Newbies
Nap Transitions: How Do You Drop a Nap?

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Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

KRISTEN STRATTON: Your baby is getting older. He used to have three naps a day which with two hours long. Now, he’s struggling to fall asleep during one of his usual times. He fusses and you’re both miserable, and, and admittedly he falls asleep, two hours before bed time. This is making you both cranky. How do you successfully drop a nap.

This is Newbies.

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KRISTEN STRATTON: Welcome to Newbies. Newbies is your online on the go support group, guiding new mothers through their baby’s first year. I'm your host, Kristen Stratton, Certified Birth Doula, Postpartum Doula and Owner of In Due Season Doula Services.

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SUNNY GAULT: All right. So as you guys may know, we have changed the way we record our shows a little bit, and what’s great about this is it gives parents all over the country even all over the world, if you can access a link, if you got a strong internet connection, and either desktop or laptop, you can join our shows.

We used to record in more of a studio type of environment and you kind of needed to be there in order to participate but we’ve kind of opened the doors and we’re really excited about this because it gives anyone the opportunity to participate in our show, so if that sounds like something you’d like to do, we would love to hear from you. There’s a couple different ways you can do that. You can go to our website at www.newmommymedia.com and we’ve got some banners and stuff up on the site that indicate, hey, if you want to be a parent, here’s how you’d join us.

Click those links, it’ll take you to an online form that you can fill out really quickly, just gives our producers a little bit more information about you, so if we have a topic that we’re working that we think you’d be a good fit for, we can reach out to you, and there’s also way you can reach out to us, and that is through our close Facebook group. And so, if you are on Facebook, this is a great group to join. It’s where we post all of our topics and the times that we’re going to be recording for all of our shows not just for Newbies but for all of the New Mommy Media shows. And so, if that’s something that’s of interest to you, go to our website for more information and, yeah, we’d love you to get you involve to get you participating on the shows.

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SUNNY GAULT: All right, so before we dive into our conversation today, we had a comment from one of our listeners, and as you guys know, I'm always asking for your feedback on the show, so let us know. Whatever you’ve got a comment, perhaps it’s a topic that we covered that you want more information about or you got a question about something that we said or whatever, let us know, we’ll try to get these questions answered. Sometimes, we get comments from listeners just about more general things with our show. And so, this comment comes from Becky, and Becky, I really do appreciate you submitting this. This is what she wrote.

She say; “I'm a regular listener of all your shows. I'm about 21 weeks pregnant. My husband and I both listen to a variety of podcast and he recently said he was out of episodes of his regular podcast. I suggested he subscribe to Newbies because he’s very interested in learning all he can about what’s to come with our little one. However, when he saw the description said, Newbies is a podcast guiding new mothers, he immediately dismisses the idea because he didn’t think it would apply to him. Throughout the pregnancy, he’s trying to get involved by downloading apps, looking at books but there all seems to be geared toward women and this discourages him, although I know from listening that Newbies is dad friendly, perhaps changing the description to say “new parents”, might help the podcast see more inclusive. Thanks for all the work you guys do on the podcast. They’re great, Becky.”

So Becky, I wanted to address this a little bit and give you a little bit of reasoning behind why we did, what we did there. Yeah, as you already know, all of our podcast are really parent friendly. We tried to make everything inclusive but even when Kristen and I were first talking about creating Newbies and what the shows was going to be about one thing we really went back to was we need more content that is just focused on moms.

Now, the way we kind of setup the episodes, what we tried to do when we’re planning out our episodes is how it’d be at least 50-50. We try to aim for that and 50% content that’s focused on caring for mom and mom’s you know, body and her personal well-being and wellness, and the other half focused more on caring for baby.

And so, that’s kind of our ratio of what we try to do with this but actually, with Newbies, we really wanted, we really felt like we were so kind of balanced with the other shows. We really wanted to reach out to specifically moms with this show. So I understand where you’re coming from on that. What I would say is if there’s an episode, please share it with your partner, I think that’s fantastic.

I think they’re probably going to get a little bit more out of the content like we’re talking today about naps. That’s very much for moms and dads. We’re talking a lot right now about postpartum depression, and that could also help dads but the content, when we talk in the show, it’s really geared towards the mom, so we’re like speaking like right to the mom.

So, it was intentional with our way to say, hey, this is for moms because so much of our content is for everybody. Becky, thanks so much for sending this in, hopefully, we gave you kind of a good breakdown of our reasoning for that. We appreciate you listening to our shows. It’s awesome and your feedback is great. If you guys have a comment out there, please send it to us, again, you can email us, send it through the website and we’ll answer it on a future show.

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KRISTEN STRATTON: Today on Newbies, we are discussing how to address to our baby sleep transitions. Our expert is Jen Varela, Certified Gentle Sleep Coach and owner of Sugar Night Night in San Diego, California. Thanks for joining us Jen and welcome to the show.

JEN VARELA: Thank you for having me. I always love being on with you guys.

KRISTEN STRATTON: We love it too. Well, so, Jen, what do normal and healthy sleep patterns look like for infants?

JEN VARELA: When you talk about infants, that can go from four months to 11 months, it’s kind of how the National Source For Sleep Foundation defines that, so newborns would be from like zero to three months, and I imagine that it gets defined in different places differently, so for today, I mean, we can just go okay, newborns is up to three months and then infancies from 4 to 11.

So newborns, when they first come into the world, they’ll sleep nap at night anywhere between 9 and 12 hours, and then during the day, combined nap total. So we’re between two and six. So they’re getting anywhere between 15 and 17 hours in a 24 hour time, and they are properly taking multiple naps, you know, it could be as many as four, it could as many as six.

Their sleep will really fluctuate, so you’re going to get long stretches and then you get short stretches. So, usually around 68 weeks is when you might see the night time start to lengthen. So what’s interesting to me is it’s more about awake windows than it is about how much like sleep they’re getting on the 12 hour clock. One of the key pieces when they first come to the world is that 90 minute window.

So Dr. Pollinmore talks about this, and basically, the amount of time our little one can be awake when they first are born as maybe an hour and then it’ll stretch to like 90 minutes, an hour and a half. So typically, it’s more about watching when they wake to start their day, you add 90 minutes, then that’s where the next sleep will happen, and that sleep could be 20 minutes, so it could be two hours.

And then, they’ll be awake and then you’re going to watch that 90 minute of wake time and then you’re giving the opportunity to sleep again. So you’re going to see bedtimes sometimes is at 10 o’clock, sometimes bedtimes at 9 o’clock because you'll have an evening nap if you will. And then, as you’re getting close to somewhere around three months, you’re going to start to see that oh, they’re really fussy now in that time, and so now, you don’t really have an evening nap anymore, and now, you’re actually starting bedtime probably somewhere between 6 and 8 o'clock. So in the beginning in that naps, this is just all about naps and normal health patterns.

In the very beginning, it’s mostly about awake windows and a great re-fluctuating what naps look like, short and long, and evening nap. That’s kind of give you at least form a newborn perspective, what’s happening.

KRISTEN STRATTON: How is sleep related to developmental milestones a baby achieves in their first year of life?

JEN VARELA: I love this topic, and the reason I love this topic is because when we think about it from their perspective with developmental milestones, REM sleep, so active sleep, it’s where … It’s Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This is where you take information from the day and you put in to long term memory. So REM dreaming allows this process state an emotional experiences and transfer recent memories into long term storage. Not cool, when you have a little one who’s going to rolling over, sitting up or scudding or crawling, right? Or standing and then, REM 12 months maybe walking, they are spending a lot of time in REM sleep when they’re working on this about in a milestone.

So our typical sleep cycle is 90 minutes as adults. So it’s 30 minutes REM and 60 minutes is Non-REM. So Non-REM is like when their little babies are like noodles, right? They’re all just super relaxed. So what’s happening is if they’re spinning more time in REM sleep which is the shorter cycle of sleep, then what’s going to happen is you’re going to have more night awakenings.

So you can’t make the brain go any faster than they’re going with organizing that informations, so that’s why you’ll see milestones related to sleep issues as far as increase night awakening as well as … And we can maybe talk a little bit about this further in but with toddlers, that developmental milestone around 18 months, they actually figure out how to wile themselves not to take a nap.

And so now, they’re nap striking. It is interesting how developmental milestones have a very much have an effect on sleep.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And throughout their first year or life, how much total sleep do infants usually need?

JEN VARELA: The overall total sleep doesn’t change that much in the first year, more what’s happening is nap organization. So off of the National Sleep Foundation, they’ll say from newborn, so that’s zero to three months, they need between 14 and 17 hours. And then, with infants where they say it’s from four months to 11 months, they’re saying it’s 12 to 15 hours.

It’s not that those numbers are that different. It’s about the ability to stay awake for a longer period of time between naps, and the number of naps will decrease. A newborn might be taking four to six naps then a four to five month old might be taking four naps, and then by the time we have the six months birth typically getting down to three naps. So it’s not that they overall sleep number changes terribly much but it’s more about the awake windows and number of naps.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And what did the early naps look like? The zero to three.

JEN VARELA: Again, they’ll be 20 minutes to two hours you know. And the number of naps can vary, so you might have like well, today was a four nap day, and tomorrow is a five nap day. So it supper fluctuates from baby to bay. And I will tell you some temperaments of babies. They are taking in so much information who has time to nap. And so, they might not even give you the signals to indicate that it’s time for nap that can kind of push through them. So that’s where again, watching the awake window, that 90 minute window is a key thing to do.

SUNNY GAULT: Jen, I’ve a question. Is it strange for kids to kind of skip this like four or five whatever, I mean, nap schedule because I feel like my kids never really … Well, maybe my twins a little bit did the two but I'll tell you, my boys, they were always like one solid nap a day. Whenever people talk about multiple naps in the morning, I just totally … I don’t relate to it all because my kids just doesn’t do that. I'm just wondering why.

JEN VARELA: So that’s where I think you have to go, okay, here’s what we know that you know, how the brain organizes sleep and structure and all of that. And then, there’s you know, different individuals, right? So there’s even like stock sleepers where they consolidate sleep cycles together so they don’t need as much sleep as the average brain does. What I find is interesting is you can make up for night sleep with naps but you can’t make up for naps sleeps with night.

So you can’t go 13 and a half hour of night sleep and then do 30 minute nap and have that be what the brain needs. It’s the brain needs to take that information put in a long term memory, so there was a study done by university in Germany where they thought a six month old and 12 month old groups how to put a puppet on take the puppet of and make the bell ring on the puppet.

And then one group got to take a sleep right after and then the other one have an extended period of time before they could take a sleep, and then they came back the next day to see what the recall was in the first 90 seconds of showing them the puppet again, and did you know that only the babies that have taken a sleep right after, remembered how to do it.

So that does tell you that there has seem to be some limits to how much short term memory you can hold on to stuff before it needs to go into long term memory through REM sleep. So I get it. You know when your baby is overtired. Is your baby like falling asleep in the car every time you get in the car, do they yawn? Are they cranky at the end of the day? Are they losing it? Right? Because they’re having all corners a search.

Just because your baby can push through that sleep window doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s optimum. So you do have to take a look at each individual maybe and make sure that they are thriving, right?

KRISTEN STRATTON: When do those naps are to spread out in length and how often and how long should most infants nap after their newborn phase is over?

JEN VARELA: So this is where it’s interesting around four months, some babies will start to organize their sleep, they’ll start putting together two sleep cycles. I get parent all the time. Yes, my baby sleeps 28 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes and all of the sudden, look at that, that is first nap of the day, they’re starting to put two of those together and now, you’re getting like an hour, an hour and a half now. And I'm going to tell you, some babies don’t do that until quite some time, and in my practice with some of my one on one clients, I’ve had eight months old that are not putting those together all by themselves.

So, if there’s a big range on individual babies who are putting those together but around four months when you might start to see get those longer naps on their own, but you still might be having four naps a day at four months, four or five months and you may still be having like okay, today, bed time was at 6:30 and Oop, yup, tonight, you know, the next is that 8 o'clock depending on where that last nap landed, right? And so it’s not until six months of age between six and eight where you actually kind of have a little bit more of a predictable schedule where it’s like an hour, an hour and a half nap in the morning, an hour and a half to two hour and a half in the afternoon and a little 30 minute top off which is usually about two to two and a half hours before bedtime of sleep.

So I would say six months is when you can kind of go, who, things are getting a little more predictable, prior six months, you still may have quite a bit of fluctuation. However, someday, these are really scheduled already. Someday these just aren’t there yet. So it’s until you see six months of age, so you start to see some consistency across the board.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And when about when you’re starting to approach the one year mark?

JEN VARELA: So, six months are usually on three naps. And then, somewhere around nine months hopefully, it’s not too much before nine months. It could be in the eight month mark. They’ll start to drop that third nap. So what’s crazy about that is so now, you’re on a two nap schedule which would mean you would want to be able to have four hours between last nap and bed time but I want to tell you that probably at 10 months, they’re not ready for four hours between last nap and bedtime.

So it’s a really hard time. Whenever they go through transition from, four and a half to three then they’ve got to be able to stay awake now somewhere like two, two and a half hours when they go from three naps to two, ultimately by the time they’re 12 months, they’ll be able to go that four hours between last nap and bedtime but not necessarily right when they drop that naps. That’s why it’s really hard that transition from three naps to two.

KRISTEN STRATTON: When we come back, we will continue our discussion about nap transitions in the first year. We’ll be right back.

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KRISTEN STRATTON: Welcome back to the show. We are talking with Jen Varela, Certified Gentle Sleep Coach. Jen, let’s talk strategies. How do we make each transition easier in both baby and mom?

JEN VARELA: Yes. So first, you have to take on courage, right? Naps, N-A-P-S, it could be a four letter word, right?

KRISTEN STRATTON: It is a four letter word, it really is.

JEN VARELA: Right, okay. So when you have a little one and you start to make that transition, you'll know because you can’t get them to give you that third nap anymore like it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t get it. So you might need to be a little bit flexible, knowing that somedays, you might be on the old schedule and somedays, you might be on the new schedule, right? So somedays, it might be a three nap days, somedays it might be a two nap day.

So you got to kind of read your little one a little bit. And I do find that keeping a sleep log when they’re in these transitions can really help you because it’s so hard to remember what happened 48 hours ago, and so, I think it’s valuable to be able to keep a log. And you need to plan your wake windows. So here’s the deal, when they go from three naps to two, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can go four hours between last nap and bedtime.

So, reality is somewhere in the day, the numbers are not going to match up. Somewhere in the day, they’re going to be overtired and there’s going to be quarter off, right? So you want to do your best to not have that happen in bedtime because I can have an effect on increase number of night a week needs an early rising, so I say if you’re going to have to have that window that’s not matching up, then have it be in the middle of the day not at the end of the day where they’re really over tired, and so that might mean that you try and extend that to where you can.

So, example being that morning nap when they’re making that transition, they might still give you three and a half hours combine nap totals and maybe an hour and a half in the morning, and then a two hour in the afternoon, so you may look at trying to extend that morning nap to get an hour and a half, so if you have a little one who always wakes at an hour, you’d plant yourself right next to where they’re sleeping and as soon as they stir, you snatch them up.
And however, you can get them back to sleep and good with it, rock them, nurse them, hold them, wear them, you know, stroll around. So extending naps can really help to get things kind of on the right track especially trying to get that incur nap, that morning nap in place.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And so, what about those times when you have to go somewhere, you have to put them in the car and it’s literarily 50 minute drive and they fall asleep and you get home and that’s it for today. They’re crappy. You’re crappy. How do we overcome those issues?

JEN VARELA: Right, and you can’t just stay at home all day and make it all of that naps.

KRISTEN STRATTON: At last, I wish I could.

JEN VARELA: Makes life a little small sometimes, right? When we’re so focus on trying to get naps, and it does create a lot of anxiety too because you feel like oh, no, that nap didn’t go well and so that means you know, like you start anticipating that things are going to be rough. So I get it. So often I will say, you know, well, first of all, the cars is the at least ideal place to nap them just from the standpoint of safety, right? Because it’s the least safe place we can probably be, but I recognized that even a lot of moms who used the car to get a nap, right?

So I'm going to say if you’re coming home from that fun sign language class or that music class, or some class and yup, here they are, they fall asleep. I hope we’d try and plan those outings around, knowing that they probably will fall asleep in the car on the way home at the right window.

So example being typically 11 o'clock, 11:30 is no man’s land. That’s like, you can win either way if your baby falls asleep at 11:30 with the right wake window. So it might be that you hang out at that location until you get something closer to the appropriate time to take the nap, right? And then they fall asleep in the car, you might need to find the shady place and take a book and sit in the backseat of the car may or may be and enjoy little quite time or if you park the car, you jump in the backseat and maybe you take the baby out of the car seat and you start nursing them down, right? So that you can extend to sleep just in the car in your arms.

So you may have to get a little intentional about like when you get in the car. And then, the other thing is too, there are some kids, you can total mess with them for one day and then you get back on track the next and they’re all good.

So you know, some babies are little more flexible and maybe, you just have to take a look at how many times a week can you do that without having your baby get overtired. So you might have a little one that can go with a little less combined nap total. And you’re fine or you can get a little 30 minute nap at the end of the day just to protect that window between last nap and bedtime even though they might be a little bit short on combined nap. So again, keeping a log will help you know what can you maybe do because some babies are pretty flexible, someday these are not.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And I know, you Sunny, you have a full house just like me. You have four. I have three.

SUNNY GAULT: Yes.

KRISTEN STRATTON: And I know you kind of touched on it and you’re going to explain nap strikes a little bit but I mean, I remember times when we just could not get the baby to sleep, you know, you just like, no rocking, nothing was working and well, I was like what are you thieving, no, they’re not thieving. You know, it’s like are they over stimulated? You know, so those are just times where they just won’t do it no matter what you do, so I don’t know. How do you overcome those kinds of moments Jen?

JEN VARELA: Well, one way to look at it too, so when they’re little, right? So when I say under a year. So we’re not talking that toddler yet. If one year later, I always say short naps equals short wake windows. So if you get one of those little snap nap, you know, kind of crap naps, you know, they’re like 30 minutes, then you may need to watch that 90 minute window again to see if you can get them another little short nap then kind of boosters them up, right?
And a lot of the books will say that you want stationary naps because that’s the most restorative, and so that’s where you'll get, you know, you’ll put little baby in their own separate little sleep space and they won’t go down. And I'm going to tell you that a movement nap is going to more restorative than no nap, right?

So I'm offer assisted naps. So if you were to look at when should they be able to do it all by themselves, yeah, as we get to eight months, we should definitely be seeing some stationary naps and they can do on their own. But as the day progresses, naps are harder to get. So I think a lot of moms have these expectation that they should be you know, naps in the crib stationary and I'm going to say, well, maybe you need to wear them, you know.

KRISTEN STRATTON: That’s a really good point, yeah, because that’s one way we can only get one of our kids asleep was baby wearing.

JEN VARELA: Yup, and it’s good, do it.

KRISTEN STRATTON: Yep.

JEN VARELA: Right, so however, there’s a whole another level of nap striking that happens with toddlers and I’d just touch on it so that if you know, if that becomes an issue, then you guys can know that oh, I can’t, I lost my mind. And I know Sunny, we did a podcast on this. It was called Toddler Naps, Dos and Don’ts. And I really go over a lot about the nap striking. Parents have more interest on that topic. They can go and listen to that whole podcast but basically, it’s usually about the time that they’re in a language first.

So somewhere around 18 months where they can really understand pretty much everything but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can articulate everything they understand. And so they might even be popping out words here and there you weren’t expecting and then say like, oh, look at that.

And when they get frustrated right? They throw a little tantrum because they’re frustrated because you’re not understand what they’re saying and then all of the sudden, mom and dad change their answer and so these little toddlers become so like, yes. I'm in charge. I can throw a tantrum. Mom did change her answer, right? And so, they are pretty focused and determined and so, they may choose to go I want to take a nap.

There’s so many other things I want to do, and that’s when you might start to see some nap striking. That does not necessarily mean that your baby is done having naps, so I get a lot of people yet. It was like right near too, we stop napping and like, no, I think they want on a nap strike. So there are strategies that you can do when you have toddlers in order to save that nap. So, the Wonder Weeks book is great because it really will help you know, what’s the next developmental leap that’s coming, and kind of help you be aware of how that might be affecting the nap situation.

SUNNY GAULT: I feel like I am the nap enforcer. I'm like when my kids get to that two to three year old age and they go on these naps strikes, I'm like, oh no, you didn’t, oh, no, you were not. Giving up this nap, this is my freedom,
and you are going to layback and my girls did that. It was right around two. I think they were just about two. They’re two and a half now. And they went through this whole thing, first of all, it’s like climbing out of the crib and all of the kind of stuff. And I just figured out the way to maneuver their crib so they couldn’t climb out and like, no, no, no. This is happening and you are staying in there and I cannot deal with no children napping in this house, so you are in there and you’re going to stay in there either I dimmed otherwise.

KRISTEN STRATTON: You are truly the enforcer.

SUNNY GAULT: Yeah, because it’s my sanity. It’s not just about the kids. It’s pulling my sanity.

JEN VARELA: Yes, I agree. And then what do you do that it’s a tricky one when they go from two naps to one.

KRISTEN STRATTON: Yeah.

JEN VARELA: Especially when you have like daycare situations where they want to move them into that next room because they’re over a year and they want to put them down to one nap, and honestly, it’s more again about the wake windows, maybe they could go with less sleep but the distance between last nap and bedtime especially. So a lot of times, daycare, they want to go to like one nap and it’ll be like starting at 12, right?

And so, yes, they have good sleep pressure. It’s good for daycare, they sleep but, even if they took a two hour nap, right? They’re done with their nap at two, right? And so if we’re trying to keep it at the four hour window, your baby is going to have to go to bed at six and if they’re going to give you 11 hours, your day starts at five, right?

So I find that you really want to try and keep two naps as long as possible and ideally something closer to between 15 and 18 months. So, what if I go over a couple of things to know like how do you know, that they’re ready to go to a one nap schedule?

KRISTEN STRATTON: Yeah, because I'm going through that right now.

JEN VARELA: Right, it’s timely, all right. So there are some signs, one if your little one is getting between 10 and 11 hours at night of uninterrupted sleep, so you know, you’re not having nine awakening. So there’s a correlation between sleep deprivation and increase number of night awakenings and early rising as well as two large of awake windows can also lead to more night a week it needs an early rising.

So one of the things I'm always looking at is if you have a little one who can get uninterrupted sleep 10 to 11 hours, then maybe that awake window is fine it’s not too long, right? The next one is when they start to take longer and longer to fall asleep at their morning nap, right? So they don’t seem to have quite enough sleep pressure to take that morning nap, that might be a sign, that yeah, I think we’re getting close to a one nap schedule, or and or, they take shorter morning naps or they sleep too long for morning nap and then refuse an afternoon nap.

So when you start seeing like, yeah, we’re getting like a 30 minute nap in the morning but they’re still giving you an afternoon nap. That probably means it’s coming pretty soon. If they start giving you like a two hour nap in the morning and then they won’t give you an afternoon nap, this is when it might be time to take a look at kind of adjusting their schedule so you don’t have to make of awake window. And I usually like to see it over like 10 to 14 days where you’ve seen these fluctuations.

So again, keeping a log, and going okay, over the last two weeks have we had these patterns, then you can go okay, it’s time to force the change basically and make the shift so that they’re having one nap that probably starts somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30.

KRISTEN STRATTON: So when should a parent seek help from a sleep professional or a medical professional if their child’s sleep is just not regulating, it’s disruptive and it’s unhealthy?

JEN VARELA: So, I'm always first, first, first is the pediatrician, right? So if there are things like your baby snores, babies shouldn’t be snoring. If your baby is snoring, you need to see your doctor. If they’re getting, and there are little, and they’re getting less than nine hours in the 24 hour, I think you needed to see a doctor because you want to make sure what’s going that there isn’t some kind of medical reason for that to be happening. I’ve one restless legs syndrome baby in my practice which leads to early rising and increase night awakenings, so interesting.

So it wouldn’t even matter how much you try to do something on structure or whatever. They’re going to still have these night awakening. So if you’re having really interrupted sleep at night and it’s not related to developmental milestone or the feeding, I would definitely consult your pediatrician.

Also, if you’re looking at like night weaning, you really want to ask your doctor how many hours can your baby go between feeds, not can my baby sleep to the night. Because if they say, oh, your baby can go eight hours, well, you still don’t have a night feed because when I look at night sleep, I'm looking something like 11 hours or more.

Those kinds of health reasons are definitely things that you would want to see your pediatrician about but let’s see you got the green light, and now, you had a place where it’s like, okay, so I think I need some help with regards to sleep coaching. I recommend that you get pass that 45 month old developmental milestone and that you’re somewhere closer to six months of age where you can see that they can go to two and a half hours between last nap and bedtime, and you want some help, then I think that’s a great window to start looking at maybe hiring a sleep coach to help you.

And if you’re not clear on what method you should use because temperament is a huge factor in learning how to self-suit. So there are some methods that are better fits for certain temperaments and a sleep coach should be able to help you figure that out. And then, I would say, if you’ve tried to teach your baby how to self-suit and it’s not working, then call one of us. We can help you. So I would say if you’ve give it a good go and it’s not coming together then those sleep coach can really help you take a look at what’s the missing piece on how can we get you there.

KRISTEN STRATTON: All right. Well, thank you so much Jen for being on the show and sharing your knowledge about nap transitions with baby. And for our Newbies Club members, our conversation will continue at the end of the show as Jen will share the very important distinction between sleep training and sleep shaping. For more information about the Newbies Club please visit our website at www.newmommymedia.com .

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SUNNY GAULT: All right, so before we wrap up our show, we have a “Baby Oops" segment that we’re going to do. This is where you guys share your interesting funny stories of you and your baby and crazy things that’ve happen in that first year when we’re all sleep deprive. This one comes from Jenny, and Jenny writes into us.

She says:
“The first night we had our little one at home, my husband and I were sleeping and our little one was in the bassinette, next to our bed. Well, around six in the morning, I heard a baby crying and I thought I was dreaming. I nudged my husband and asked if he heard a baby cry and he said, yes, Zander, and she says, I completely forgot I’ve had a baby and the baby was next there next to me, crying.”

So, it’s funny but it takes us awhile to kind of like adopt to the fact that we have this little child especially if it’s your baby right?

And you’ve got to care for this baby and I love, I don’t know if you guys have had this on other situations where you know, it happens a lot with alarm clocks, right? Where you know something, it’s like you’re dreaming about something and your baby doesn’t like wake up to actually do it like oh, wake up and you know, attend to an alarm clock or whatever and you’d just incorporate it into your dreams, and it sounds like that, sounds like that’s exactly what this mamma did. She said, oh, baby crying you know, and she worked it into her dream and so they’re getting up and taking care of her baby. So we’ve all been there, done that.

All right, thanks so much for sending this in. If you guys have a “Baby Oops" you want us to read on the show, send it to us. You can do so through our website at www.newmommymedia.com , just click the contact link and send it that way or send us a voicemail through the website and I will get it on the future show.

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KRISTEN STRATTON: That’s wraps up our show for today. We appreciate you listening to Newbies.

Don’t forget to check out our sister show:
• Preggie Pals for expecting parents
• Parent Savers for parents with infants and toddlers
• Twin Talks for parents with multiples and,
• Boob Group for moms who breastfeed
This is Preggie Pals, your pregnancy you way.

[Disclaimer]

This has been a New Mommy Media production. The information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. While such information and materials are believed to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, medical advice or care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.

SUNNY GAULT: New Mommy Media is expanding our line-up of shows for new and expecting parents. If you have an idea for a new series, or if you’re a business, or organization interested in joining our network of shows through a co-branded podcast, visit www.NewMommyMedia.com.

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