Hi, I’m Dana. Let me paint a little picture for you that might sound very familiar. You finally, after 20 minutes of trying, get your little one down for a nap. You pour yourself a cup of hot coffee. You sit down for what you hope is a glorious hour of uninterrupted you time. Only to find your favorite show, start the episode, and 10 minutes into the nap, your baby is awake. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I can remember it well. I would be confident that my son was so sound asleep before I put him down for that nap, that he was most definitely going to stay asleep for at least an hour or more. And I want to talk today about what I like to call the curse of the short nap and why it happens.

So it’s very common, first of all. So don’t blame yourself or your baby because I hear it all the time about this short nap issue. Now, a baby’s sleep cycle, we all have sleep cycles. And adults, we do about a 90 minute cycle. A baby sleep cycle is about 45. So it could be anywhere from 35 to 45. And they get to the end of this sleep cycle and they’ll often have a brief wake-up. Now, this is the problem area. This is the crux of the issue here. If your baby is dependent on you or a thing, a person or an object to get them to sleep in the first place. So let’s say you’ve been rocking your baby diligently for 20 full minutes. You’re positive she’s asleep. You go to transfer her to the crib. And 30 minutes later, she’s awake again. Well, that’s because she’s come to the end of her sleep cycle.

And the fact that the environment has changed, the conditions are different, she’s no longer in your arms is enough of a difference that she’s going to wake up fully. You can imagine that, right? If you fell asleep in somebody’s arms to wake up 30 minutes later in a bed, you would be probably pretty surprised, shocked, and alarmed. And so your baby’s going to start to cry right away because you’re not there anymore. The conditions are different. She’s not sure what to do with herself at this point. Now, the trouble is she’s not had enough sleep. She’s only slept for 30 minutes, and we know that that’s not very sufficient to really rejuvenate a baby for the long-term. So she’s going to wake up probably still fairly fatigued, but not fatigued enough that it’s easy to get her back to sleep.

So it just becomes this muddy mucky mess where you’ve got a baby who’s not very rested, probably not that hungry yet because she’s only been asleep for 30 minutes, and just grumpy, right? Just grumpy for the rest of the day. So how you encourage longer naps is by teaching a baby to fall asleep independently at the beginning of the nap, so that she doesn’t have to rely on you or a bottle or a breast or rocking to get her to sleep in the first place, that she learns how to get into this crib, how to get comfortable, and drift off to sleep all on her own. And I know that sounds like an impossibility to a lot of you watching. I understand that. And I was in the same boat once myself. But it is possible. And once you teach this baby how to do it, then these short little 30 minute naps do turn into hour or longer, often longer naps.

And I promise you, you’ll get to watch your whole show. You’ll get to finish the laundry. You’ll get to do some work. Whatever it is that you’re just waiting for, that little break in your day, you will have some confidence that it’s going to show up pretty much at least a couple of times every single day. So pick up a copy of The Sleep Sense Program. I’ve got a chapter that’s dedicated to naps. But usually, if you’re having this struggle with nap, you are probably also having some struggles in the night, either with getting your baby to fall asleep at bedtime or maybe having multiple nighttime wake-ups. But usually, sleep challenges go hand in hand with the 24 hour clock. And so, hey, we can solve two problems here. We can get your baby sleeping better through the night, and we can extend this short little nap curse into something beautiful and substantial and rejuvenating for your baby.

Thanks so much for watching. Sleep well.