Hi! I’m Dana Obleman creator of The Sleep Sense Program.

This week’s question comes from Serit who writes:

“Matan is five months old and I cannot get him to sleep from more than a 20 minute cat nap. Can this be changed?”

Well Serit, that is a really common question and I hear it just about from all of my clients. It is a very common thing for a baby to take a 20 to 45 minute nap. Especially if they are transferred from a different place they started. If I were to rock my baby to sleep and then try to transfer him to his crib, I could be pretty sure that 20 minutes to 40 minutes later, he is going to wake up. Usually those babies wake up crying because they are not in the same spot they were when they fell asleep and that can be a bit frightening.

They tend to wake up a bit startled and start crying. It is not likely enough sleep, but it was just enough that it is going to be hard now to try to get them back to sleep. In order for a baby to take a nice long nap they need to be in the same place they fell asleep. I would plan Matan’s day so that (at five months old) he can be napping roughly every two hours. Let’s say he woke up at 7 a.m., this means that by 9am he should be ready for his first morning nap. He should be going to his bedroom and having a story or singing a song; just a little bit of a pre-nap routine at that stage so he knows that nap time is coming. Then he should go into the crib awake where he should be learning to put himself to sleep. Once he has mastered that, he will start sleeping longer than 20 minutes.

Now, it does not come right away…Basically at the end of one sleep cycle, which is roughly 30 to 40 minutes, there is a little breath where children flutter their eyes and come to the surface of sleep. What you want them to do is just slide right in to the next cycle but if they fell asleep in your arms, then will have that little wake up in the crib, start crying and now they won’t be able go back.

If he is a chronic “short napper” then it is going to take time for him to train his body to start sleeping more consolidated for nap time. What you can try in the meantime if you hear him at the 20 or 30 minute mark, is go in really quickly and you can try to get him back to sleep with some gentle touch or some shushing; you can pat his back a little bit, or bounce the mattress lightly and lay it on a little thicker than I recommend you do for the initial lay down.

It will be much better if you can save that nap and get him into another cycle so that he has a fairly solid nap. He will be refreshed and you can keep your day going nicely. Give it about 10 minutes of trying; if it works, it usually works right away. If it has not worked after 10 or 15 minutes of trying, then it is probably not going to because he has had that cat nap so you just have to get him up. Try to make it to next routine/scheduled nap time and if he does not quite have the stamina to go the full two hours again, then you could go a little sooner. It is a bit of work but you can definitely get him sleeping longer than twenty minutes. You will find that he will be much happier when he is awake if he has slept longer.

Good luck with that and thanks for your question. Sleep well!