sleep in her cot on her own. Sometimes she needs a little bit of patting to help her drop off, but most of the time she is pretty good. I was quite determined when she was tiny that she wouldnt use 'props' to go to sleep, she has a dummy but self-weaned when she was around 3 mths and now wont take it at all (which is a pain cos I thin it would help with getting her to drop the middle of the night drink).

 

[SianMA]

sounds pretty similar to Ryan too, other than the falling asleep alone thing! He still has to be virtually asleep before I put him down for naps or sleep.

Ryan wakes at 6.20 (on the dot most mornings!) comes into bed for BF and has his first nap about 9am then sleeps for about 30 mins at a time through the day (another 3 or 4 naps) but sometimes sleeps for an hour once a day. He still feeds every 2 to 2.5 hours during the day but goes to bed about 7.30pm then has been sleeping through until 3.30 for the last few weeks (apart from last night when we tried a 10.30pm dream feed which made him wake up every 2 hours from then on!) when he has a feed then sleeps until 6.20,

So he has about 3 hours during the day and about 11 hours at night, I have tried all sorts to get him to sleep longer, the only time he has napped for more than an hour was when he had a really bad cold! I think some babies just aren't good nappers.