If we had a dollar for every time we got asked this question....
Well… Firstly, it’s important to know that catnapping is biologically normal and age appropriate from around 3 months.
It’s also important to know that some babies do just fine catnapping for an extended period of time and will still sleep peacefully all night and this works for some families.
A catnap is essentially one sleep cycle where the nap can last for around 30-45 minutes.
Bub will either wake from this little kip quite content, chirpy and appearing to have absolutely zero chance of dozing back off. Or bub may wake instantly upset and seem quite distressed, and frustrated.
If you’ve noticed catnapping emerging around 4 months of age, it is generally because of the developmental change that is occurring where your bubs sleep cycles are maturing into more of an adult sleep cycle (hello four month sleep regression). This is where we may also see 2 hourly wakes occurring overnight.
Teaching a baby to connect nap sleep cycles is probably the most difficult type of sleep issue to tackle for most parents. Having a bub who will seem to never sleep longer than 30-45 minutes at a time during the day can be extremely frustrating, but you CAN help your baby to connect sleep cycles once he or she is old enough to do so.
So how old?
Somewhere between 4 - 5 months babies start to be able to connect sleep cycles.
There are a few things to look at before determining whether they are biologically ready.
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Sleep environment. Have you set up their sleep environment to be conducive to sleep? Are they dressed appropriately? Do you have white noise on to drown out any external noise that could potentially wake them? Are they in their own, dark sleep space?
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Sleep pressure. This is essentially the build up of need for sleep (tiredness) that bub accumulates during their awake time. We need to ensure bub is having enough awake time to allow their body to feel tired enough to want to sleep a longer stretch. A good way to ensure your little ones slpe pressure is optimal, is to follow an age appropriate routine like these ones here.
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Sleep props or associations. Does your little one rely on something external to fall asleep? Whether that be physical assistance from you or even something like a dummy (if they’re too young to find and replace it themselves). Essentially when teaching a baby to consolidate their sleep cycles, you need to remove these sleep associations as we need to ensure they are able to fall asleep without external associations in order to be able to resettle. So if you haven't worked on self settling just yet, this would be your first step. You can read more about sleep associations and how they can impact sleep here.
If you’ve addressed all of the above and you’re still not having any luck, despite attempting resettling… bub may just not be ready yet (if younger then 5 months) or perhaps they haven't mastered the self settle as yet.
If this is the case for you, try to roll with it and focus on the lead up to bedtime, ensuring bubs sleep pressure is where it needs to be to achieve a nice big sleep overnight!
If you feel like your bub might be ready but you’re unsure how to encourage some longer day sleeps, let us help!
Either a consult or sleep guide will help to get those longer naps happening in your house.
Kristy x
The Sleep Teacher
