Sleeping/Nap Patterns for a Nine Week Old

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Folks,

Currently our little girl gets her last feed at night around the 9/9:30pm mark and she'll sleep through the night until 7/7:30am when she'll wake up for a feed. Once she gets this she's back asleep for another 2-3 hours. After that she's up for the day with with perhaps three naps that can vary from 20 minutes to 2h 30 min..... they really vary.

I'm not sure we're starting the day off right and establishing a good nap pattern. Opinions?

jlm29

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Hi Folks,

Currently our little girl gets her last feed at night around the 9/9:30pm mark and she'll sleep through the night until 7/7:30am when she'll wake up for a feed. Once she gets this she's back asleep for another 2-3 hours. After that she's up for the day with with perhaps three naps that can vary from 20 minutes to 2h 30 min..... they really vary.

I'm not sure we're starting the day off right and establishing a good nap pattern. Opinions?

She's still very small. I wouldn't worry too much about it just yet! If she's sleeping that well at night, I wouldn't worry what she's doing by day!

December2012

No such thing really for a nap pattern for a 9 week old in my experience.

scarepanda

OP, that sounds exactly like the routine my LO set for herself at the same age.

Bedtime was at 9, she slept through the night from around 7 weeks. When she woke in the morning she would have a big feed, take her longest nap and then be up for the day only cat naping throughout. She's never been a great day time sleeper, but we have always been very lucky that she's made up for it during the night.

Now at a year old, she's gotten better for doing two good naps during the day, although she's started to drop one of them now. We've never had much issue with night time, just the odd unsettled early part of the night when she's teething. Iv never fought with her over naps, I'll facilitate her taking one as much as possible, but I won't get into the wrestling match of her needing X amounts of naps throughout the day at X time and her having no intention of going for one.

So, to me at least OP, your doing nothing wrong and I wouldn't worry about the morning routine. For us at least, letting our LO set her own routine for the most part has worked out perfectly for us. I will add that I'm a stay at home Mam, so I can't comment about whether things would be different if she was in creche and had to be up for a certain time in the morning etc.

Kintarō Hattori

scarepanda wrote: »

OP, that sounds exactly like the routine my LO set for herself at the same age.

Bedtime was at 9, she slept through the night from around 7 weeks. When she woke in the morning she would have a big feed, take her longest nap and then be up for the day only cat naping throughout. She's never been a great day time sleeper, but we have always been very lucky that she's made up for it during the night.

Many thanks for all replies. Just on your experience above scarepanda, did you experience much 'issues' with your little one in the run-up to the last feed? I think because our little girl has slept so well in the day and only taken, as you say 'cat naps', that in the run-up to the last feed/bed time she becomes somewhat over tired. She's generally not too bad but Thursday night was horrendous. She become so tired that she found it extremely difficult to get to sleep and I felt so so sorry for her, she was letting out little yelps she was so exhausted. I really want to try and avoid that happening again.

Madam Oblong

That's known as the witching hour and I think it's pretty much universal!

catrionanic

Sleeping through the night at 9 weeks.... I am beyond jealous. My guy is six months and has never slept through. He's usually up three times a night but often more. I'm like a zombie!

scarepanda

Kintar&#197 wrote: »

Many thanks for all replies. Just on your experience above scarepanda, did you experience much 'issues' with your little one in the run-up to the last feed? I think because our little girl has slept so well in the day and only taken, as you say 'cat naps', that in the run-up to the last feed/bed time she becomes somewhat over tired. She's generally not too bad but Thursday night was horrendous. She become so tired that she found it extremely difficult to get to sleep and I felt so so sorry for her, she was letting out little yelps she was so exhausted. I really want to try and avoid that happening again.

Erm....generally no. She could take a nap at 6.30/7, be awake at 8 and then down for the night at 9. I'd generally never keep her awake close to bed time, certainly not when she was that young anyways. If she was particularly tired or had a hectic day I would bring bedtime forward by maybe 30 minutes to stop her getting so tired that she couldn't fall asleep. As I said bedtime here is 9, but we play it by ear, sometimes it's earlier, sometimes it's a little later.
Can I ask is your baby being breast or bottle fed?

shesty

She's nine weeks so there is no pattern.Round twelve weeks you can gently establish more of a pattern but at the end of the day, you can't force her to sleep longer or shorter naps.She will roughly settle at about three naps in a day, the first two will be longish (like maybe 1.5-2 hrs) the last will be the shortest, and will happen sometime between 4&30 in the evening.

That's the ideal.In practice...well...!!!My pair both slept forty minute naps only from 12 weeks.No.1 stretched to a longer nap at 6 months, so she had two 1.5-2 hrs in a day from six months.but she did that herself, nothing I did made that happen.No.2 kept the forty min naps til 9 months, and then settled at 1.5 hr naps, which she recently dropped at 15 months (whereas no.1 kept the two naps til 19 mths).It really depends on the child.All you can do is follow a rough timeline of encouraging a nap every two hours since she last woke up (or roughly that)....so putting her in her bed, or timing a car journey or walk to roughly coincide with that timing....and she'll find her rhthym.Expect variations and off days, they happen.It's normal (we had one today, resulting in two exhausted kids)

She sounds like she's doing great.One thing to note, her night sleep may become disrupted in the next few weeks; that's a normal developmental thing.

Kintarō Hattori

scarepanda wrote: »

Can I ask is your baby being breast or bottle fed?

Bottle. She tried breast initially but neither of them was taking it very well and it really seemed to be distressing the baby so after a while she made the decision to go bottle only. I think it was the right decision myself as both baby and mother are a lot happier, though Mam does still feel guilty that she isn't breast feeding. There's such pressure put on women to breast feed, it really doesn't seem fair.

Bacchus

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Hi Folks,

Currently our little girl gets her last feed at night around the 9/9:30pm mark and she'll sleep through the night until 7/7:30am when she'll wake up for a feed. Once she gets this she's back asleep for another 2-3 hours. After that she's up for the day with with perhaps three naps that can vary from 20 minutes to 2h 30 min..... they really vary.

I'm not sure we're starting the day off right and establishing a good nap pattern. Opinions?

:eek::eek::eek:

She is getting 10 hours uninterrupted sleep at night at 9 weeks! We didn't get that until around 5.5 months. Enjoy

As for the day naps... yeah we were the same. It varies so much. We didn't really start seeing an established day pattern until around 5 months with 3 naps... which dropped to 2 naps around at 7 months.