"Dear Dr. Moore,

My baby boy is a very active 5 month old (20 weeks). I am doing everything I can to help him get all of the sleep that he needs, including almost never going out during his nap times. I have struggled with his reluctance to sleep since day one. As a result, I have read all of the popular sleep books, and your is by far and away the best and most effective. I have been consistently using the N.A.P.S. plan for about a month and his average daily sleep has increased from about 13 hours a day to almost 13.75 hours a day, so I am seeing improvement. I can usually get him down for a nap 90 minutes after he wakes up, but he typically takes 4-5 short naps of 30-50 minutes each per day. I have determined through experimentation that his best bedtime is 8-8:30 p.m. because he goes to sleep most easily and sleeps the longest stretches with this bedtime. He is feeding about every three hours during the day, although he'll feed hourly in the three hours leading up to bedtime after which he wants to eat only once during the night (between 20:00ish and 06:00-07:00ish), although he wakes 2-3 times more per night, at which point he will usually go back to sleep almost immediately if I replace his pacifier. He is typically a happy, focused and engaged baby, and our efforts to help him self soothe are paying off in that he can sometimes now fall asleep at bedtime while laying in his crib with just patting, shushing and his pacifier. He still needs to be more vigorously soothed at nap time.

These are my questions:
1. How will I be able to tell when his wakeful periods are increasing from 90 minutes to 3 hours? Just today he went down for two naps that only lasted 20 minutes, but was up and smiling and cheerful after each. Could it be that he didn't really need a nap at these 90 minute intervals?
2. He sleeps best and longest while swaddled, but he will only tolerate swaddling about half of the time. If he is unswaddled he wakes himself up after a short nap or repeatedly during the night because he rubs his hands on his face or keeps jack-knifing his legs up in the air or turns on his side and pushes with his feet against the crib rails until he's turned around sideways. Is there anything I can do to calm these activities down and help him be more peaceful? As he gets older and more mature will he either start sleeping through these antics or stop being so squirmy?
3. We are going on an unavoidable 4 day/3 night trip at the end of this month. We will be traveling from the central time zone to the mountain time zone. Can you give me some tips to help minimize the negative impact that this will have on his sleep?
4. Does anything in the above description of his sleep habits jump out at you as an area that could use improvement?

I appreciate your time and I hope you can help me help my boy get all the good sleep that he needs.

Yours truly"

- Bethany

Hi, Bethany,

Congratulations on the success you've had with your son's sleep! I'm delighted with the amount of sleep he's getting.

You are correct (and have probably figured this out by now), indeed at 5 months your son could be able to stay awake for 3 hours once or twice during the day.

Usually (though not always) a 3-hour wakeful period will "bookend" the night's sleep. That is, 3 hours just prior to going down for the night, and 3 hours upon awakening in the morning.

This may be related to his need for more soothing at naptimes, and the short naps.

I hear your concern about traveling across timezones, but you seem to have such a good grasp of your son's sleepy signs, I wonder if it will really be an issue. This is usually my advice with traversing fewer than 3 timezones: follow your baby's signs of sleepiness, not the clock. The naps and bedtimes may shift by an hour compared to what you're used to at home, and it may take a day or two of adjustment, I'm thinking he ought to do just fine.

Polly.