Why are my baby's naps so short?

Photo by Summer Drew

There’s nothing worse than spending 45 minutes getting your baby to nap, only to have him wake after 30. It can feel like an exhausting and frustrating cycle: you watch the clock, do a nap routine, swaddle, feed, bounce, sing, and gently lay your little one down — and you barely have enough time to eat a snack and open your email before he’s awake and calling for you. The Groundhog’s Day continues!

This is a normal and common dilemma, and one we work with parents on A LOT. How to approach the issue depends on your baby’s age, primarily. Here are some points to keep in mind:

Catnaps are normal for little ones: Newborns often sleep for hours and hours, but by the time a baby is 1-2 months old, they start to wake up to the world, and they’re alert for longer stretches of time. Their naps can sometimes shrink to just 20-40 minutes, especially when you put them in their bed.. This can last until they’re about 5-6 months old.

Little babies are built to be held: We have an evolutionary reason for this dislike of being put down: the newborn period is a time when physical contact is essential to forming a sense of secure attachment and trust in the world, and our caregivers. There are multiple reasons that short naps are developmentally normal, but most important to know is that they are, in fact, normal. You didn’t do anything wrong — in fact if you’re holding your young baby all the time, you’re doing something right. It’s amazing how much guilt and self-doubt we hear from parents for this!

Little babies also do need to sleep: Even though short naps are normal, babies do need quite a bit of daytime sleep. Often parents try to put their babies down and find they sleep for 30 minutes, but when they’re held they sleep for 2 hours. This is exactly what we’d expect from a baby under 5 months of age. If you’ve read the happy sleeper book or taken the online course, you know that the Soothing Ladder and other Sleep Strategies for 0-4 month babies are key in this stage. We often tell parents to balance practicing the Sleep Strategies with also respecting the baby’s need to sleep, which may mean holding or putting them in a carrier for their nap.

Older baby catnappers need a different approach: Once a baby is about 5-6 months, their naps can and do improve and lengthen. Their ability and desire to sleep independently is growing. If babies over 5 months are still sleeping for under an hour every time they’re put down in their crib for a nap, this is something to troubleshoot and work on. In the Online Course for babies 4-24 months we have a Spotlight On video for understanding and fine tuning naps to make this happen. The main idea is that babies who are put into their cribs fully awake and aware will show longer and longer naps over time. You’ll want to use the Sleep Wave method to accomplish this.

You will also want to look at timing, routines, and the sleep environment as well. These are all the aspects of sleep that we cover with every family in a consult, and that we review in the Online Courses. If you’re using the Sleep Wave, also check out the Top 5 Nap Mistakes we see when families are implementing their new sleep plan.