Hi Dr Moore,

I am so excited to have discovered your book. I’ve noticed my daughter consistently being drowsy at 90 minutes for about a month and just thought she was a very sleepy 4 month old. I try to get her down at the 90 minute mark and she goes to sleep quite easily. The problem is that she sleeps 30 minutes to an hour and wakes up still drowsy but unable to go back to sleep. I have a 2 1/2 year old that I do my best to keep quiet during nap times. What, if anything, can I do to help with the length of her naps?

Sincerely,

- Tracie

It sounds like the book affirmed what you suspected all along. I’m glad about that.

I think if I were you, I wouldn’t be doing anything differently from what it sounds like you’re doing: looking for signs of sleepiness, and responding asap by providing an opportunity to sleep.

Be guided by your observations. See which sleep opportunities at 90 minutes were followed by sleep and which ones weren’t.

My guess is it will take a few days or a week or so to sort it all out.

As a broad guideline, many (but not all) six-month-olds have a 3-hour stretch in the morning once they’re up for the day, and another before they go down for the night.

There might be other 3-hr stretches in between his daytime naps. You might not see this yet if he hasn’t been getting his full allotment of sleep for some time.

Once your little guy starts getting more regular naps and hopefully longer naps, you’ll know which are the real alertness intervals to follow up with a nap.

Make sense?

If it doesn’t, can you try to describe for me what cues you’re going by? That might help me be more specific.

Polly.

I have a 6 week old and he often only sleeps for 10-15 minutes before he wakes up, either on his own, because he’s put down or because of a noise around the house (I also have a 3 year old). I’m wondering if I should start counting the 90 minutes after each of these episodes? Or wait until a longer nap. When he sleeps this little, he often goes to sleep again before the 90 minutes, though.

Also, especially in the evening, I start counting the 90 minutes, and begin soothing him up to 10 minutes before he should be back asleep, but it often doesn’t work. It often takes 3 hours of soothing to get him to sleep. Is he just still young enough he’s still developing this in the evening? Or what could be the issue?

Thanks,

- Alisha

Hi, Alisha,

Goodness, your baby must be something like 3 months old now, I’m so sorry for the delay in responding, I just cannot humanly get to all these questions in a timely fashion as I would like, my apologies for the delay.

I’m imagining your baby now has outgrown these supershort naps and in addition is more tolerant of noise in the environment. Some of this change is purely developmental, and is outgrown, usually by the 3rd month.

If you still have short naps, usually what I find is that the 90-minute cycle starts over again upon awakening, even if the sleep only lasted 15 minutes. That said, I’m sure there are babies or occasions that are the exception to this “rule.” If your son shows signs of sleepiness before the 90-minute clock would predict, then I definitely advocate for responding to his signs (that is, reading your baby and not the clock).

And yes, at six weeks, up until about 12 weeks, that evening fussiness lasts a doggone long time in the evening, and yes, he will outgrow it (if indeed he hasn’t already, again my apologies). You will not believe how sweet your baby is when he finally outgrows this. This is also a developmental phase that many babies just seem to need to go through.

Polly.

My son is 8 months on August 29, 2010. I feel he has reverted back to a newborn. Car rides take longer to put him to sleep. He cannot self-soothe and needs to be rocked in the rocking chair to be put to sleep, BUT recently he does not go to sleep. I have been writing down his awale and asleep times and there is absolutely no consistency or predictablility to his nap times nor his bed times. This is leaving me completely frustrated. I am tuned in to his sleepy cues – rubbing eyes, pulling ears, playing with hair, putting face into me, floor, etc., getting whiny. BUT when I attempt to put him to sleep ..he sits up he lies down in my arms, he sits back up, he tosses nad turns in my arms. So I place him in his crib thinking he is not comfortable in my arms and then he doe sit in his crib. By the time he is done he is in another wake cycle and the same cycle begins on both of our ends.

I found you book fascinating and it makes so much sense, but I am unable to enforce it with my son.

Please help!!!

- Tiffany

Hi, Tiffany,

Your son does sound terrifically sleepy and with the overtired babies, it is always such a challenge getting them to sleep, because they really know how to fight sleep. Also, his age makes it challenging, more challenging than if he were, say three months old. He’s got a different view of the world now!

If I were you I too would be frustrated out of my mind, and in my desperation, here is what I would try. I have no guarantee this will work and this suggestion may not even be something you’re willing to try (and I would support you in that decision, you know your child better than I). But I think your son needs a little more help getting to sleep for a few days, and I believe if you can accomplish this, you can help him turn the corner, so to speak.

Since he can’t self-soothe, for a short time, can you try a swing, something motorized, that can help him fall asleep?

Obviously you wouldn’t want to use this forever, in the book I advocate not relying on swings as they can be tough habits to break later on. But I think your son requires a few days of solid deep naps plus good sleep at night ASAP before you can re-establish a nap schedule.

If you can get him a couple days of solid sleep, I bet his sleep-resisting will diminish.

The car used to help him drift off to sleep, it sounds like. I wonder if the starting and stopping of driving are stimulating to him now, more than it used to be when he was younger, plus his vision is better and he can see more through the window and so forth. Your description of the emergent ineffectiveness of riding in the car triggered my suggestion of a mechanical baby swing, because it is monotonous and I suspect your son needs monotony to sleep right now.

If not a swing, then anything genuinely monotonous might do. He is having trouble disengaging from the very interesting environment around him, and this is interfering with sleep processes.

What do you think? Crazy idea (from a crazy lady)?

Polly.

Hi!

I just came across your book yesterday and am about half way through reading it. I have a 3 week old baby who has become fussier (part of it is due to having reflux) and who has been up every 1.5-2 hrs. at night wanting to eat. His day time naps have been more like cat naps and he seems to fight sleeping. This morning when he got up I decided to give your program a try. Sure enough, after about 70 minute or so of being awake he started getting fussy and sleepy. I soothed him and got him ready for sleeping and right at the 90 minute mark, he fell asleep. The trouble I’m having, however, is that he doesn’t like to STAY asleep. After five or ten minutes he wakes up and fusses. I try to soothe him back to sleep and sometimes it works, but often he will wake up again after only a few minutes. What causes him do do this and how should I handle it?

I would greatly appreciate your advice! Thanks so much!

A tired mommy,

- Jennifer

Hi, Jennifer,

I do get this question a fair amount and I only have a little bit of advice in addition to the things you’re already doing. Good for you for recognizing his signs of sleepiness. Hopefully this is helping you already, at least a little bit.

This difficulty with staying asleep can be somewhat common, especially in the very young babies like yours, and reflux can also contribute. These moms describe what you describe, which is a sense that the baby ‘wants’ to sleep, but simply seems unable to do so.

Seems to me there’s a certain percentage of babies who have this difficulty with staying asleep, and I think its just the way the babies are wired. Their nervous systems just get ‘irritable’, partly due to sleep loss, which instead of helping them sleep more deeply, it interferes with the sleep process itself. Babies as young as yours are unable to soothe themselves just yet. Mostly this is developmental. While there are some who would disagree with this advice, I suggest for the time being that you (and anyone else who can help you) provide the soothing for him, either by holding him (as much as is feasible, obviously this is impossible to do all the time), or by wearing him in a sling or carrier, something that provides contact and warmth. You will not need to do this for months and months, I predict. My hunch is you will need to do this for a few days, to get him ‘over the hump’ so to speak, and then he’ll have this problem less and less.

If you try this for a few days and see no appreciable difference in his ability to stay asleep, though it will not be easy or fun for you for a few weeks/months, chances are good he’ll outgrow it.

I apologize in advance if this advice conflicts with your parenting style, but this is what I would do if I were in your shoes. Hope it helps.

Polly.

Dear Polly:

Our four-month-old son was sleeping well (at night from 9 PM-5 AM) up until a few weeks ago but has hit a rough patch. Three weeks ago, he had a stomach flu that went around our house. The next week, we traveled for a week which made it difficult for him to get good naps and he was unable to sleep through the night. Last week, I was traveling for business leaving my wife with the burden of caring for him. We are wondering now if he may be teething because he drools, puts his fingers in his mouth and has a runny nose constantly.

Since then, he has had trouble napping for extended periods unless he sleeps on one of us. His naps are usually only 30-45 minutes on his own and can get more than one hour if he is on one of us. At night he sleeps from 8:15 PM until 2:30 or 3:00 AM. We usually give him a bottle or nurse him at that time but he is usually only able to sleep in 45 minute increments until 6 AM. He usually falls asleep while eating. We have started to either let him cry or soothe him back to sleep without feeding him but haven’t had much success yet. Any insight you have would be great.

Thank you,

- Jim

Hi, Jim,

It sounds like your four-month-old may not be getting enough sleep, not enough total sleep in each day that is. That’s one of the more common causes of the short naps and the dependence on the presence of a parent/caregiver to fall and stay asleep. I hear a lot of this and it’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book.

It’s not clear to me whether you’ve read my book or not, from your description, I suspect not. If I’m mistaken, are you able to follow the suggestions in the book for recognizing your son’s signs of sleepiness? IS there a part of this that you’re having trouble with, specifically? The book breaks it down into a set of very simple steps. Opportunities for initiating sleep occur in a very predictable timing, actually, and help parents identify optimal timing for naps and sleep.

The book also has some sleep diary pages in the back that can help you plot your son’s sleep and waking.

And as an aside I would not advocate attempting the ‘cry it out’ method at this point, I usually suggest making sure the baby’s getting all the sleep he needs first before taking on that goal. ‘Cry it out’ can backfire in a baby that is a little bit ’sleep deprived.’

Polly.

Dear Dr. Moore,

As a new mother, I would like to say thank you so much for making motherhood such a breeze! I`ve been listening to horror stories of babies and sleep for years and was somewhat cringing at the thought of what my horror stories were going to be.

The first 6 weeks of my daughter`s life were tough; I had read your book but she had problems sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time during the day and night time wasn`t much better. She started sleeping more soundly and at 6 weeks she was napping better and sleeping the nights.

I now strictly adhere to your book and I also believe sleep is such an important part to being healthy. My mother also read your book – she`s a mother of four and her reaction was `wow, this makes so much sense, I wish I had this book around when you were young`.

My daughter is now 4 and a half months – she loves being in her crib, has been falling asleep on her own since she was about 2 months old, and when she wakes up, she giggles and entertains herself until we go get her. In fact, the trickiest part about following your method has been to catch her when she wakes up so that I can start timing!

I am now recommending your book to all my friends.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this book!

Sincerely,

- Kathryn

Dear Kathryn,

Kudos to you for your success with your baby’s sleep, and thanks so much for taking the time to write me.

You made my day!

Sweet dreams,

Polly.

Hi Polly,

I would like to tell you that I love your book and recommend it to every new mother I meet. I used your program with my 2 year old (from birth) and she is an amazing sleeper. Thank-you for writing your book!

I am having difficulty with my 12 week old daughter’s naps….she only takes 40-50 minute naps and is exhausted…it started affecting her night sleep until I started putting her in the swing to nap (she sleeps in her crib at night) ….She generally sleeps well at night (8pm-7am) and I feed her at 11:00 pm and 3:00am. This made a difference as she has 2-3 hour long naps in the swing during the day…..when I tried to eliminate the swing she started having little cat naps and was overtired and waking up more frequently in the evening and having difficulty falling asleep….Is it a problem if I use the swing for only one of her naps during the day so that she can at least have one long nap…while the other naps are short ones?

If you have any suggestions I would be most grateful,

- Vanessa, Montreal

Hi, Vanessa!

Well you have stumped me! I’m not so sure about my advice on this one, but here are my thoughts, for what it’s worth.

Have you plotted out your daughter’s total sleep time, over a period of days? Does it seem like she is getting enough total sleep?

I ask because often the babies that can only nap well while in the swing, these are often the babies that are not getting sufficient sleep.

That might sound unreasonable, given how long she seems to be sleeping at night. But the short naps and the exhausted appearance has me wondering.

It may be that she needs even more sleep than she is now getting. I would suggest seeing how much sleep she would get if you let her sleep in the swing (for now, this is okay but your hunch is right, this won’t be practical in a few months). She may need it to catch up on lost sleep in the short term, and then she might settle back into a total sleep time that is somewhat less than you get when relying on using the swing.

You are right on that it would be good to continue to give her opportunities to sleep and nap while not in the swing. In a few months from now when you transition her out of the swing, you will be glad you’ve maintained this continuity.

Polly.

Hello,

After getting so much conflicting advice on sleep and babies, which frankly, didn’t prove very helpful, my husband and I found your book at the library yesterday. I’ve been reading your book since last night and am almost through it. Since I got it, I’ve followed the 90-minute plan and it’s really helping me to see when my son is ready for sleep! I wasn’t really worrying about him being very routine-oriented yet since he’s still pretty young, but after seeing the 90-minute “magic window,” I can see that he’s more scheduled than I’ve been giving him credit for. I’m tired (both literally and figuratively!) of hearing that he’ll even out over time, fussiness is normal, and he’s too little to do anything about sleep issues! However, I have a few questions.

First, a little more info. He’s 14 weeks now, and he’s breastfed. We had a crazy (I’m sure every new mom can say this!) initial newborn sleep schedule, compounded with three bouts of mastitis and medications which affected both of us. And of course, he’s had his growth spurt times when he’s gotten up much more than that. Around 2 months he started sleeping somewhat better at night (3-4 hour stretches) and was taking three good naps a day. At this time we had transitioned him from an Arm’s Reach co-sleeper in our room a crib in his room. I suspected that since I didn’t hear every moan or whine he was able to settle himself more since I wasn’t bolting out of bed to nurse him back to sleep. The naps were always in his swing, otherwise he’d only nap in 20-30 minute intervals. The past two weeks, he’s cut down to napping only 30 minutes, period, in his swing or crib. Then he gets up very crabby. The only way he’s sleeping longer than that is sleeping on top of me (1 1/2 hours). Thankfully, though, he’s sleeping a bit longer at night. My confused newborn turned happy baby turned overtired baby! Aagh! I’ve dedicated the next few days to charting his habits.

Now for the questions: I know you say that naps need to be a priority, and thankfully I’m a stay-at-home Mom and this isn’t too difficult for me, but we live too far away to run any errands in the 90-minute window after he’s been fed and changed. Until his wakeful times get longer, what advice do you have to say about this?

How can I encourage him to nap longer in his crib? I’m not sure if I should stop with the swing naps, and co-napping, and try to get him into his crib, or if I have to wait till he’s older for this.

What do you have to say about white noise or music playing while he sleeps?

He’s recently started teething as well… I know this can affect sleep, so should I brace myself for poor sleep until his teeth come in? We’ve tried Orajel before bedtime/naps and that doesn’t seem to make much difference.

Please help!

Thank you!

-Ellie

Hi, Ellie,

My, you have had your hands full! That doesn’t sound like an easy road to hoe, as my grandmother used to say.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen the other posts I’ve made on this website about overtired babies and getting them to sleep longer, but often what I recommend is setting aside a few days where you let your son sleep on you, in a swing, whatever it takes, in order to get his sleep need met. The details can be found in those other posts.

The really good news for you is, you already know your son’s capable of longer stretches of sleep. Some moms don’t have this hands-on evidence, and just have to take it on faith.

Regarding the difficulties with getting errands run in 90 minutes, you need to do what you need to do, and you have my support, because this is where some of the advice in the book simply isn’t practical. Here’s my advice and you can feel to disregard it, none of us lives in a perfect world. If I were you, I would first look at my calendar and see which 2-3 days I can dedicate myself to hanging out at home with the baby, and get that sorted out first.

Once you know he’s sleeping better, then you can work out a plan going forward in which you can get done what you need to. If it were me, I would understand that my baby might get tired once in a while when out and about and that this might mess up his nap schedule for a bit that day. But when you have a pretty good handle on his rhythms and he’s well rested, it will just take him a bit of adjusting to get back on track. Kids are pretty flexible/adaptable.

Also, before you know it, he will grow into a 3-hr long wakefulness stretch during the day, he’s getting to that age, if he hasn’t already. Hopefully that will give you some more ‘wiggle room’ with his naps and the errands out of the house.

Re getting him to sleep longer in the crib. First you need to get him to sleep longer, period. Once you have that worked out, it will be easier to transition him to the crib. I recommend working on these in this order!

Re: white noise. If you live in a noisy area, these can be useful, though generally I’m disinclined to use them, just because we parents and the babies end up dependent on them, which just makes things like errands, or traveling to grandma’s, or such things, just makes them that much more difficult. If you’re saying your baby is sensitive to noise, I’d first recommend getting his naps worked out, see how much longer you can get them, because this is likely to obviate the need for a noise machine. Babies that seem sensitive to stimulation sometimes see this reverse when they get enough sleep.

And teething will always throw a monkey wrench into the works, you’re right. It’s not such a great idea to wait until after all of his teeth are in before you deal with his sleep problems, I don’t think.

Polly.

Dear Dr. Moore

a friend from UK recommended me your book and it was really worth reading it! A great help to understand our daughter. Thank you very much for writing it!

However, I still have some problems following a NAPS plan with my daughter (12 weeks old). From the beginning she didn’t sleep much during the day, but extremely well and long in the night. Soon I found out that she is one of the overtired children you describe in your book: Sleeping 9 hours in the night is not enough and so she’s often crying because she’s tired but she doesn’t fall asleep – whatever I try to do (also not while going out for a walk with the pram…). The only thing that works is the baby sling (independently from the 90 minutes cycle), and sometimes when I rock her in my arms (but then I can’t put her in her crib – she already notices when I’m thinking of doing it…and I really tried everything you described in your book). And if I sometimes manage to put her in the crib she wakes up after several minutes and I have to start from scratch. I really see it in her eyes, she wants to sleep, but at the moment she doesn’t know how to do it. The funny thing is that in the evening I can put her in the crib at 9pm and she falls asleep alone!

Now my question is: Do you have any suggestion how I can help her fall asleep during the day?

Thank you very much and best regards from Switzerland

-Julia

Hi, Julia,

This is not an unusual situation and I have at least two suggestions for you.

One is that this is a developmental stage that your daughter will outgrow, to some extent, so one option is to do nothing and see if that happens. However, in the possible event you don’t just want to wait-and-see, and I wouldn’t either, I have another suggestion.

This is what I would do if I were in your situation. It has worked for other families. The so-called plan is to set aside a few days (2 or 3, consecutive) in which you do nothing else but tend to your daughter’s sleep, rock her if she needs to be rocked, hold her if she needs, wear her all day in the sleep, whatever it is that she needs in order to sleep, and stay asleep. Just plan on getting nothing else done and have this be your sole project for these few days (well of course you will still feed her and play with her and so forth). Follow her 90-minute rhythms, respond to her signs of sleepiness without delay.

It won’t be easy at first, there will be some challenges at first and you may question my judgment at that point, but if you stick with it, the purpose is to get your daughter ‘over the hump’ so to speak, to get her past that sort of irritability (in the nervous system, I don’t mean her personality) that comes from not getting enough sleep. At this point she needs that external soothing from you. So if you help her get enough sleep for a few days, this should quell that difficulty with staying asleep. I do think some babies need that extra assistance in order to move on and sleep deeply. It doesn’t mean you will have to do this forever, and in fact, I predict that after a few days she will no longer need this kind of attention toward her sleep.

It can be difficult to do this, given all the other things we have to do, I know that. But if you are able to give it a try, I think you will find it to have been worth your while.

Good luck!

Polly.

Hi,

I read your book a few weeks ago and it makes a lot of sense to me. I can definitely see the 90 minute pattern in my 3-month old. We’ve been working really hard at getting him down for a nap at the end of each cycle, and we can tell he is tired but it is SO HARD to get him to sleep. He resists rocking, bouncing, swings, strollers, and car rides. Swaddling and white noise help a little. Generally it takes about 20 minutes to get him to sleep, so I start 70 minutes after he wakes up. Then he will sleep for twenty minutes and wake up crying and won’t go back down no matter what we do to soothe him. His night sleep is all over the place. Generally he goes to bed around 9, then wakes a few times before he is finally out around 9:30 or 10. Then he will go anywhere from 3-8 hours before waking for a feeding, and be restless for the rest of the night. We did notice that he usually sleeps better at night the more he sleeps during the day, but it is very difficult to accomplish a good amount of daytime sleep! Usually he naps a total of 3 hours during the day, in lots of short naps, and about 8 hours total at night, with anywhere from 3-8 wakings.

Any advice?

Thanks

- Alison

Hi, Alison,

It sounds to me like your baby is one of those that needs extra rocking and soothing for sleep, most likely as a consequence of being a little ’sleep deprived.’ By this I mean, your son’s response to inadequate sleep is not to become super-sleepy and to sleep super deeply on his next sleep opportunity, like some babies (and adults) do. Instead babies like your son respond by becoming so tired he CAN’T sleep (also like some adults do).

Have you ever been so tired you can’t sleep? I have and it is not pleasant.

There is nothing wrong with your baby, he just needs extra attention from you and whomever else can help you for a few days in order to get past this point. There have been several recent postings on the website about this. I suggest that what you do for a few days (and I wouldn’t suggest you do this indefinitely) is to continue to rock and soothe your son as you are doing, and to make this soothing environment as boring as you possibly can. It is very difficult for babies like your son to disengage from the distracting environment around them with all of its interesting sensory stimulation! (This should improve once he gets some more sleep.) At this point he’s unable to disengage on his own. That’s why you need to make things boring boring boring for him.

What I suggest isn’t easy to do, but if you can dedicate a few days just to his sleep, not trying to accomplish much else (not very realistic but do what you can), up to and including wearing him continuously in a sling or carrier, or lying down with him in order to facilitate and maintain his sleep, this is what he needs, and doing so for a few days should ‘reset’ his sleep-ability.

I know that in the book I don’t advocate co-sleeping as a constant but there is something very important that really little ones like your son need when they are ’sleep deprived,’ and that is your body temperature, they can’t quite thermoregulate AND stay asleep when they’re ’sleep deprived.’ So you won’t want to do this forever, just for a few days until he gets back on track.

I hope this makes sense.

Polly.