The other day O and I went for a beautiful fall walk down a dirt road along the water not too far from our home. I was instantly taken back to this time last year when I was on maternity leave, and we walked this road at least once a week. I spent a good part of this walk thinking back on all the sleep learning (and unlearning) I have done over the past year regarding normal infant sleep. By this time last year, I had ditched the mainstream sleep training course everyone had been raving about (check out my first blog post in O’s sleep journey series here) and had embraced bedsharing (you can read more about our journey to bedsharing here). However, there were still a lot of baby sleep myths I was falling victim to. Anxiety around O’s sleep, mainly her naps, was still making its way into our lives.
So let me pick up where I left off and continue sharing O’s sleep journey with you. In this post, I’ll share what our nap and bedtime routines (or lack of) looked like when O was 4-6 months, the mistakes I made, and things I learned about normal infant sleep along the way. Again, I want to remind you this is our journey, and yours likely looks very different. Each baby and family is unique, and so is their sleep. There is no right or wrong here (as long as the baby is sleeping safely). Trusting your intuition and following your baby’s cues is all that matters.
Naptime
By the time O was around four months old, we had settled into our nursing-to-sleep rhythm reasonably guilt-free. As I discussed in my first post, I learned that there was absolutely nothing wrong with O nursing to sleep, and it was biologically normal. It was so freeing to do what felt right finally. I was trusting my intuition, and in so many ways, this served me well.
When I think back to this time last year, I am flooded with so many beautiful memories. One thing we often did last fall was head outside upon waking and take in the beautiful October sunrise. I’d throw on my robe, put a hat on O and grab a cozy blanket, then head out to our front deck for 10-15 mins to watch the magic. This is my favourite way to start the day, and little did I know getting O out into the natural light first thing was helping establish her circadian rhythm, which helps tremendously with baby’s nighttime sleep (I will share more about the science behind this in the coming weeks as I work through my certification.)
O’s first nap was usually on my chest on the couch. Sipping coffee and getting some quality “me time” and rest was so rejuvenating (see why I love contact naps here.) I’d give anything to relive these slow, peaceful mornings with O sleeping soundly on my chest. I think back to these mornings, with the gorgeous fall sunlight peeking through our windows all the time.
Stroller naps were also part of our daily routine during the 4-6 month stage. And these also did wonders for my mental health! Getting outside (almost) daily was so much easier once the cooler temperatures had arrived, and I didn’t need to worry about O overheating. I spent hours each week pushing a stroller with O sleeping soundly, taking in all the fall foliage. This is another favourite memory from this time last year.
Late afternoon and evenings were always the most challenging nap time for O. She has always needed a later bedtime (anything before 9 pm is treated as a nap), so we got these naps in however we could. Often O would sleep in the carrier or wrap, or we’d go for another walk or plan to snuggle on the couch. Nic and I adopted a “whatever gets the nap in” mindset for the final naps of the day, and these looked very different from day to day.
During this stage, even though this routine felt right and I trusted my intuition, I had worries in the back of my mind. These concerns were rooted in having no idea what was normal infant sleep and needing to unlearn a lot of the (mis)information I had picked up in the sleep course I took before O was born.
One of the main things I worried about was our lack of schedule. O’s naps didn’t have much predictability (which is entirely normal, I just didn’t know it); some days, O would have three naps on the longer side, and sometimes she would have 4-5 (sometimes even 6) cat naps to get her through the day. I stressed about the cat naps and thought I was doing something wrong when she would wake after 20-40 mins. I had seen sample schedules online with these 1-2 hour naps and claims that babies need long naps for their development. So when these didn’t happen consistently for O, I worried she wasn’t getting the rest she needed to thrive. I thought she would fall into a predictable schedule around 5-6 months, but she didn’t (spoiler, this didn’t happen until closer to 9 months when she was on two naps a day consistently).
Lack of schedule and cat naps are biologically normal at this age (and beyond – so fear not if you have a baby older than six months who is thriving on cat naps).
Knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back in time and embrace this stage a little more. Even though I was worried I was doing it all wrong, I did enjoy that we weren’t tied to a schedule, that we were getting daily walks in and that our days were still filled with snuggles. Without knowing this was a baby sleep “thing,” we had fallen into a predictable rhythm with our days, meaning we, for the most part, had a similar sequence of activities day to day, and this is much preferred over a strict schedule in the baby-led sleep world. I so wish I had known this a year ago, not necessarily because I would have done anything differently, but because it would have relieved so much stress around O’s development.
I also remember the later-day naps causing some stress, mostly because I thought she needed to have a particular wake window for her age. I later learned that wake windows aren’t based on science and are simply averages; some babies need more prolonged, and some need shorter wake windows. Once I learned this (sadly, closer to the ten-month mark), I could tune into O’s cues and rely less on the clock. I realized that O needed a slightly longer wake window than the average for her age. She also required slightly less sleep in 24 hours than many sleep “experts” were recommending, which led to many sleep challenges during the 7-10 month period (post on this age coming soon). There is a wide range of normal for how many hours of sleep babies need, and O happens to be on the lower end of that range.
Bedtime
We also went through a brief period around the six-month mark where we attempted to get O to sleep in her crib for the first stretch of the night. I would nurse her to sleep in the rocking chair in her room, then would try to transfer her to her crib in our room instead of laying her in bed with me. It is laughable when I think back to this short-lived phase. We put in SO much effort to get this first stretch in the crib, and it backfired more times than not.
She was so sensitive to any noise and the transfer into the crib. From the stealthy walk down the hall, hoping a floorboard wouldn’t creak and that the dog wouldn’t move, to slowly removing the hot water bottle lying in the crib before laying O down in hopes a bit of warmth would allow her to settle in soundly, to finally the carefully curated technique of lowering her into the crib, the whole process caused so much stress. After a few weeks, we gave up because it just wasn’t worth it. More times than not, we would have to go through this routine 2-3 times before she would stay asleep, and then she ALWAYS woke after 20-40 minutes. Plus, I found by the time her 9-9:30 pm bedtime rolled around, I just wanted to go to bed with her.
Once I learned that it was normal for babies to wake up when they were alone and that it is pretty common for babies to be sensitive to the transfer into the crib, especially at this age, we moved O’s crib back to her nursery and gave up the crib at bedtime once and for all. For so many reasons, it just made sense for me to go to bed with her in our bed. And when it came down to why we were trying the crib it had nothing to do with our own wants and needs, it was purely pressure from others to somewhat “get our life back.” It is perfectly fine to want to encourage more independent sleep or to enjoy some adult time (or alone time) in the evenings. And there are so many gentle ways to do this. But it is essential to have realistic expectations on how the process may go (which is what I am here to help you with) and be really clear on your WHY. As long as the reason is something you genuinely want and not from external pressures like it was for us, making shifts in patterns and gentle changes benefits the whole family. But for us, that just wasn’t the case at this point in time. So we once again trusted we knew what was best for our family and paused.
What I wish I knew
Looking back, I wish I had learned SO MANY things sooner. I wish I knew that cat naps were normal and that I did not need to follow a schedule. Our predictable rhythm (that I enjoyed SO much) was exactly what we needed and more developmentally appropriate for O. I wish I had ditched the clock sooner, followed O’s sleepy cues, and trusted that she knew how much sleep she needed. I also wish I had spent some time thinking about WHY I wanted the first stretch of sleep to take place in the crib and that I had found information on biological infant sleep for the 4-6 month age much sooner.
If this is the stage your baby is in now (or if you will soon be there), I hope my experience helps you enjoy this stage stress and guilt-free! It is such a fun age, and most of the advice for this age is simply wrong and not based on normal infant sleep. If your 4-6 month-old baby resists a schedule, takes cat naps, wakes upon transferring to the crib and thrives being in close contact with you, rest assured they’re doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
