Have you ever laid your baby down for a nap and then stressed about what to do with the next 30-40 minutes, knowing that it won’t be long before your little one will be awake again? Should I do the dishes or read that book? Fold laundry or finally eat lunch? Watch a TV show or call my mom?
I’ve definitely been there!
If you have little ones, my guess is that you’ve struggled with having a baby who takes short naps at some point, no matter their current age, and and short naps are so frustrating!
So in this post we’re going to be talking all about your baby’s short naps and how to lengthen them! Now, if you have a toddler, hang tight – while a lot of these strategies are very similar, I’m going to specifically cover tips to lengthen your toddler’s short naps on the next post.
This week, we’re covering everything you need to know about your baby’s short naps, including:
- What is considered a “short nap” and how long your baby’s naps should be
- Why darkening your baby’s nursery will help lengthen their short naps
- How adjusting your baby’s schedule can help them take longer naps
- Why waiting to get your baby after a short nap might help
- When and how to “save” your baby’s short nap
- How sleep training helps extend short naps
And more!
What is considered a “short nap”?
I’ve worked with several families who can tell me exactly how long their babies’ short naps are every day – it’s often 27 minutes or 32 minutes – their baby’s nap cycles are so consistent day to day. Just enough time to lay them down, start something, and have to go get them up again.
Can you relate?
I would absolutely call a 27-32 minute nap a short nap! I find that short naps are generally in the 30-45 minute range. And really, in the sleep coach world, I generally consider anything under an hour a short nap.
Note that I’m not saying “bad nap,” but short nap – and I’ll explain more.
When your newborn takes short naps…
First, let’s talk about short newborn naps. It is so normal for newborns to take short naps! It’s also very normal for newborns to take incredibly long naps! But I’m pretty sure every newborn, no matter how amazing of naps they’ve taken at one point, hits a short naps phase. And it can be frustrating!
But I really want you to hear me say that short newborn naps are normal.
And I talk about this in our newborn sleep course, Newborn Sleep from A to Z, because it often stresses out those newborn mamas. But again, it’s NORMAL!
My goal with newborns is that at least one nap every day would be over an hour, but that could be in the crib, carrier, stroller, etc. And sometimes that’s easy to make happen, and other times not so much.
Now, you can certainly apply some of these tips I’m about to share to on your newborn and it could absolutely make a difference – so this post is still worth reading. But you could also be doing all the things and still have short naps, and that’s normal!
So take heart newborn mama, it won’t be like this forever, but today, it’s just the way it is.
When your baby takes short naps…
When I’m working with a 4, 5, or 6 month old taking three naps (maybe four naps for the four month old), my goal is that at least one of those naps each day is over an hour long, and if we can get two of those naps over an hour long, even better.
And often very possible!
That final nap of the day, however, is generally pretty short – in that 30-45 minute range – because it’s just helping your baby get through that final push before bedtime and they’ll be dropping it soon. If that final nap is long, great, but I don’t make that a goal and never worry if it’s a short one.
Now, did you catch before how I said two long naps a day are “often very possible” in that 3-6 month range, not “guaranteed”?
Nothing is guaranteed in the baby sleep world, and nap lengths absolutely fall into that category – especially in the 3-6 month range.
Developmentally, some babies just aren’t ready to take longer naps until closer to six months old. When I work with 4-5 month olds, I’m pretty confident we can get one or two good naps a day, but I tell families there’s a chance we may not be there yet.
Or we may have a day of great naps, and a day of shorter naps, and not a lot of consistency there – and that can still be normal in the 3-6 month range.
Now again, just like newborns – if you have a 3-6 month old who’s regularly taking short naps, keep reading! Just because it can still be developmental doesn’t mean there aren’t any strategies for you – your baby might be totally capable.
Once babies transition to two naps, and when they’re on a one nap schedule, they are totally capable of taking longer naps every time.
For babies on a two nap schedule, we aim for both naps to be at least an hour long, ideally closer to 1.5 hours. And for babies and toddlers on a one nap schedule, we aim for over 1.5 hours. But again, we’ll dive more into toddlers’ short naps next week.
If you’re hearing me say all of this and you have a baby who has never take a nap over an hour and now you’re panicking because they’re not getting good sleep, please hear me out – THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M SAYING!
There’s really no such things as a bad nap, or junk sleep.
Even a 15-20 minute nap is sleep! Not my favorite naps, and not your baby’s favorite nap, either, but they’ve still gotten some sleep and got a little reset.
Naps are hard, and they’re generally the toughest part of the sleep puzzle. And that’s because daytime sleep is just harder than night time sleep – we don’t have melatonin, that natural sleepy hormone, on our side like we do at night.
Now that you know what a short nap is, I’m going to walk through five strategies you can use to help lengthen your child’s short naps.
1. Total Darkness
If your baby is a chronic short napper, the first thing to check is their sleep environment. Ideally, it would be so dark in their room that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
If there is any light streaming through your baby’s window during nap time, it could make it harder to not only fall asleep but to also stay asleep beyond that first sleep cycle, hence a short nap!
So if you’re reading this and your baby is a short napper and they’re room isn’t super dark, this is your first step. I share more about the importance of blacking our your baby’s nursery, as well as my favorite blackout solutions here.
2. Adjust Their Schedule
For babies, a big piece of the schedule puzzle is awake windows. Whether you’re strictly following awake windows, or your baby is on a set schedule now, that schedule is still built based on awake windows.
The whole idea behind wake windows is finding the sweet spot of tired enough but not too tired. Both undertiredness and overtiredness can wreak havoc on a baby’s sleep, and part of that havoc can be short naps!
So if your baby has been taking great naps and now their naps are all of a sudden getting shorter, it may be because they no longer have enough sleep pressure to take a longer nap. It might be time to stretch their awake windows by another 15 minutes, or push their whole schedule about 15 minutes later, to see if that added sleep pressure helps them sleep longer.
Or maybe they’re ready for a nap transition – it could be time to drop one of their naps!
Oppositely, if babies stay awake way longer than what’s developmentally appropriate for them, that overtiredness can also cause a short nap. Because when we are overtired, our bodies release cortisol, the stress hormone released as part of our fight-or-flight response; when that stress hormone is pumping through our babies’ bodies, it not only makes it incredibly challenging to fall asleep but to also stay asleep.
So sometimes we need to decrease wake windows, or even add a nap back in, so our baby isn’t overtired.
To learn more about what awake windows and schedules are developmentally appropriate for your baby, make sure snag our free schedule guide. Or if you’re a newborn parent, those awake windows are in our newborn freebie!
3. Wait!
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if your baby or toddler wakes up from a short nap, first try to just wait! Try to wait at least 10 minutes before going in to get them up.
If you’re a newborn parent, I still recommend “le pause,” but just up to about 3 minutes.
We want to give our babies chance to fall back asleep into another cycle before calling the nap done.
And yes, I still recommend waiting if your baby is crying! They might be crying because they’re still tired and just want to sleep, so try to give them time.
For older babies, especially, on a one or two nap schedule, if they take a short nap and wake up content, I’d even wait longer than 10 minutes to get them! If they’re still happy, you can wait the entirety of the ideal nap length – they may or may not fall back asleep this time, but we’re essentially nudging their little body clock that this is nap time, and maybe tomorrow you should sleep longer.
4. When to “Save” the Nap
This next tip comes with a caveat – while saving your baby’s short nap might lengthen that nap, this isn’t a great long-term solution if you want your baby to take long naps on their own!
So first, what am I talking about?
“Saving a nap” means your baby takes a short nap and you then try to get them back to sleep. Sometimes that looks like popping into their room and patting and shushing them back to sleep, but I’d say more often than not it looks like scooping baby up and having them finish the nap on you.
And if it’s going to work, it’s going to work within a few minutes – you shouldn’t be spending forever trying to save a nap!
So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t! But it feels good when it does.
I am a big fan of saving naps for newborns – especially if they wake up from a nap and just seem so sleepy. Or if they haven’t gotten that one nap over an hour yet – try to save it! Because we don’t want the overtiredness that can come from so many short naps to impact the rest of their day or night.
As babies graduate from newborn land, however, I try not to save naps as much. Sometimes it’s just necessary – I remember with our third, I would almost always try to save her post-church naps on Sundays, because she’d sleep the last 15 minutes of our drive and wake up once we got home, and she already had a short nap at church, so I just wanted her to get something more.
The “danger” with saving naps, however, is that if we try after every nap, or do it really regularly, our babies are going to learn that they take long naps by finishing them on mom or dad! They very likely won’t just start taking long naps on their own.
So saving naps can work, it can not work, and it can also backfire in not actually teaching your baby to lengthen naps.
I also want you to know you don’t have to always try to save short naps, that would be exhausting and frustrating in and of itself!
But it is an option.
5. Sleep Train!
If you’ve made the above changes and your baby is still taking short naps, we need to do some more digging – does your baby still have the pacifier? Are they getting fed too close to sleep, or going down drowsy at all?
But if you haven’t sleep trained and you’ve tried every other tip and your baby is still taking short naps, sleep training will likely do the trick! I’m not saying you have to sleep train, but let me explain why it would help…
If you still rock or feed your baby to sleep, for example, they are relying on you to fall asleep – they don’t know how to fall asleep independently, which means they also don’t know how to connect sleep cycles independently.
So they generally wake up after one sleep cycle and rather than slipping right into the next cycle, they wake up.
And even though they might still be tired, they simply don’t know how to fall asleep again without be rocked or fed, so they’re either awake until their next nap, or fall back asleep once you “save” them.
The whole idea of sleep training, however, is we teach babies to fall asleep independently, without needing to be rocked, fed, patted, so they can naturally connect sleep cycles, not only at night, but for naps, as well. So they can have consistent, uninterrupted sleep.
I know it sounds “simple,” but when we work with families whose babies struggle with short naps, we often don’t have to get creative with other strategies to lengthen them – the sleep training does the trick!
We of course talk about darkness, and the schedule, and wait time as part of the sleep training plan, but those things alone can’t always do the trick. The independent sleep skills, however, do!
And if you’re curious to learn more about what your sleep training options are, read about the most common sleep training methods here.
Conclusion
Now, in all of this talk about short naps, I want to remind you that short naps aren’t bad! If your baby takes short naps, it’s not bad or wrong, and they’re not being harmed by short naps.
Short naps are absolutely frustrating, especially when we know our little ones are tired and really need that extra sleep. But a short nap is still a nap, which means it still counts as sleep and it will still help carry your baby on to their next sleep.
But if your baby regularly takes short naps and it’s making your crazy, or you just don’t feel like they’re getting the sleep they need, or you want to see if longer naps are possible, that’s why I’m writing this!
The plan here is to help give you tangible strategies you can start applying right now to help extend your baby’s short naps.
Also remember that naps are hard. Short naps are frustrating! But a short nap is still a nap – it’s still restorative and it still counts as sleep. And there’s no such thing as “junk,” or “bad sleep.”
So yes, let’s work on solving those short naps, but let’s also give ourselves some grace!
Finally, if you’ve run through this post and are still stumped by your baby’s short naps, that’s what we’re here for! We work with families like yours all the time, sifting through what sleep currently looks like and working together on reaching your sleep goals, which includes nap goals! So to learn more about how we can help get your baby sleeping, read here.
With Grace,
Lauren
