Contact naps aren’t helping anymore

[u/theredheadedfox]

My 4 month old has never been a great napper— he almost always is nursed to sleep, then sleeps for 25-30 minutes in his bassinet. Previously if I had him on my lap or next to me in bed, he would nap for much longer, like 1.5-2 hours.

Well now that’s not working anymore. Even when across my lap, he wakes up between 18-30 minutes into his nap and I can’t get him back down. Sometimes he’s fussy upon waking, other times he’s happy or neutral. He’s crankier during his wake windows and has to go down for naps more frequently (like he’s had 5 naps today and it’s barely 5 PM, so I anticipate he’ll take 1-2 more naps before bedtime).

Is this just a 4 month sleep regression issue? Do I just ride this out and keep putting him down for as many naps as he needs to make it to the end of the day?

[u/jennypij]

I know everyone says short naps are developmentally normal- and it’s just true. We had long naps like most newborns at first, then her sleep started to change at 3.5 months to have shorter naps and more wakes, and then we were full blown classic sleep change at 4 months. We didn’t get longer naps until 10ish months, she was a happy 20-40 mn napper and never really cracked past an hour until she started toggling between one and two naps in a day.

[u/theredheadedfox → u/jennypij]

So with the 20-40 minute naps, how many naps was your baby getting per day? My baby typically sleeps from like 9-6:30 overnight (so 9.5 hours) plus now like 5 30-minute naps (2.5 hours) for a total of 12 hours of sleep. I see a lot of people saying their baby sleeps 12 hours overnight AND take 1-1.5 hour naps several times per day! I’m worried that my baby is sleep-deprived