5. She still eats 6 times per day because she continues to wake between 5am and 6am and will not back to sleep unless I feed her. I then wake her at 8am to start her day. She has never been a good napper and I think I have finally accepted that she never will be because I have tried everything. Her naps are usually about an hour, sometimes only 45 minutes. With this in mind, do you think she will ever move to a four hour schedule? Her optimal wake time is about 1.5 hours. If she doesn’t ever take longer naps, does that mean she will just always be on a 3 hour schedule? Is there harm in feeding her every 3 hours still as she gets older? She started solids about a month ago and eats them 3x a day at 8am, 11am and 5pm. She will usually only eat about 1.5-2 T at each meal.
Meghan said: Thank you for the post- so timely for me. I have a 7 month old daughter (almost 8 months– January 11th) that I think is ready for a four-hour eating schedule bc she’s simply not hungry every three hours (not finishing bottles). She is also having solids/ finger foods two, sometimes three times a day. However, her naps are A MESS. And I’m desperate for help. She sleeps through the night but consistently wakes early (sometimes as early as 5 am) and I know she’s overtired because her naps are short and sometimes she will wake from a nap crying. Every once in a while she will take a longer nap- 1 1/2 hours, but this is not consistent. She simply can’t move to two naps a day because she isn’t consistently sleeping long enough, yet she often fights the third nap of the day. Suggestions? Advice? I need help!
BabywiseMom said:If you are having trouble with naps but think your baby can move to a four hour schedule, give the four hour schedule a try and see if it fixes your nap issues. If you move to a schedule where baby gets up, is awake for 2 hours, goes down for nap for 2 hours, then gets up for 2 hours, then goes down for nap for 2 hours, it just might fix your nap issues.
Some little ones cannot go 2 hours of being awake, though. In those cases, you can do awake time for one 1.5 hours and nap for 2.5 hours.
My 3 1/2 month old is STTN and is usually on a 3 hr schedule during the day (6x b/w 7am – 10pm). He has been taking longer naps in the afternoon. Should I always wake him so he doesn’t go more than 4 hours or can I let him sleep?
On transitioning to a longer schedule, you mention that you will know that the baby is ready when he sleep through his feeding. I need some clarification on that. My DS is 4 months and I just started implementing BW 4 weeks ago. He is on a 3-3.5 block, depending on the day and time of day. (I’m still really flexible with the time since I am still trying to figure his patterns.) DS will sleep through his next feeding (even on 3.5) if I don’t wake him, but I know he’s not ready for a full 3.5 or 4 hr because he can only stay up for 1.5 hrs max on average. Plus, he doesn’t STTN yet (I dreamfeed him at 11 and he wakes around 3:30-4 to eat.) Since he IS sleeping through some of his feedings AND waking up before some, does that mean I still need work on trying to figure out his schedule? For example, if he is sleeping through his feeding, does that mean he went down for his nap too late? And conversely, if he is waking up too early, does that mean I put him down too early, or too late and he is overstimulated?Thank you in advance for your insight!
Deb, during the day I wouldn’t let him go more than 4 hours.
Jeanne, You don’t want to move to a 4 hour schedule until he is sleeping through the night. But you can move to 4 hours with him being awake for 1.5 hours–he would just then take a 2.5 hour nap.Sleeping through the feeding isn’t a problem–just be sure to wake him up when it is time to eat. Waking early usually means they went down too late.
Hi there,I have a 7 month old boy who has been STTN since about 8 weeks old. He does amazing at night but I am struggling with his naps. He was on a 3 hour schedule for a long time. With one hour waketime and 2 hour naps. It seemed like he could go a bit longer for waketimes and was waking early from his naps so I decided to do 1 1/2 waketime & 1 1/2 naptime (still keeping the 7,10,1,4,7 schedule). He started eating very little at certain feeding.. at one feeding it would be 7 oz then the next it would be 2 oz. I thought this was a good indicator that I could move him to a 4 hour schedule (7,11,3,7). It seemed like the signs were there. It has been 4 days on the 4 hour schedule and it has been horrible. He has started to bawl when I put him down for naps. He never used to cry when I would put him down.. now he will cry for up to an hour. He seems to not be content during waketime. Could he be crying because we are doing too many stimulating things during his now 2 hour waketime? I know he is teething, could that be it? Do you think I should go back to a 3 hour schedule? Should I try a 3 1/2 hour schedule? Or does it just take time for baby to adjust to the 4 hour schedule? Any advice you can give me would be great. I have read all the posts on 4 hour schedules. Thank you for all your hard work at making this site amazing for all of us Moms!
Kim,Thanks for your thanks :)It shouldn’t take time to adjust to a four hour schedule if he is ready for it. Teething could definitely be a reason for him not eating well at some feedings. I would guess that he is up too long. I would take him back to 1.5 hour waketime. See how naps go then. You can do 3.5 hour schedule if he will then nap 2 hours. You can even let him sleep up to 2.5 hours if he will and have a four hour schedule.When you add to his waketime, don’t add 30 minutes at a time. I like to add literally only 5 minutes at a time. I wouldn’t do more than 10. Remember you can do a combo schedule. Some feeds can be 4 hours apart while others are only 3 hours apart. That is not a problem at all.You can also see the blog label “teething” to get ideas for soothing the teething pain. Good luck!
Hi Valerie. I have a 2 yr old and a 7 week old. I started BW with my 2 yr old when she was 4 weeks old and she just fell into a 3 hr routine naturally. No problems. I started BW with my 7 wk old from birth and we still haven’t established a consistent schedule. In the beginning I attributed it to the difficulty I was having keeping her awake for waketime. But even now at 7 weeks she is still a sleeper. I have to wake her for every feeding throughout the day, except maybe for her first morning feeding. I’ve tried doing a combo schedule with everything between 2.5 to 3.5 hours, but I’m still having to wake her up. I think she would easily do a 4 hour schedule and be happy eating every 4 hours, but I have a few concerns. One is that she doesn’t stay awake for more than 1 hr to sometimes 1.5 hours. Secondly, she is not sleeping through the night yet and still gets up once to eat in the middle of the night. I worry that moving to the 4 hour schedule now would mean she sleeps too much during the day and prolong us being able to get her to sleep through the night. Do you have any suggestions? It’s killing me to have to continue waking her up all day, especially when it makes her very cranky afterwards.
Hello Val! Thank you so much for answering my other questions! You are so awesome that you are able to do all of this with a newborn! I know that you probably would rather be sleeping, but I REALLY appreciate it! :)My son is now almost 11 weeks, and I would really like to transition him to a 3.5 hour schedule. (Do you think he is old enough for that, yet?) I have just started this week trying out a combo 3-3.5 hour schedule. The approximate feeding times are 7:30, 11, 2:30, 5:30, 8:30 and 10:30 or 11:00. I am trying this b/c 1- I am hoping it will make a difference in his daily evening fussy time and 2- My husband and I are on staff as youth pastors at our church and it is getting harder and harder for me to leave so many services to feed him. I am hoping Drew will be able to move to a complete 3.5 hour schedule soon, but I am a little hesitant b/c I know that BW really suggests not going more than 9 hours bet feedings