Sleeping FAQ: 0-8 weeks -Daytime Sleep

My 6-week-old daughter naps at different times to the routine because of the school run

My 6-week-old daughter has settled well into the routines. I also have a three year old that means I am finding her daytime naps are taken in the car seat to fit in with school runs. This sometimes affects the length of her naps and then also the times of her feeds. She now is becoming harder to settle in her cot for naps on the days when I am at home and don’t want this to become a long term problem.

At present I drop my eldest daughter off at 8.30am three mornings a week. On these mornings my baby will fall asleep in the car earlier than she should. I cannot wake her before 10am because she will demand a feed straight away and it also affects the timings of her next nap.

I pick up my eldest daughter at 1pm. This means I must either disturb my baby’s sleep by taking her from her cot or let her fall asleep at 11.30am in her car seat and put the car seat in her room until I leave.

I find that on the days when her nap times get mixed up it can also affect the times of her feeds.

Feeding details:

She is breast fed at 7am,10.30am, 2.30pm, 5.00pm, 6.15pm and occasionally a 2oz formula top up to settle. At 10.30pm she has a 4-5ozs formula feed, and then sleeps until 5.00am when she is breast fed.

My daughter naps at approximately 8.30-9.45am, 12-2.00pm and 4.15-5.00pm. She is settled by 7pm.

To help you meet the needs of both your daughters’ you may need to juggle the routine times a little on the three days that are affected by the nursery times. You are right to be concerned that your baby may begin to associate falling asleep during the day with being in a car seat. But if you can manage to settle her for her most of her lunchtime naps in her cot, then having her first nap of the day in the car or buggy should create any of the wrong sleep associations. On the days when you do not have to leave the house at 1pm she should get used to sleeping there as well as in her car seat.

On the mornings that you have to take your elder daughter to nursery I would advise that you start to wake your daughter around 9.30am so that she is wide awake by 9.45am. As she has fed at 5am in the morning and topped up at 7am, I am sure that she will be ready to take a feed from one breast at 9.45/10am, and then the second side around 11/11.15am after she has had a time of free kicking on the floor.

However, If she is unwilling to split her feed in this way, offer both sides at 10am and give her a small top up at 11/11.15am prior to her going down for her lunchtime nap. By reducing the morning nap, and bringing it and the feeds forward slightly your daughter will be ready to sleep by 11.15/11.30am, therefore you can settle her in her cot for her lunchtime sleep every day. Although you will need to get her up earlier at on the three days when you are collecting your elder daughter from nursery, she will have slept past her first 30/40 minute sleep cycle.

If she has slept an hour in her cot and you manage to transfer her quickly from her cot to car seat she may well fall back to sleep again once the car begins to move. If you arrive home before the end of this naptime and she remains asleep, place the car seat in a quiet spot in the house until she wakes for her next feed. If you find your daughter does not settle back to sleep once moved from her cot during her lunchtime nap, you can let her have a short cat nap after her 2.30pm feed and another one at around 4.30pm to prevent her from becoming over tired by bath time. If she is unsettled once you arrive back from the nursery pick-up, it would be advisable to offer her one breast then. You may find that she will then have a short cat-nap. If this is the case allow her to sleep until no longer than 1 hour, so that she is on track with her feeding and sleeping by 2.30pm.

Although it may seem that you are having to do a lot of split feeds and shorter naps, the above advice should help you get through the next few weeks. Once your daughter gets a little older you will probably find that she can stay awake until 9am, at which time you will be back from nursery and she can be settled in her cot for the morning nap. Once you are at this stage I would suggest that you shorten that nap to twenty minutes so that she is still ready to go down for her lunch time nap earlier, so that she will continue to have between an hour and an hour and quarter in her cot. As she gets older you may find that she does not need at cat-nap at 2.30pm, but she will probably continue to need a longer late afternoon nap than the books recommends, because she is having a shorter nap at lunchtime. However, the majority of babies start to resist the late afternoon nap once they are over six months, even if they have only had a short lunchtime nap. Therefore I would suggest that once she is six months you should start to push her morning nap until 9.30am, and allow her 45 minutes. If she will sleep this long it will allow you to push her lunchtime nap forward so she could sleep from 1.15pm to 3pm. The longer nap at lunchtime will mean that she should get through the rest of the day happily without becoming overtired at bedtime.