Auto news on Youtube Dec 17 2018

Hi, I'm Nicky from Little Ones.

And today I'm going to answer the question,

how do I know when to drop the late afternoon nap?

The short answer is usually between six

and eight months that nap will disappear.

Prior to this your baby is ideally on three naps a day.

In our Sleep Programs it's structured

so there's a shorter nap in the morning, a longer nap

across the middle of the day, and then a shorter nap again

in the late afternoon, to get your baby

through to a settled bedtime at around seven.

So, usually by six months we aim

to have whittled down that late afternoon nap.

So it's sort of slowly weaning your baby off needing

that nap I suppose, and keeping the other two naps in place.

Now, you don't just need to drop the late afternoon nap

simply because your baby has reached a particular age.

There are signs you would be looking out for

in terms of your baby's readiness to do away with that nap.

And those signs would be that your baby has the nap,

but then starts being really unsettled

after that before bed time and refuses

to go to bed at their normal bed time,

whatever that is, maybe 7:00 in the evening.

They might wake a couple of hours into the night,

they might wake around 3:00 a.m,

or they might wake early in the morning.

Start waking at those times if they

were previously not waking at those times.

Those are the signs that their late afternoon nap

is interfering with their night sleep.

And it might be that their late afternoon nap is too long.

And the first step would be to maybe cut down

that late afternoon nap in length and see

if that positively effects their bedtime and their nights.

If they're still having unsettled bedtimes

at nights then it might be time,

especially if they're over six months,

to do away with that afternoon nap altogether.

Another sign that your baby is ready to drop

the afternoon nap is that they simply stop having it.

So they're just not tired enough

to actually go to sleep for that nap.

And you might be fighting them, and fighting them

and fighting them to go to sleep.

And maybe they do fall asleep but it's a bit too late

in the afternoon and a bit too close to bed time.

And then that's going to push out everything in the rest

of your day and bedtime's going to come a lot later.

So if your baby's fighting the nap,

then it's a really good sign that they actually

are ready to drop that nap altogether.

When you're looking at reducing or doing away

with that late afternoon nap it is still really important

that your baby is having a decent midday sleep.

Because if they're not having their second sleep

of the day as their biggest sleep,

then they're coming into bedtime quite overtired already.

So if they're having a long, long morning nap,

and then a shorter nap around lunchtime,

and then a shorter nap in the late afternoon,

and you do away with that late afternoon nap they're going

from when they wake up from their long morning nap,

which is maybe 10:30, 11:00 in the morning.

They're going right through to bedtime in the evening

with probably just a shorter cat nap to fill in that time.

And that's going to mean that they're going to

be reaching bedtime really overtired.

So it's going to be harder for you to drop

that late afternoon nap in a baby

that's having their long morning nap in the morning.

So, what we aim to do is we have a shorter nap

in the morning to get babies

through to a long midday lunch nap.

And then they're tired enough,

and they're ready to have a nice long sleep

for a couple of hours across the middle of the day,

which means that when they do drop

that late afternoon nap they're still well-rested enough

that they're not getting too overtired come bedtime.

So that's a way easier nap transition for babies than those

who are used to having a longer nap in the morning,

and then two shorter naps throughout the rest of the day.

If your baby is over eight months old, then you definitely

need to have dropped the late afternoon nap.

Because as I said, normally, it would

be dropped in-between six and eight months.

So we'd sort of say definitely by eight months,

unless your baby is sick, or unless

there's something else going on and they need

to catch up on sleep, or you've been on holiday.

But after eight months any sleep after 3:00 pm

is really going to wreak havoc with bedtimes, night-times,

and potentially in early morning waking as well.

So if your baby's over eight months old, and you say

should I drop the late afternoon nap, then, yes, definitely.

And in any of those cases our Sleep Programs talk you

through the perfect nap structure,

the perfect nap lengths, and really ease you

through getting rid of the late afternoon nap,

and all the other nap transitions to come.

And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel

for lots more baby sleep videos.