Surely babies just sleep when they’re tired and wake up once they’ve had enough sleep?

That’s certainly what I thought when I had my first baby. Back then I knew very little about sleep and, in all honesty, I didn’t think too much about it. I didn’t consider routines or structuring Archie’s sleep in any way; he just fit in with my daily life, napping when he was tired. Often this was in the car or the front pack, which was great because I could be out and about, not bound to the house.

When we were at home I made sure I watched for sleepy signs, just as the books told me to do, and so whenever Archie started rubbing his eyes and getting a bit grizzly I would put him down for a nap (which is a whole other blog in itself, as I really didn’t know how to get him to sleep!). Thirty minutes later, Archie would wake and I’d get him up, assuming that this was all the sleep he needed.

So is he still on 3 naps or has he dropped down to 2 now?

It wasn’t until he was around 7 months old when a friend asked me “So is he still on 3 naps or has he dropped down to 2 now?”. I remember being totally puzzled about this question because Archie didn’t have a set number of naps each day, he just slept when he was tired.

By the time evening came around we really struggled to get Archie to bed, needing to feed, rock and hold him until he was extremely drowsy or even asleep. He’d sleep well for a few hours, but then would wake up every 1-2 hours overnight. I generally resorted to feeding him back to sleep because that was the quickest way for me to get back to bed. Archie was normally awake by around 4:30/5am and would scream the house down unless I got him up, so I ended up starting my day by 5am too. I would need to put Archie down for a nap by 7am most days, just as my husband was getting up for work, and I remember thinking that this was crazy; other babies hadn’t even woken up yet.

Overtiredness - the route of all our problems

As a first-time mum, I thought I was doing the right thing and I just figured this was the way Archie was. I accepted that he took short naps, but that’s ok because all babies are different, right? Looking back, it is clear to me now that Archie was extremely overtired. This was almost certainly the root cause of all of his sleep problems, including his short catnaps, long drawn-out bedtimes, frequent overnight wake-ups (often every 1-2 hours) and his super-early 4:30-5am mornings.

I was unknowingly compounding things by regularly sleeping him out-and-about in the car or front pack and allowing him to continue with his 30 minute catnaps, but I honestly didn’t realise that these things could ever be a problem. Now I know that this kind of sleep is a lot less restorative than consolidated, motionless sleep, and so Archie was just getting more and more tired without me really realising.

Things did get better

It wasn’t until he was around 18 months that he started to consolidate his daytime sleep. Combined with teaching him how to self-settle (and also resettle himself between sleep cycles) and cutting his overnight feeds, we finally got Archie sleeping through the night, from 7pm until 6:30 or 7am! We honestly felt like new people with all of the extra sleep we got and I now think back and wonder how we coped. Having a catnapping, overtired child can be utterly exhausting and it’s hard to see a way out, especially when you don’t realise that overtiredness is even a thing.

If you need help with catnapping or you feel that your child could be overtired, please get in touch for a free 15 minute chat about how I can help.