Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

Is your baby waking up after only a thirty minute nap? This is a common problem, and one that can be quite easy to solve!

Christina wrote in about her three-month-old son:

“We have trouble getting our three month old to take good naps. Once we get him down, he only sleeps for 30 minutes. It doesn’t matter if he sleeps on our arms, or the crib, or the car. I think he’s waking up when he hits the light sleep stage of a cycle… Any advice?”

Christina is exactly right about why her baby is waking up. When we sleep we need to be somewhat aware of our environment. From an evolutionary perspective, that was required to protect our families from predators, from danger. Sleep is not like a solid steel door slamming shut and blocking everything out; we’re still marginally aware of our surroundings.

If you rock a baby to sleep in your arms, getting him to the deep sleep stage then transferring him into the crib, chances are he’s either going to wake up as soon as you move him, wondering “Hey, what’s going on here? How come I’m not in your arms anymore?” Or he’ll wake up 30 to 45 minutes after falling asleep.

A baby’s sleep cycle is roughly 45 minutes long and at the end of that cycle is a very light stage of sleep. There’s often a momentary wake up at that point, hopefully just a brief fluttering of the eyes, then they’re back into another cycle. But if he was in your arms at the beginning of the sleep cycle and now he’s not, he’ll wake up fully wondering “Where am I? How come I’m not in mom’s arms anymore?”

Most babies who wake up in a new location wake up somewhat alarmed, and if you think about it, we would as well. Imagine if you fell asleep in your bed and then woke up in the bathtub. That would be an alarming feeling and you’d probably wake up quite startled.

Have you watched your baby wake up and immediately sit or stand up? They almost fly into that position and start crying. They’re thinking that either the nap is done or wondering why their environment changed while they were asleep.

The only way to encourage a longer nap is to let your baby fall asleep in the same place he’s going to wake up. It’s a simple matter of helping him learn the skills he needs to fall asleep, and stay asleep, on his own.

For instance, if you hold the soother in their mouth until they fall asleep, chances are when he comes to the light part of the sleep cycle he’s going to wake up because the soother is no longer in his mouth. Then you’ll have to go to them and put the soother back in, and maybe he’ll go back to sleep and maybe he won’t.

Again, the key to a successful nap is for the baby to have the skills to fall asleep, work themselves through that little wake up at the 45 minute mark, and then fall back asleep on their own. That mid-nap wake up should be so brief that the baby goes right into his next sleep cycle, turning the 45 minute nap into a good hour and a half nap.

Christina really has two goals for her baby; first, getting him to sleep in the same place that he’ll wake up, and second, for him to learn how to fall asleep on his own so he’ll stay asleep on his own.

We’ll do that either by putting him down in his crib and checking in on him or by staying in the room with him, perhaps doing some careful touching like rubbing his back while we whisper “shhhsh, it’s sleepy time” or by humming softly. In this way, you’ll help to sort of ease the journey to sleep for them. We have to be careful though not to incorporate too much external stuff into this routine.

An example of that would be to pat his back until he falls asleep. We don’t want to have to go in there and pat him on the back every time he wakes up. We really want him to put the pieces together and figure out how to do this on his own. Your job is to be supportive while he’s figuring out what those new skills are. Again, be careful that you don’t just create a new sleep prop, trading one prop for another.

The good news is that Christina’s baby will become a great little napper and he’ll definitely sleep a lot longer that he is now. Achieving that goal does take some work, but it’s well worth it. It’ll be a great day when he takes that long nap, when he is sleeping well.