I'm not very far into Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (Dr. Richard Ferber) yet, but already I've noticed how much different books differ in what they say even on basic facts about sleep.
Let's take the amount of sleep a six-month-old should get.
According to the No-Cry Sleep Solution: 2 naps a day, 3-4 naptime hours, 10-11 nighttime sleep hours, 14-15 hours total. (According to the No-Cry Nap Solution, by the same author just a few years later, six-month olds should get 2-3 naps, not necessarily just two.)
According to Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, from 4-11 months, a baby needs an average of 14.25 hours of total sleep, including about 3.5 hours of nap sleep and 11 hours of nighttime sleep. The vast majority of six-month-olds take only two naps.
According to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, a six-month-old only needs an average of 12.5 hours of total sleep, including 9.25 hours of night sleep and 3.25 hours of nap sleep broken into two or three chunks.
That's a pretty big difference in the recommendations, especially with the last one. Also, HSHHC says a baby about this age should be starting the morning nap around 9 AM and the early-afternoon nap around 1 PM. But SYCSP recommends the first nap start between 9:30 and and 10:30 AM, and the afternoon one between 2 and 3 PM.
What am I supposed to do with all these conflicting recommendations?
Today: Mari had tremendous difficulty going down for her naps, especially the morning one. I started extra early trying to get her down in the morning, since I thought maybe she's been overtired the last several mornings, which was why she fussed so much before going down for her nap. So I tried from 8 AM to 10 AM to get her down. She did nothing but fuss. Finally Jon was able to get her down at about 10:40 and she only slept for 35 minutes. In the afternoon, I tried to get her back on track by putting her down at 1 PM. She didn't go down until about 2:15, though this time she slept an hour and 50 minutes. She skipped her evening nap and was down for the night by about 7:15. So maybe there's something to Dr. Ferber's recommended naptimes, though I hesitate to draw conclusions from just one day.
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I have noticed that my kids tended to fall on the larger end of Dr. Ferber's 'average' number for hours of sleep, once they actually started sleeping long chunks of time. Isaac will typically sleep around 10-11 hours at night, and then take about 3 hours of nap during the day, which varies from as little as 1.5 hours to as much as 4.
ReplyDeleteYou'll also find that Dr. Ferber's book recommends putting the kids down later so that they're *really* tired and will go to sleep easier. I haven't always found this is true for a baby, at least -- or, rather, 'later' had to be tempered with other considerations, like giving Caleb sufficient time to wind down after a bath, and giving me and my husband quiet time in the evenings (I figure since C doesn't go to sleep right away no matter what time we put him down, we put him in his room at 7:45 and he reads or does whatever for about half an hour and still gets to sleep at a reasonable time. If we put him down at 8:15, he stays awake until at least 9 and is nuts the next morning. Sneaky. :)).
So I would guess every book says something different because there really is no 'average' child, and each author is probably drawing his or her data from a different set of children. I see that your polls on WTE have been somewhat inconclusive also. What works for your n of 1 (Mari, the only person in your sleep study :)), that also works for you?
Yeah, I suspect Dr. Ferber is a bit stingy on the number of hours a baby needs. In that respect I agree more with Weissbluth -- I think sleep begets sleep and a well-rested child sleeps better than an overtired one. I think putting a child down later is often a recipe for disaster.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me Mari does best when she gets lots of sleep -- about 11-11.5 hours at night and about 3-3.5 during the day.
Making sure she actually gets that much, though, is a challenge.
That's for sure! Caleb is in the middle of what he seems to think is a nap transition and I think (hope) is a phase -- he needs a nap still, but try convincing him of that.
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