Parents with young babies….please, don’t be afraid to let them have a little evening nap before bedtime. Young babies who are overtired and have been ‘kept awake’ in hopes that they will sleep better at night will often have trouble staying awake long enough to finish their bedtime feeding (which will lead them to wake soon from hunger) and their overtired bodies have more trouble settling into good, deep sleep once they’ve gone down. This evening nap can happen anywhere: in their room, in the living room (if they can handle the light and sounds), in the car while you run an errand, or in the stroller as you take an evening walk. They usually outgrow the need for a short evening nap between 4-6 months if they’re taking a long morning nap and a long afternoon nap (1.5-2 hours each) and going down for the night after a 7pm feeding.
Here’s a picture I took of an 8 week and 3 day old napping in the evening (I intentionally included the large clock).
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I cared for her every night starting the day she came home from the hospital. And she started sleeping 10.5-11.5 hours/night on the night she was 7 weeks and 5 days old (the youngest I’ve seen a baby start doing this). I stayed with her family out in CA until she was 10 weeks old….and 18 months later the mom said she was still an amazing sleeper.
Normally, I will wake babies after sleeping about 45 minutes in the evening. But, this little girl didn’t have a very good afternoon nap this day, so I let her sleep a little longer.
And if a baby can finish a bedtime feeding very quickly, I would normally time the short evening nap so they would have 45-60 minutes of awake/playtime before we start the bedtime feeding. But, I knew this baby girl always took close to an hour to finish her bedtime feeding. So, I let her nap until it was almost time to start that feeding.
She was breastfed all day, but I fed her one bottle a day at bedtime. This allowed her to have as much as she wanted before starting her long stretch of sleep. And it ensured she would not have any issues taking more bottles through the day once mom returned to work.
Here are my notes from the same night I took this picture
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8 weeks 3 days
Mom said she last nursed at 4:45pm
Napped from 6:00-6:55pm in swing (not turned on)
7:05pm start bedtime feeding. We’re using the bedroom upstairs while the grandparents are here. And I have the foil on the window to make it dark. It’s very noisy because the window has a draft, but I’m hoping the sound machine covers that. Big poop in the middle of her feed. She took 7oz. She was almost finished eating around 7:40pm, but she held onto a burp for quite a while. I had to swaddle to help her relax…then unswaddle once she started getting too sleepy. Finally got the last burp.
8:18pm down swaddled, awake and relaxed…I had the lights on as I said “night night”. I heard one tiny sound about a minute after I turned off the lights, then quiet.
6:28am I hear her waking with relaxed voice, so I start the morning routine. Happy baby!
6:40am she’s nursing
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