The age appropriate routines that I use are based on a baby’s age, development and natural circadian rhythm.

Newborns up to 4 months can sleep on demand and as much as they need or wanr. From about four months old they can start to establish rhythm. I don’t say routine because the word routine can feel strict or rigid. 3 – 4 short naps are fine. They have a couple of hours sleep or a shorter, then when they wake up, they play, they feed, and then they have a kick about, then they go back to sleep, and you just continue the cycle.

Somewhere between 4 – 7 months your baby can have 3 naps that would be around 8.30am to 10am, 12.15pm to 2.15pm and 4.30pm to 5pm, with 6.30pm Bed.

Some babies have higher sleep needs when you’re looking at your baby what the signs of tiredness are, and remember, there’s a difference between tiredness and over tiredness. So tiredness might be a bit dazed, kind of drawing a little bit looking a bit less active. Over tiredness would be rubbing eyes, cranky, pulling ears, crying, fussiness, not feeding. So the window has kind of been missed. And if that’s the case, what you do is you can try hands on settling, or you can just keep them up for another 20 minutes and you’ll get window again of going to sleep.

With regards to rest of the routine for older babies, from about seven months old or in between, you want to do a shorter morning nap with a longer lunchtime nap and the same with the 3rd nap. You would look at doing 9.30am – 10am nap, 12.30pm – 2.30pm and 6.30pm bed.
Between 6 – 8 months old, babies generally start to drop the 3rd nap. ou can start to look at reducing this to 15 minutes and then ditch it. You can offer a 6pm bedtime for a few weeks to fully transition from 3 – 2 naps.

Between 15 to 18 months babies will drop their morning nap. Sometimes people drop the morning at 12 months old. It could be because your child is in nursery or it could be that you are struggling with the 12 month sleep regression and its difficult to get them down for that nap. I always say, try to keep them on one nap up until 15 to 18 months, because 12 months is quite young to drop it down.

So from 15 to 18 months, right up until about 2 years and three months old, they still need two hours. Then the 2 – 3 year age is a big age! There’s a lot of development going on. This fear of missing out watching TV programs, earning the word no. learning more about their personalities, fear of dark and general age related behaviour!
So at this age you want to just be aware of the nap and give a later bedtime if they still need it but show bedtime resistance.

At 2.5 years old you can start reducing the nap to about 90 minutes, and then a few months later down to 60 minutes, then again a few months later 30 mins and ditch it at 3 years old.

You will know your child is under tired because they will be resistant to go down or really mess around at bedtime. It’s a bit of a tricky time an I have a lot of parents come to me and say that they’re not managing from 4pm to 6pm because their child is super tired, having meltdowns, not eating dinner, having tantrums, and it’s quite hard to manage, especially if you have multiple children. I always say to people that if you just want to do a short 15 power 15 minute power nap, that’s okay, and then maybe just do an 8pm bedtime instead of 7pm or 7:30 so that helps to build up sleep pressure, avoid the fussiness at dinner time, and also lowers the resistance. So hopefully that’s a transition, and you could do that for a couple of months, and then all naps should be gone by about three years old.

Then you’ve got a child that is completely nap free!

If you are suffering from anxiety you can contact me for a No Pressure to discuss Counselling Sessions on 07581410015.

You can find me here: www.seemabarua.com

If you are suffering from Sleep Deprivation and would like to discuss Sleep Training you can contact me on 07581410015

 

Seema x