Advice on Wake times

[bluebutterfly74]

Hello other mums

Just wondering what sort of wake times your 4 months olds are having at the moment. I found my DD wasn't sleeping through properly during the day and she was showing me she was tired at about an hours wake time but then not sleeping through which then to earlier feeding which then she snacked and it kind of snow balled. Just some advice please. the save our sleep book states 2 hour wake time for this age.Personally i think that seems like a very long time and it only suggests two sleeps and one nap. ? any thoughts???:fingerscrossed:

[trishalishous]

at that age i just follow babies cues. feed when hungry, and to sleep when they show tired signs.
i think at that age our feed/play/feed/sleep cycle was around 90mins to 2hrs, though tbh DD was in the sling and did her own thing since i had 2 4yos to chase after

[trishalishous]

at that age i just follow babies cues. feed when hungry, and to sleep when they show tired signs.
i think at that age our feed/play/feed/sleep cycle was around 90mins to 2hrs, though tbh DD was in the sling and did her own thing since i had 2 4yos to chase after

[zzz]

I think that 2 hour seems a long time as well, if my 3 1/2 month old was awake that long she'd be very cranky, get overtired and be harder to settle and wouldn't necessarily sleep longer.

So how long is your DD sleeping for during the day? Mine only sleeps 40-45 mins about 5 times a day. It's seems to suit her well although I wish she'd sleep longer!

[mmy2b]

at that age i just follow babies cues. feed when hungry, and to sleep when they show tired signs.
i think at that age our feed/play/feed/sleep cycle was around 90mins to 2hrs, though tbh DD was in the sling and did her own thing since i had 2 4yos to chase after

This is what I was going to say. My boy is 4 months old too, and 4 month olds don't follow the book unfortunately. He has days where he is awake and feeding all day, or when he'll only sleep with booby in his mouth. I let him, he knows what he needs at any given time. 4 months is a major growth and development spurt too, so the mix everything up.

Just go with what your baby wants, makes for a much leas stressed mumma and bub.

[MunchkinsMum1]

My 5.5 month DD's wake time is usually 1.5-2 hours and sometimes less. I just follow her cues rather than relying on a structured timetable. It's 11.30am and she's already 30 mins into her 2nd nap for day having had one between 7.30-9.30 (awake for day at 6.30).
The only real structure we have us 4hrly feeding (fully breastfed). We had issues in past with snack feeding and little day sleep and the structure works for us.

[bluebutterfly74]

Hi my daughter was waking every 40mins also and wasn't able to resettle so I have recently stretched her wake time of 1 hour to 1.5, even though she will tell me she is tired after an hour. Sometimes just changing an activity or picking her up for a scenary change makes all the difference. When she gets really grizzly I will put her to bed. every thing will change next week when my boy goes back to preschool though. At the moment, her routine is wake at 6 feed, play , feed as she can't take a full bottle in one sitting she is only little. But i don't feed her to go to sleep. Back down at 7:30 wake at 10 same thing down 11.30, up at 2, etc then 6 then 10 but I am currently pulling her night time feed back to 9 and then to 7 but she will sleep from 10 through till 6. So 3 day time. Come 6 I am experimenting. Usually I will feed at this time and then its beed again. But I know what you mean. The thing I have been struggling with was she would get overtired and then not sleep and then you would offer a feed to settle but she would snack. I was having days where she would be awake 7-7 and not grizzly just being a nosey parker.lol. Stretching her wake time out seems to be working at the moment. I guess when that stops working I will stretch it to an hour 45 etc.

[looloo711]

My DD goes about 1hr 45- 2hrs wake time. She wakes at 6:30 for the day feed at 7am play then back down for sleep about 8:30 by the time she actually gets to sleep. However she will only have about 40mins. She will have another lil nap at about 10 ish if we are home. Then she usually has a fairly big sleep of an arvo from about 12:30 to 2. Then another nap at 4ish. We do four hourly feeds.
So wake times vary but mostly around 2hrs. Also depends in what we r doing for the day as she is a bit of a sticky beak!

[loveabubba]

My DD has just turned 4 months and generally has a wake time of somewhere between 1 and 2 hours. It really depends on where we are as she'll go down fairly easily at home but basically refuses to sleep in the pram if we're out for a long time. Her feeds are generally 2-3 hours apart during the day so her naps are either 45 minutes or 1.5 hours.
I've been feeding and sleeping according to what she wants not by the hour. I didn't plan on doing it this way but it just seems to work for both of us.
I think you've just gotta go with what works for you since every baby is completely different.

[Plod1608]

Hi, my bub is just 3 mths but is quite large for her age! Weighs in at nearly 7 kg :) I've been running off the save our sleep book as well (because I had no idea being a first time mum!) I was putting her to bed when I'd first see tired signs and she was only sleeping 45 mins. I realized I was putting her to bed too early and she was only napping because that's all she needed! So we started to stretch her out slowly, to an hr, then an hr and a half, now an hr 45. It's tough work and she was getting pretty cranky but definately better at night now and has 2 big 2 hr ish sleeps during the day and a 30-40 nap in the arvo. I know they say to watch for tired signs but once I realized they have the 'earn' their sleep, we started getting the long day sleeps. I now watch and when I see about 3 tired signs it's time for bed. Meanwhile I'm now struggling with her waking after 40 mins at night! Not sure what's going on there!
Good luck

[Catkin]

Mine resists any sort of day sleeps at all... we've been to day stay etc and all they could say was that she was one of the most determined babies they'd met..! She sleeps from 7pm ish (sometimes later - 10pmish) through to somewhere between 8 and 11am and then if she naps at all during the day it's 20mins max.

We don't have a routine, it's all baby led etc and she does her own thing. She has lots of tired signs, and i know the really early ones too, but whenever you catch her she won't sleep. I won't do CIO/CC, I don't believe in it and short of drugging her/knocking her over the head we've tried everything else. We're now basically going with it to see what happens. She does have the occasional day where she sleeps almost all day as well so we're just accepting that's her.

[bluebutterfly74]

Hi All. Thanks for all the feed back. I have come to the conclusion with my DD being the second child she just has to fit in with what we do as we have preschool runs three times a week. when she is at home its easy but when we are on she just have to sleep where she can. yes it makes sometimes for an interesting afternoon and some times a cuddle to go to sleep. But she is sleeping 7pm to 6-6.30 over night depending on when she has her last feed for the night. Plod1608 perhaps her day time sleeps are too long and maybe increase the wake time? just a thought I know its a lot for a 3 month old but maybe just do a wake time of 2 hours for maybe one or two of the sleeps and then she can make it up in other sleeps. Hope it is all sorting itself out.

[labellavita]

My DD is 3.5 months and is generally awake for around 2 hours before she starts to grizzle. Mind you she feeds (breastfeeding) about every two hours during the day. We loosely follow "eat, play, sleep" but don't have a strict day routine. She will generally only sleep 40 minutes to an hour 3 times a day. I stick to a night time routine of bath around 5:30pm, feed at 6ish and bed at 6:30pm. Some nights she might wake around 10 for a quick feed then sleep until 6am. If she doesn't have the late evening feed we generally meet again around 3 and she will sleep until 7ish.

My only advice would be to follow your babies cue's and do whatever works for you guys. Happy mummies = happy babies! Good luck :) xx

[CuddlesAwait]

I think that 2 hour seems a long time as well, if my 3 1/2 month old was awake that long she'd be very cranky, get overtired and be harder to settle and wouldn't necessarily sleep longer.

So how long is your DD sleeping for during the day? Mine only sleeps 40-45 mins about 5 times a day. It's seems to suit her well although I wish she'd sleep longer!

My DD only cat naps like that too, but I'm lucky if I get her to sleep 3 times during the day. Do you feed your little one in between each nap? What times does she usually nap? Does she go down easily?

[FutureMa]

My DD is just 4 months and only sleep 40-45 mins around 5 times a day too! We've had some good days in the past where she will have a 1.5-2hr nap but that does not happen every day. At the moment I am slowly changing her feeds from 2hrly to 3hrly in hope that she will go longer at night without a feed (we bedshare and she wakes often). She will stay awake max 1.5hrs during the day and then will start to get grizzly so I will put her down and she generally goes down easily (I rock her to sleep). If I try to put her down too early, it ends up being a BIG struggle so I always try to wait until she has been awake for 1.5hrs unless of course she is very obviously ready for bed before that.

There is no way she would stay awake for 2hrs without screaming the house down with over-tiredness.