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Hi Joyce,
Thanks so much for all this information! It’s really helpful in figuring out what’s going on with her sleep patterns.
It’s great to hear that her first nap is consistently happening around 9 AM—having that predictability in the morning helps set the tone for the rest of the day.
From what you’ve described, it sounds like nap times at childcare vary quite a bit. You mentioned that they aren’t allowed to wake her if she falls asleep while feeding—are they open to waking her after one full sleep cycle? Or at the very least, ensuring that her first nap doesn’t go beyond 9:40 AM?
If they can do this, we can start working on making her second nap more consistent. Once that nap falls into a predictable pattern, we can do the same for the third and fourth naps. Gradually introducing more consistency into her daytime sleep may help reduce the chances of her falling asleep on the car ride home, which in turn can make bedtime smoother.
Bedtime Adjustments – Two Options
I’ve been thinking about ways to make bedtime easier for both of you, and there are two possible approaches.
Option 1: Stick with the Current Routine
This means continuing with her current schedule of five naps per day—including the short nap she takes around 6 PM while breastfeeding—and putting her to bed about two hours after waking from that nap, which seems to be around 8:30 PM.
To fine-tune this approach, I was hoping you could track a few things over the next week:
- The time she wakes from her final nap
- The time she actually falls asleep and stays asleep for the night (not just when she’s put to bed, but when she fully enters deep sleep)
At 4 months of age, babies typically have a wake window of 2 to 2.5 hours, and it’s common for their final wake window to be a little longer than the others. What I am hoping, is that by tracking this information, you might start to notice a pattern—either in how long she naturally stays awake before bedtime (so her wake window) or what time she truly settles for the night. If you choose to keep her current routine, this will help you determine the best bedtime for her based on her natural sleep patterns.
If you continue with this option, one key factor to keep in mind is making sure she stays fully awake during her final feed before bed. Even a brief “micro nap” while feeding can reduce her sleep pressure, making it harder for her to stay asleep.
This can be tricky to catch, as babies often continue sucking even when they’ve drifted off. A good way to tell if she’s still awake is by listening for regular swallowing sounds—if she’s awake, you’ll hear her swallow every few sucks. If you don’t hear swallowing for a while, she has likely fallen asleep.
If she does fall asleep while feeding and you then complete the bedtime routine and settle her into the crib, she may initially fall asleep but is more likely to wake shortly after.
So, to help keep her fully awake during her feed, I was wondering if you would be happy to do the bedtime feed in a brighter, slightly more stimulating environment (e.g., the living room with the lights on) rather than a dim, quiet bedroom. The extra background activity can help keep her awake for the full feed, which should make staying asleep easier when you put her down.
Option 2: Adjusting to an Earlier Bedtime
The other option is to experiment with shifting bedtime earlier to see if it helps her settle more easily at night.
I completely understand that evenings are your main time together on childcare days, so I don’t want to suggest an earlier bedtime without considering that. Instead, we can test the impact of an earlier bedtime over the weekend when you have more time together.
If you’re open to trying this, here’s a schedule to follow over the weekend:
Weekend Schedule Test (2-Hour Wake Windows)
– 7:00 – 7:15 AM – Wake, 1st Feed, then play
– 9:00 AM – Nap 1 (Assuming a 27-30 minute nap)
– 9:30 AM – Wake, 2nd Feed, then play
– 11:30 AM – Nap 2
– 12:00 PM – Wake, 3rd Feed, then play
– 2:00 PM – Nap 3
– 2:30 PM – Wake, 4th Feed, then play
– 4:30 PM – Nap 4
– 5:00 PM – Wake, 5th Feed, then play
– 7:00 PM – Bedtime (including a feed, ideally in a bright, engaging room to keep her awake).You’ll notice that this schedule includes only four naps instead of five. I know she’s currently taking five naps, but in order to gradually extend her wake windows to two hours, we need to space out her naps, which naturally reduces the total number of naps in a day.
The reason for this adjustment is to help build up enough sleep pressure before each nap. This will encourage her to take longer naps and start linking sleep cycles—something babies are developmentally capable of doing around five months, but only if they can fall asleep independently (which she can).
By stretching her wake windows to two hours, she will naturally transition from five naps to four. My hope is, that this slight reduction in total daytime sleep, along with increased sleep pressure before naps, will make it easier for her to settle at bedtime and stay asleep for longer stretches.
Would you be open to trying this over the weekend to see if shifting bedtime makes settling easier?
Emma