Hi, I'm Nicky from Little Ones.
And today I'm going to answer the question
how many naps should my six month old be having?
By six months old,
most babies should really have consolidated their napping
into three distinct naps.
A morning nap, a midday nap, and a late afternoon nap.
As babies near closer to six months old,
we would really want to be reducing
the length of that late afternoon nap
because that particular nap can really affect
bedtime settling,
it can cause night waking,
and it can even cause an early morning wake as well.
So what we would be recommending people to do,
and certainly through our Sleep Programs,
is to be slowly reducing the length
of that late afternoon nap
as their baby nears six months old.
Somewhere between six and eight months,
that nap will disappear all together.
And your baby will be left with two naps in the day.
This transition is very day-to-day,
so it's not going happen
right when your baby turns six months old,
and it's not going to be a hard and fast rule
that they drop that nap and you never see it again.
It will happen over the next couple of months
that some days your baby will need that
little late afternoon power nap
and some days they won't.
And whether they need that nap or not
is going to be dependent
on how the other naps that day have gone.
So, we always look at a structure
of a shorter nap in the morning,
a longer nap across the middle of the day,
and then that shorter catnap in the late afternoon.
And that way,
once your baby does drop that late afternoon nap,
their most recent nap of the day
will be that big, long lunchtime sleep.
Meaning they're not coming into bedtime at night
already over tired.
If your baby is in a structure
where they're having a longer sleep in the morning,
and then two shorter sleeps later in the day,
this can definitely be a more tricky transition
because by the time your baby's trying to drop
that third late afternoon sleep,
and their longest sleep is happening in the morning,
they can reach bedtime very, very, very overtired.
And that can make them harder to settle,
to sleep for the night.
It can cause night waking,
and again, the overtiredness can cause early morning waking.
So it's a bit of a delicate formula.
So what we would be looking at
is a shorter morning sleep
and a nice long lunchtime sleep.
And then by the time your baby is sort of six months old,
if they're sleeping for a decent couple of hours
across the middle of the day,
they're probably fine
to start dropping that third nap all together
and you would definitely want to bring bedtime forwards
a little bit on those days,
just while they get used to this transition.
If, for whatever reason,
your baby woke early from their lunch nap
or didn't sleep very well,
then those are the days
you would probably want to keep a short cat nap in
in the late afternoon to get them through to bedtime.
But like I said, it's potentially going to be different
every day for a couple of months
while your baby gets used to that transition.
And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
for a lot more baby sleep videos.
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