mike lane

My boy William is nearly 10 months old. For the first 6 months he was a great sleeper. He would wake up at 7:00am, nap at 9:00am for a couple of hours, nap again at 1:00pm for an hour or two, and then be off to bed by 7:00pm (he started sleeping through the night at 4 or 5 months).

Then his naps became a bit more irregular. Down much later for his first nap some days. Skipping his 2nd nap entirely some days or only getting 20 or 30 mins in on others.

Now, I feel very lucky if he takes a nap in his bed at all during the day. I may get him to sleep for 20 mins to an hour in the afternoon occasionally. Very rarely, he'll have a day or two where he takes 2 naps that are a couple of hours each, but mostly he'll only sleep if he's in the car, in the backpack, or on me in the rocking chair.

Incidentally, he still goes to bed at 7:00pm and sleeps through; however, he gets up somewhere between 4:30am (ugh!) and 6:00am.

I got a baby center email that says that your baby should just now be starting to reduce his naps to 2 per day. So now I'm really worried. I know how important sleep is for a baby's developing brain. How can I get him to get all the sleep he needs? What am I doing wrong???

Kaytee

First don't listen to those "your baby should be..." things. Your baby will do what your baby does. With that said, I htink Nichole was down to 2 naps by 9 months or so. Usually when they drop naps at this point (different for younger babies) they usually substitute by taking a longer nap somwhere else. Does that make sense? lol
Anyways, how is your sons behavior during the day? Is he cranky? If he's not, then he is fine don't worry about it. My mom always told me that Nick (my brother) dropped all his afternoon naps by 10 months old and only slept 10 hours at night. He just didn't need sleep like an average child.
Does your son fall asleep by himself at night, or do you rock him to sleep? I only ask because that may be the problem is that when he wakes up he doesn't know how to go back to sleep by himself. If thats the case, don't worry he will learn to do it on his own. At least I don't know many 30 year old that need to be rocked to sleep. lol
I am no where near being a sleep expert though, haha since my 18 month old doesn't sleep through the night, so you may want to look into something like Dr. Sear sleep solutions or No cry sleep solutions. They may be great help to you.
Incidently Nichole also slept through the night in the beginning. She was going 10 hours by 8 weeks old and she was Exclusively breastfed at that. By 16 weeks she was going 10-12 hours a night. Then 6 months or so, seperation anxiety kicked in and well up every 2-3 hours every night. Now she is up 1-3 times a night. Usually just once, but when she is teething or something like that its a lot.

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mike lane

So is it possible that he is simply at a point that he wants to be around us more? The reason I ask is because I decided to try and nap with him to see if he would sleep. For the past 2 days we've had a morning and an afternoon nap. The morning naps were 2 to 3 hours and the afternoon naps were 1.5 to 2 hours. The plus side is that daddy is feeling very refreshed these days.

So now the question on my mind is will him sleeping with me at nap times (he doesn't have any problem with going to bed on his own at night) cause him to become dependent on us for naps?

I'm ordering some sleep books btw...