Do you ever wake your baby up?

[ArtsyMom]

Our little one sleeps *okay* especially since I started following Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child advice.

However, I feel like maybe Joshua would sleep better at night if he didn't have such a long late afternoon nap. He usually sleeps from 4-7 pm. We wake him for an hour and he goes down for the night at 8 pm.

Do you ever wake your baby from their naps?

[Mom2Alex]

Absolutely! Especially the first few months when DD needed to be nursing more often. BF babies, especially, need to nurse every couple of hours when they are newborns, so I found that I had to wake DD to nurse every once in a while.

We also don't let her nap that late in the afternoon. She doesn't nap later than 4pm, and she's out cold by 8:30 at the latest. :)

We haven't done any sort of sleep training, however, as we don't believe in it for children younger than a year old, so that may affect how we do things by way of naps and such too...

[KeriS]

I never woke him up to eat -- he was big enough we didn't need to.

If he takes a late afternoon nap -- which is usually his third nap of the day if he takes one since he cut the third nap out a few months ago -- I will wake him after about an hour so that he will go to bed on time.

Buuuuuuuuuut ... Davis doesn't sleep well at night these days ... so ... who knows if that is the right thing to do.

[JenM]

Thinking back I think we did wake up Zoe from time to time... either to keep her from messing up her night time sleep schedule... or as Mom2Alex said.. to feed her when she was an infant. Of course, after the first 3 or 4 months I wouldn't have dreamed of doing that! It was VERY rare that we did that. Zoe never did sleep much... Still doesn't "like" sleeping. I generally had the feeling to let her sleep when she was tired.. eat when she was hungry.. etc... Didn't really try to schedule her until she got a bit older.

[ArtsyMom]

Thanks for the input. It's really hard to know what the best thing is to do.

I do feel that the HSH, HC book by Weissbluth is accurate as the author's theory of infants getting tired every 2 hours or so seems to be true in our case.

However, the most important thing to us is a good *night* sleep. And, it's confusing b/c ppl say "never wake a sleeping baby" but if Joshua goes for a nap at 4 pm and doesn't want to wake up at all, we can't just let him keep sleeping for the entire night.

Well, we'll just keep experimenting I suppose. Any other thoughts appreciated. :aok:

[Faye]

I have woke my daughter up before when naps ran too long. :)

[mommy2one]

I would recommend shortening his nap and putting him down for bed later or moving his nap up in the afternoon. "No Cry Sleep Solution" (a great book!) would advocate that you should have a couple of hours between the last nap of the day and bedtime. I know we moved our DD's bedtime all the way up to about 6:30 or 7pm and she is sleeping until 7am (with 1-2 quick nursings during the night).

[scruzin]

I only wake meredith if it is going to interfere with night sleep!

Keep doing what you feel is right. Every child is different. Sounds like he might need a 1:00 nap and then a cat nap at 5, and bed at 7, would that work with your Schedule!

I use Healthy Sleep habits also and we got almost exactly by that time schedule they have

[Martian Lullaby]

I've never woken her up to feed her, not even from birth. She ate when she wanted to. The only time I wake her up now is if she's sleeping too late in the evening. She does usually take a nap between the time she gets home from day care and when I take her to bed, but if that nap runs too long or starts too late, I'll wake her up so she'll sleep later.

She's ten weeks and has been sleeping through the night since six weeks and I want to keep it that way. :lol: If I wake her up around eight, she'll go down for the night with me (at ten or ten-thirty) with no problems.

[JillMelissa]

Oh, HELL no! :lol: No, I'm just kidding, I wake her if her evening nap is running too close to bedtime. Boy, is she cranky when she doesn't get to wake up on her own time!

[chefkath]

Aside from the necessity of awakening a sleepy newborn to nurse ( I never had to do that with Brigit, but did with Ciaran), I simply don't believe in waking a sleeping child. If a kid is tired, s/he needs to sleep. Every baby and toddler has his or her own schedule, and I do find it really frustrating sometimes when naptime runs up against bedtime. But I just don't like the thought of messing with their natural cycles, however insanely wacky they may be! Eventually they get it all sorted out!

[Cortney]

Oh, HELL no! :lol: No, I'm just kidding, I wake her if her evening nap is running too close to bedtime. Boy, is she cranky when she doesn't get to wake up on her own time!
Yeahp! :)

[togirl]

I found the healthy sleep habits happy child book especially helpful after about 4 months. For the first 3 months I couldn't bear to let him cry at all, but after 4 months I found it really helped to let him cry for a few minutes and he learned to sleep really well after that. I never have the heart to let him cry for too long though.

[harmonielyn]

I never wake DD up. I tried once to wake her up because she was more than likely out for the night but she needed to eat, it had been hours. That was a no go, no matter what I did the second she hit the bottle she was out.

[Marcella]

During the first few weeks of her life, I would wake her up during the day if she slept longer than 4 hours at a time (at the advice of her pedi). That didn't happen too often though!


Now, at 8 months old.. on the days I'm home with her (I work full time), I will wake her up from her morning nap at the two-hour mark. I also instruct her caregiver to do the same. However, at that point she's usually waking up on her own anyway. Same goes for her afternoon nap.. although she usually only takes a one-hour nap in the afternoon, and wakes up on her own.

She usually wakes up on her own in the morning (sometime between 6:30 - 7 am), but on the rare occasion she's still asleep at 7 am, I HAVE to wake her up during the week to get her ready to go.