pod ep 9 fighting naps
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[00:00:00] Welcome to this sleep by Alex podcast. I am a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of three, and I will be bringing you quick science backed sleep advice to get you and your baby or a toddler sleeping well.
Hey everyone. Welcome back. I hope you're having a lovely week. Happy Tuesday. I am definitely feeling good motivated this week, trying to get a lot done, but also suddenly I'm starting to feel pregnant, I guess like physically pregnant. I feel like I've officially. Popped, I guess as they say it.
And I am, let's see, 22 weeks now. So still not too far along. Definitely not in like the super uncomfortable stage, but I think it's just my fourth time around and my body is like, oh, Alex, I'm tired. How are we doing this again? So I'm definitely starting to feel [00:01:00] it, but still feeling pretty good. Not too much to complain about.
Also getting ready for summer with my kiddos, which I'm really excited about. I know that some days I'm gonna wanna like pull my hair out, having all three of them at home all day long. My oldest is in kindergarten. And then my second, she just goes to preschool like a couple mornings a week. Um, but we'll all be home all summer.
But I love having them home. Like, I may be crazy, but like, I love when there's no school. I love when we can have slow mornings. I hate starting the day, like trying to rush everybody out the door. Um, so I'm really excited for that. They're not doing like any camps or anything, so I'm gonna need some fun.
Activities to keep them sort of busy. So if you have any ideas, please send them my way
or on the countdown here. I think we start summer in like, I don't know, eight days or something. So I'm looking forward to that, having some extra time with them, especially before you know, this fourth baby comes [00:02:00] and I am all wrapped up in that sort of newborn postpartum mayhem.
Okay, enough about me. Here's what we're talking about today. Have you ever been rocking your baby to sleep at nap time or you lay them down at nap time? Just for them to completely fight you on falling asleep like you're rocking them and they're either crying or they're looking up at you for a half an hour or.
They normally go to bed just fine. When you lay them in their crib and all of a sudden they're crying and they don't wanna go to bed, and they want you to pick them up, they're just not going to sleep no matter what you do. Have you ever had some of those days with your toddler where you know they're clearly tired, yet they just won't take their nap?
They're telling you no, they're crying. Maybe they're laying in their bed, tossing and turning for an hour. Like there are many times when your child may be refusing or fighting. Their nap. So today we're answering the age old question, why the heck are you fighting your nap? [00:03:00] What is going on here? Why aren't you going to sleep?
By the end of this episode, you will know the most common reasons for why you can't get your child to fall asleep at nap time. And I say child 'cause I really wanna touch on, um, a little bit of toddler sleep as well today. So we'll talk about babies and toddlers and hopefully by the end, you know the reason why your child is not taking a nap at times.
So let's start with the most obvious reason and kind of like probably the easiest one to tweak is there's something wrong with when we're laying them down for a nap. So either they are overtired, so they've become too tired, they've stayed up for too long. And you know they're tired, but now they're sort of wired and tired and they're having a hard time sort of regulating their emotions and getting themselves to settle down and fall asleep.
So that can happen if your baby or your toddler is awake for too [00:04:00] long and they're super tired, but now they're sort of tipped into that overtired point,
this might look like they're clearly tired and you know that they're so ready for their nap and they're probably crying, fussing, upset. Um, they seem sleepy, but they're just really fighting you on it. And they're having a really hard time calming their bodies down, settling down, and falling into sleep.
Most likely, that can mean that they've been up for too long before you put them down for their naps. So make sure that you're following sort of age appropriate wake windows when it comes to your baby or toddler's nap times.
I'll just quickly list the average wake windows right now. Of course, these are just averages. These are not rules. So this is what we see when we take a big group of babies overall and see like, okay, what are they typically doing? This doesn't mean that this exact wake window is gonna fit your baby perfectly.
It just means here's what we see on [00:05:00] average. Your baby may need less or more than this.
What's more important than having their wake window line up perfectly with some average you heard online is their demeanor and how they're napping and how they're sleeping. That's really gonna help guide you. To understand, do they need less time awake or more time awake? But regardless of all of that, it's good to at least know the averages.
Usually in the first few months, that sort of zero to three month newborn phase, they're really gonna be awake like 45 to 90 minutes at a time before taking a nap.
Definitely early on it's gonna be like 45 minutes, maybe an hour. And this time does include feeding time. So if they're nursing or bottle feeding for 25 minutes, like they're probably only gonna be awake another half an hour before they take a nap. As your baby gets older and kind of gets outta that newborn phase and they're four-ish months old, they're usually gonna be on a little bit longer, like an hour and a half to two hours.
So it's probably gonna be about an hour and a half or an hour and 45 minutes before their naps [00:06:00] and can get up to two hours before bed for some.
As your baby hits that sort of five and six month age, most of them are going to be awake two to two and a half hours before taking their nap. Once we get to like 7, 8, 9 plus months and they've dropped to two naps a day, then they're gonna need two to three hours of a awake time before their naps. And finally, if you have a toddler who's dropping to one nap a day, which is usually somewhere around 14 months, , then they need about five hours of wake time before they're taking a nap.
So that's your first step is like, is my baby overtired? Are they staying up too long before? I'm trying to put them down.
Another reason your baby or toddler might be fighting their nap is they're actually under tired. So yes, there's so much stress out there about like preventing overt tiredness. Get your baby down before they're too tired. But also sometimes we're trying to put them down too soon when they're getting [00:07:00] older and they're actually needing a longer awake time before they go to sleep, and maybe they're ready for longer awake windows and they're not tired enough at nap time.
So. We're trying to get them to sleep at their usual nap time, and they're just rolling around in their crib, you know, chatting for a half an hour, or they're just staring up at you with these big wide eyes as you're rocking them , like you'll just notice, okay, they aren't losing their mind, they're not totally upset.
Not usually, I should say. This is just average, like every baby has a different temperament, so they're overtired or under tired. Might look different, but for the most part, under tired is gonna be more like, I'm okay, but I'm definitely not ready for sleep. So that could be reason your babies fighting an app.
Another reason your baby may be fighting their nap is because they're ready to actually drop a whole nap. So not only are they ready for longer wake windows, but they're ready for one less nap than they're having right now.
I am not gonna dive into every single sort of sign that your baby is ready to drop a nap. , that's not what this episode is all about. There's a whole workshop about it in the Sleep by Alex membership. If [00:08:00] you are a member, you should go wash that. It's called Dropping Naps.
But if your baby is sort of at this age where they're ready to drop to a new nap schedule and they're ready to, you know, just leave off one of those naps altogether, that may look like a couple weeks of them really fighting one or more of their naps.
Okay, so now that we've talked about their schedules, and . That's all I'm really gonna say about the schedule piece. Like I said, these are all just really averages.
I'm telling you, if you feel like you've been following the average week windows and NAP schedules for your baby's age and it's just not working, I highly recommend hopping onto the membership or scheduling a quick 30 minute call so that we can nail down a schedule that feels good for you and your baby.
Okay, moving on. So we talked about schedules. That's all we're gonna do there. Let's move on to what else could be causing your baby to not take their nap or take a long time to fall asleep for their nap. The next one could be their sleep environment. So think about where you're trying to get your baby to fall asleep.
Further nap and. [00:09:00] How much is that environment sort of setting your baby up for success when it comes to falling asleep for their nap? Have you put them in an environment that is conducive for sleep? Okay, and what I mean by that is most babies are going to sleep better and nap better in a nice, dark, cool room.
Maybe with a sound machine. Definitely a plus. Maybe we've had a little like pre-AP time routine that lasted 10 minutes to wind them down. Have we sort of laid the foundation for them to be able to fall asleep? Right.
Yes. Plenty of babies can nap in a bright room or on the go or whatever it may be, but not all babies are going to be able to do that easily. Some babies are FOMO babies or they're just extra stimulated by their environment.
Typically around six to eight weeks is when you may find that your baby starts fighting their nap, and they don't just doze off in the living room like they [00:10:00] once did when they're feeling sleepy. And so this is kind of the time when I usually recommend, okay, let's make a conscious effort of when we know that the end of the wake window is coming and we catch some sleepy cues, can we.
Turn off the lights or start a sound machine or start to, you know, sort of wind down our environment and can we set them up for success to be able to fall asleep quickly?
One more quick thing to add on about sleep environment before I move on is sometimes it is actually stimulating for us to be with our babies or toddlers trying to help them get to sleep. Like maybe once you used to be able to hold your three, four, even a five month old baby and rock them to sleep, and you could get it done within 10 or so minutes, as your baby gets older, this can actually get a lot harder.
It's exciting for them to have us in there with them. And although we're in there trying to help them fall asleep, sometimes us [00:11:00] trying to rock them to sleep or feed them to sleep or lay with them until they fall asleep, once they're passed a certain age, is actually just too stimulating for them, and they're ready to learn to fall asleep completely on their own.
That could be something about your baby or toddler sleep environment or bedtime environment that's keeping them awake, so keep that in mind.
Okay. Another reason your baby or toddler may be fighting their nap. And this is a big one 'cause there's a lot of pieces to, it Could be a regression. Separation, anxiety, developmental leaps. The reason I'm putting this all into one bucket is because really, when I say regression, this is just any time that there's a blip in your child's sleep, and most regressions are caused by some sort of developmental leap, whether it's physical or emotional, or language or whatever.
Or separation anxiety, something like that. There's something going on in your baby's brain or body that all of a sudden making it hard for them to fall asleep at nap time.
So some developmental leaps that can [00:12:00] cause your baby to take longer to fall asleep at nap time is learning a new skill. So maybe they just learned to sit up, or maybe they learned to crawl, or maybe they learned to roll over and maybe they're even practicing these things in their crib when they should be going to sleep.
So when they usually would just go right to sleep. All of a sudden they're sitting up and you're like, oh no, they're not going to sleep. Or all of a sudden they're learning to pull up on their crib, or they're practicing crawling around, or they're rolling onto their tummy and they're getting stuck. Like, these are all reasons that it might take your baby longer to fall asleep because they've all of a sudden learned this new skill.
This can be for language skills as well. If they're learning how to babble or say new words, like they can be in their cribs saying, da, da, da, da, da, or whatever it may be. And this can just make it take longer for them to shut their little brains down and go to sleep. The world is so exciting and they're learning so many new things, and this can definitely cause them to have more wake ups or to have a [00:13:00] harder time falling asleep.
Another little regression that you might experience with your baby or toddler is separation anxiety. So maybe you could once place them in their crib and walk out the room. And now they stand up right away. They reach out for you. They want you to pick them up right away, or they want you to hold them for their nap, or they don't want you to put them down in their crib.
That's kind of what separation anxiety can look like. The moment you put them down, the moment you try and leave the room, that's when they're like, no, no, no. I don't wanna take a nap. I wanna stay with you, pick me back up, et cetera, et cetera.
If you're experiencing a regression or separation anxiety or developmental leap with your baby or toddler, and it's lasting for more than one to two weeks, it's probably no longer just a regression. So. Let me repeat that. If you've been in this sort of sleep situation for more than one to two weeks, then you can probably no [00:14:00] longer blame it on a regression.
It means something needs to be adjusted. So maybe like we already talked about their schedule. Maybe they're ready to drop a nap. Maybe we need to change their sleep environment. Something needs to be adjusted. Or you change something about the sleep habits during their regression and now it's gonna take you changing something again in order to get back on track.
So what I mean by that is maybe the moment that your baby started standing up and reaching for you and not wanting to go in their crib, you sort of resorted to rocking them to sleep for all their naps, and now you've been doing that for three weeks. So. If this regression has lasted longer than two weeks, you probably need to adjust something or you need to change whatever sleep habit was probably developed during the regression.
Whether you ended up feeding them to sleep or rocking them to sleep, or sitting with them until they fall asleep, or whatever it may be. If you started any of these things since the regression and [00:15:00] you're still in it after a couple weeks, then it's probably gonna take a conscious effort and a plan for you to switch up those habits and get back on track to independent sleep.
Okay, next up, I'm moving into toddler territory a little bit.
A reason your toddler might be fighting their nap is because of inconsistent boundaries.
Okay, what do I mean by this? Toddlers are naturally going to push boundaries. They're going to test limits. They want to feel in control. It's normal for them to start to fight you on their nap. It is so normal for them when you even know that they're tired, that they say, no, I don't wanna take a nap.
Or they cry or they run out of their room. Or they use stalling tactics like, read me one more book, give me one more kiss, but I need my water, but I need another stuffed animal. This is so, so normal. As you sort of go into that 18 months, two years plus toddler [00:16:00] territory. Sometimes they have fomo. They don't wanna miss out on all the quote unquote fun you're having without them.
Right? Life is fun for a toddler, life is exciting, and they are developmentally capable of understanding that while they're in there taking their nap, , you are out there doing something without them. Right?
Maybe their separation anxiety is peaking and they don't want you to leave them at nap time,
and maybe they're just trying to push those boundaries and test the limits to see what they can get away with to see how much they can stall to see if they can stall an app until you say that they don't have to take it. 'cause of course they don't wanna take it. This is not your toddler being manipulative.
This is all so normal and it's good for them to be doing this. This is a natural, normal part of toddlerhood.
Okay, so if this is a normal part of toddlerhood, then how do we make sure it doesn't derail sleep every time it happens? That is you remaining consistent with [00:17:00] the boundaries and expectations with your toddler. The more inconsistent you are, the more they're gonna fight you on nap time and bedtime. I can 100% guarantee that.
So if they're constantly asking for one more book and we're giving one more book, if they're constantly asking to skip their nap, so you let them skip their nap, if these things work for you, that's totally fine.
But just know that you may have to continue doing those things, and you may have to continue being in this battle to get your child to nap. If you're not consistent with the boundaries and expectations for your toddler. What is part of the nap time routine?
What time is nap time? Where is nap time? Who's sleeping in there for nap time? You are in charge of all of these choices. You can give your toddler choices. Of course, making them feel powerful is going to help them not fight you so much. They can choose what book you read before bed. They can choose which stuffy they wanna sleep with, but [00:18:00] you are in charge of those big things.
Your toddler is not in charge of those things.
So, of course you wanna tune into your toddler's needs. There's gonna be times where, like I said, they do have the separation anxiety, they need some extra cuddles, whatever it may be. But you still wanna stay consistent with when we're sleeping, how we're sleeping, where we're sleeping,
, in order to eliminate that fight at nap time as soon as possible.
The more you switch up the routine, the longer it is going to take.
Okay. Now of course I know I didn't get into every single little reason. Your baby might not be going to sleep. I just can't physically get through everything and every little podcast. But these are like the five main things that I typically see why a baby or toddler wouldn't be taking their nap. If you are ready to be able to just like lay your baby down for their nap or lay your toddler down for their nap.
Have them fall asleep on their own in a matter of minutes, then nap for one to two hours and you don't need to worry [00:19:00] about it. You won't wanna miss my next group sleep coaching session. 'cause it's actually starting this week. It's starting on Thursday, June 5th at 1245 Pacific Standard Time.
So here's how it works. This specific group sleep coaching session is for anyone with a child who is between four and 24 months old. And how it works is you join the Sleep by Alex online membership. Once you join, you gain instant access to my four to 24 month sleep course. So you're going to join, you're going to watch the whole course, and then on Thursday at our call, you're gonna come with any questions that have come up.
Like, okay, we're going to troubleshoot your baby or toddler schedule before you get started. We're going to help you pick what type of method you're going to use when it comes to teaching independent sleep, because I give a variety of options, of course, from gradual to accelerated, and I'm going to answer any of your questions that have come up since watching the course.
[00:20:00] Of course, if you can't come to the call on Thursday, don't worry. It's recorded and posted. Then once you're ready, you're gonna start implementing your plan. Throughout the rest of the month, you come to as many live calls throughout the month as you want and share your progress, get your questions answered, whatever it may be.
We meet five times a month, live in the Sleep by Alex membership, so those are all great opportunities. At least once a week to come see me face-to-face on the computer or the phone and get your questions answered. They're like mini consultations for you. In the meantime, in between those live calls, you just send me your questions, you type them out, you send them to me on the sort of community page, send me your progress, you send me your updates, you send me your questions that come up, and I respond to every member within 24 hours.
So I make sure that you're never left hanging and have got you every step of the way, even if we don't have a live call coming up. Your life could look vastly different by the end of June.
And don't worry, we don't only tackle [00:21:00] naps, we tackle nights as well. Of course, this is honestly the most affordable sleep support you will find out there. I can pretty much guarantee that.
If you're interested, you should definitely use the code podcast when you're checking out. 'cause that's gonna give you half off your first month and you can cancel this membership anytime. There's no like time commitment. So if you only wanna stay for the June group sleep coaching and then you decide to cancel, fine, you can get half off for that month.
If you decide to stay for ongoing support, totally great as well. You can stay as long as you please. I've linked this group sleep coaching information in the show notes. By the way,
if you're listening to this and you're interested and you're like, oh no, June 5th, 2025, like that already passed. I already missed it. Don't worry. You can join the Sleep by Alex membership and watch the course and send me your questions and come to live calls anytime. It's okay if you miss the kickoff call.
The kickoff call is really just a welcome and it's to go over the uh, methods a little bit and to give you some tips for success and [00:22:00] get your questions answered. But it's recorded, it's posted, and if you miss it, you can always send me your questions still. Okay? I would join ASAP so you can make it to the other live calls.
And also we do one of these groups every single month. So we will start a new one in July and so on and so forth. So don't worry too much if you're listening to this after the fifth, you should still come join us. I've got you.
Okay, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Once again, I hope you've been able to nail down why exactly your baby or toddler may be fighting you when it comes to nap time. And as always, if you'd like some support with those naps, head to the show notes. I can't wait to chat next week.
