Reply To: Night sleep or daytime naps?

[Emma H]

Hi Matthew,

It’s great to hear that your little boy is sleeping through the night

When it comes to prioritizing overnight sleep over daytime naps, it depends.

At this age, maintaining a consistent morning wake-up time is crucial. It helps regulate your baby’s circadian rhythm, ensures bedtime stays predictable, and establishes the timing for naps throughout the day as he grows.

So, if your little one’s extra nighttime sleep is causing his wake-up time to shift, I’d recommend choosing a wake-up time and keeping it within a 30-minute window each day. For example, if 7:00 am is your ideal wake-up time, try not to let him sleep past 7:30 am.

Now, about those naps—short catnaps of 30–45 minutes are developmentally normal at this stage. This happens because babies have trouble linking sleep cycles and often wake after just one. To help extend naps, you can try entering the room just before his sleep cycle ends and assisting him with techniques like patting, shushing, or offering a pacifier (if he uses one). Alternatively, you can embrace the catnaps for now and focus on teaching him to fall asleep independently using the settling pyramid. Once he hits the developmental stage around 5–6 months when he can naturally link sleep cycles, this skill will allow him to link sleep cycles and extend the length of his naps.

The other thing I wanted to mention is if he’s taking a long time to fall asleep even with rocking, it may indicate he’s not quite tired enough. In this case, adjusting his wake windows could be helpful. At this age, babies can typically stay awake for about 2–2.5 hours at a time. A slight increase in awake time might make him more ready to nap when the time comes.

Regarding his milk intake during the day, have you been able to implement a wake, feed, play, and sleep routine? Additionally, when you’re feeding him, are you doing so in a quiet, distraction-free environment? And is your little one breastfed or formula-fed?

You also mentioned he’s experiencing a milk aversion. Do you have any insight into what might be causing it? For example, could there be an underlying issue such as an allergy or intolerance that you’re currently investigating?

I hope this helps a little!
Emma