Why I don’t encourage a long nap followed by a short nap
Babies thrive on consistency; they love their nap routines and many parents spend hours looking online and in books to find the perfect nap routine for their baby.
One of the most common questions we get asked is why do you cap the morning nap? Why shouldn’t I do a long morning sleep and a shorter later afternoon sleep?
There are a lot of reasons, and my experience with over 10,000 babies tells me the majority of the time the shorter morning sleep suits babies and parents and comes with these benefits below.
- A short morning sleep encourages a longer lunch time sleep which is the most restorative time of the day for a child to nap.
- A long morning sleep can be seen as an extension of a baby’s night sleep, and contribute to early morning wake ups in children over 6 months old.
- A short morning sleep is easy to achieve out and about and on the go, so you can get moving in the morning and head off to kinder or play group, or to run errands and know that your baby only needs a quick nap in the car to be fine until after lunch.
- A long morning sleep usually means a short afternoon sleep, which means your baby is surviving from potentially 11am to bed time on only maybe 45 minutes’ sleep between 1-4pm? This can mean your baby is very over tired come bed time, and thus doesn’t sleep well at night.
- When you drop to one nap at 15-18 months, simply dropping a morning nap and keeping a lunch nap is much easier than progressively shifting a morning nap later and later and having months of a tired toddler who can’t cope. (call me lazy, but I love easy transitions!).
- The 12 month sleep regression hits those hardest who have a long morning sleep and a short afternoon sleep.
Ok so those are my reasons for loving the pattern of short – long when it comes to baby’s naps.
As always, do what works for you and your family, if you would like to know more about routines or how we can help you and your family get a bit more sleep, click the link HERE to register for a free chat.
Or book your coffee group HERE and we can come to you and run a sleep talk at your place!
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How short would you do the morning nap? 45mins? And hour?
Just download our free routines here: http://babysleepconsultant.pages.ontraport.net/sleeproutine012mth
Hi Emma, my son (7 months) seems to easily have a long morning nap and a short lunch nap. I have tried to wake from his morning nap in hopes that his lunch time nap will extend, but regardless, he won’t extend his lunch nap. If my son has put himself on to this routine himself, should I jet leave it, or is it better to continue to shorten his morning naps in hopes that his lunch nap will extend when he needs it to?
Thank you
You’ll probably have to do some sleep training to extend that lunch time nap.
Ahh sleep training at nap times seem impossible. Tips?
Do you mean the specific times, or naps in general?
That specific nap – the midday one. My baby won’t take a long one and won’t resettle unless it’s in my arms. She falls asleep independently with white noise, dark room and no sleep props.
If a 3 month old starts the day early (e.g 6a.m) would you let him have a slightly longer morning nap and then just continue as normal or add an extra short nap in the arvo?
yeah like 8-10 and then 11.30-1pm and then 2 short afternoon naps….. or a short 8-8.20am nap then 9.30-10am and then you are back on track.
Any tips on my above question. I’m just not sure on how to go about sleep training for naps.
Do you have any information on transitioning from 2 naps to 1, what are the signs and what would be the routine? Thank-you
Yes but it is on our aussie website: http://babysleepconsultant.com.au/the-transition-from-two-day-naps-to-one/ once you drop to one nap try to ensure it is around midday.You can download our 12-36 month nap routines here: http://babysleepconsultant.pages.ontraport.net/sleeproutine1236mth
Hi. I tried clicking the link above that was listed as a free download for nap schedules. It lead me to sign up using my email address but I have yet to be directed to the actual downloadable content. Please help.
They have been emailed to you, but you might find them in your junk mail, or spam folder. If you have a hotmail account it blocks our wonderful emails evening coming in to your account, so i would try a gmail account.