All About Short Naps
As a former stay at home mom with 2 littles, nap time was a sacred time in our household! After running around with them all morning, I needed that down time just as much as they did.
Now, I have a part time job and those littles are 4.5 & 2.5 years old…. nap time / quiet time is even more important than before!
This blog post is going to be all about short naps and the common causes behind them! Before we get into that, I do have a disclaimer: naps can take longer than night sleep to develop and short naps are both common and normal for babies under 5-6 months of age.
Even though short naps are developmentally appropriate for young babies, there are still things we can look into and figure out what if something else is causing them!
Here’s what we will cover:
Are short naps bad for baby?
What causes short naps in babies?
Short naps during sleep training
Short naps: overtired or undertired?
Do babies grow out of short naps?
Short naps and newborns
Can teething cause short naps?
How to fix short naps
How to extend short naps/how to lengthen short naps
Short naps: wake to sleep method?
Are short naps bad for baby?
Short naps are only a problem if they are affecting night time sleep, causing early mornings, and your baby is moody after the short nap!
A short nap is a nap that is under 45 minutes (1 sleep cycle) *this is excluding a 30 minute cat nap at the end of the day when baby is on a 3+ nap schedule.*
Why are naps so hard?
The drive to sleep is low during the day
Sleep hormones are NOT present during the day
So despite your best efforts, sometimes you just have a short napper because the odds are stacked against them!
What causes short naps in babies?
So if naps are so hard, how do we get our babies to nap? Below I will list the most common causes of short naps and how to address them!
Common Causes of Short Naps and How to Troubleshoot them:
Developmental: baby is less than 5-6 months old. Early on, naps can range from 20 minutes to 2 hours.
Sleep Environment: the room should be as dark as a cave, cool (between 68-72 deg F) and with white noise
Nap Routine Needs Adjustment: make sure you have a solid, consistent, predictable, sustainable nap routine in place!
Wake times aren’t appropriate: you may need to tweak your baby’s wake time by 5-15 minutes in either direction! If you are seeing short naps, you probably need to add more wake time before their nap! You may notice that your baby is tired enough to fall asleep, but their sleep drive isn’t high enough to transition through a sleep cycle! Check out 2 very helpful blogs here and here.
There may be some other lesser known causes! Those could be….
Is your baby taking a short snooze before nap time?
This little “REST” wipes out that full sleep drive (pressure) enough to make it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep.
Try to avoid your baby falling asleep before nap time in the stroller, car, on the breast/bottle!
Ensure feeding ends 30+ minutes before nap time!
Pacifier?
If your baby goes to sleep with a pacifier and wakes up when it falls out, you can either pop it back in there or sleep train them without it! You will have to keep popping it in there until they become independent with it (around 6-7+ months of age).
Need help dropping the pacifier?
Not Independent?
If your baby is not falling asleep on their own at bedtime, it can be difficult for them to figure out how to do so for naps! The best way to help them is to sleep train them at bedtime and for naps!
Short naps during sleep training
It is so so so common to experience short naps when you’re newly sleep training! Typically, it is easier for them to master falling asleep independently than it is for them to lengthen the nap. For all the reasons listed above (less drive to sleep, no sleep hormones) but also because whatever sleep they got during the nap will totally wipe out their sleep drive to return to sleep unless they’re REALLY motivated to go back to sleep!
Give them grace and lots of time to adjust to independent sleep. But also— don’t forget to use crib hour!
Short naps: overtired or undertired?
Which is it? It can really go either way; I like to assume a baby is over tired rather than undertired and pull BACK on WTs (shorten them) because it’s much easier to fix an undertired child than an overtired child!
If your child is taking chronic 30-45 min naps, experiment with the wake times. Log sleep and see what a 15 min difference in either direction of your current wake times does for your nap length!
Do babies grow out of short naps?
They totally can! Ashley’s 2 boys were short nappers until they were on by the clock schedules. That isn’t the answer for everyone, but it is common to consistently have short naps until they’re firmly established on 2 naps with those slightly longer wake times to help build sleep pressure. Don’t be concerned about this— and always embrace that early bedtime while you can!
Short naps and newborns
It is developmentally normal for your newborn (0-3 months) to take micro naps; we’re talking 20 min naps and being fresh as a daisy! They have very immature sleep cycles and it can really take some time to consolidate their naps.
Can teething cause short naps?
That can be a trend for some kids! Research shows that it’s really the day or two before the tooth erupts, the day the tooth erupts, and potentially the day after that cause sleep disruptions so be mindful of that; if it’s going on for more than a week or two then something else is likely at play!
How to fix short naps
Lots and lots of talk about what causes short naps, but what the heck do you do to fix them?! Here are some tips!
Obviously look at the schedule and rule out a wake time issue or impending nap transition
Age— I know, it sucks; but sometimes “wait it out” is the answer despite all your best efforts
Environment: triple check that darkness- even the light from a smoke detector or monitor can be enough to prevent them from going back to sleep! Make sure your white noise is continuous (doesn’t shut off after 30-45 mins) and is non-looping with a pure white noise sound.
Ensure that your nap routine provides adequate wind down time and you’re not asking them to quickly transition from a fun activity to sleep time; a lot of kids would protest that!
Props: there are going to be dependent props that make it more difficult for your child to return to sleep when they wake in the middle of a sleep cycle transition. Check out the blog on sleep props here!
Give them a chance to go back to sleep! Again, this is where crib hour can be so helpful.
How to extend short naps/how to lengthen short naps
Whether you have an independent sleeper or not, it’s totally okay to go and hold your baby back to sleep! Now, you’ll probably have to contact nap for the duration of the nap because transferring them the second time is usually less successful than the first and that isn’t always an option if you have multiple kids at home
But there’s certainly no harm in doing it if crib hour isn’t an option for you either!
Short naps: wake to sleep method?
Ever heard of this? Wake to sleep is an option for extending naps and in theory works to disrupt their sleep cycle before they totally wake in an effort to help them seamlessly go into the next sleep cycle for a longer nap.
To execute this, you’d go in about 10 mins before their typical nap length, rouse them VERY GENTLY!!! (like enough to see their little eyelashes flutter but not enough to actually wake them) and pray it works. If you don’t see any movement or anything, just try a little bit more. If you accidentally wake them (which is a risk!), then move on with your day and if you’re brave enough, try it again the next day.
Typically the first nap lengthens first developmentally, so start there and commit to that nap.
If you are reading this blog you are probably struggling with very common SHORT NAPS! Find out exactly what is going on; start logging sleep, here is a free log!
Set some nap goals, consider sleep training nap one and after a few successes, move to nap 2! Finally, make sure you have some consistency! Have a strong nap time routine and start waking your baby up at the same time every day so the nap times become more predictable! Also, please know you are not alone. Naps are hard, that is why I had contact naps with Liam until he was almost 7 months of age!
Ready to help parents tackle their short naps? Come join us at The Collective for Family Rest and Wellness and start your journey toward becoming a certified sleep consultant doing just that!
