"Hello Polly,

I bought your book when my son was 3.5 months old and it was brilliant – he really did follow a 90 minute sleep cycle. I was even able to teach self soothing to him around 4 months (right before that dreaded 4 month sleep regression!), so even though he still wakes up for a feeding at night, he can pretty much get himself to sleep at naps and after his nighttime feed.

However, now that he’s almost 5 months, I’m finding he is not tired at 90 minutes, but he can’t quite make it to 3 hours either. Also, I find I have to feed him twice (for instance when he wakes up in the morning and then right before he goes to bed for a nap, as he can’t go 6:30am to 11am without another feed – not a big deal as I don’t nurse him to sleep, and it does make for an easy process!). I have been putting him down after about 2.25hrs of wakefulness (when he should be at his peak, I know!), but he just gets too fussy if I try to stretch him to 3 hours. Is this just the process of stretching to a longer wakeful period, or is he breaking with the cycle?? He generally takes a long-ish morning nap (1.25-1.75 hrs) and his afternoon naps are 50/50 as to whether I get a longer one out of him. If they are not long, they are 45 minutes on the nose…(I found your book when he was taking 5 45 min naps a day, so I figured your theory must have some merit with him!). He is starting to have longer evening wakeful periods without too much of an issue – it’s more his morning and afternoon ones that are causing my confusion.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!"

- Pam, Toronto

Hi, Pam,

I'm a little confused by the time intervals involved here. You mention your son couldn't go from 6:30am to 11am without another feeding---does that mean he was awake that entire time? I would have expected signs of sleepiness around 9:30am in that case.

Have things improved for you since you wrote? If the problem has persisted, and you have the time, would you drop me a line with your observations of his bedtimes, naptimes, and waketimes over a couple of days?

Polly.