To sleep or not to sleep ?

I’ve found my daughter sleeps best over night when she’s had more sleep during the day as opposed to less. She’s 14 months, 2 -3 hours total daytime napping seems to be the sweet spot for her

Personally, there's never a right answer. Sometimes I've let my daughter have 3 hour naps and she slept amazingly at night. Other times she has napped terribly in the day and slept rubbish at night and vise versa. I do try and keep the naps at 2 hours tops unless she has had terrible naps earlier in the day. I think go off your little one rather than what you read. You know them best. If they didn't sleep great at night or their previous nap let them sleep. Whatever works for you 😊

I’ve barely ever woke our lg up from a nap unless it’s for an appointment. Now she’s almost 2.5 I sometimes will wake her if it’s getting upto 2pm otherwise bedtime would be so late! Ps she’s fully slept through from 10mths when she dropped feeding unless she’s going through something that is

I’ve found it’s very much down to the individual baby - my little boy has always slept best at night when his daytime sleep has been no longer than 1hr and 15 mins. This has been since 1 years old and he’s now 2 years 2 months old. Before 1 years old, I followed wake windows and sleepy cues combined and it worked really well for us (bar the sleep regressions or teething which you just have to grit your teeth and get through it!) xx

My eldest was a sleepy baby and if I woke her up during the day bedtime was a nightmare until she was about 3 then it was avoid daytime naps at all costs. My 2nd is only 3 months so I just let her sleep when she needs to x

No, letting my baby sleep for long periods of the day doesn’t seem to hinder nighttime sleep. When he was first born we’d ‘dream feed’ him every 3 hours during the day if he was sleeping at the 3 hour mark still.. but now (at 8 weeks and many pounds above his birth weight) I just let him sleep however long and frequently he wants to during the day. Sometimes that looks like 1 3 hour nap and a few cat naps, and other times that looks like 2-3 2 plus hour naps. Every day is different but he always seems to sleep very well at night!

Honestly the science of sleep is amazing but also a minefield. I personally find the day time sleep and amount of it isn’t the problem. It’s the wake window before bed and the build up of sleep pressure. If it’s too much they’ll become overtired and likely have a split night or early wake (5amish). If it’s not enough then they won’t go down and will want to play or sit up in their cot and not settle to sleep. If my almost 2 year old has a rubbish nap (on nursery days) then we have an earlier bedtime. If he has a great sleep 2hours or even 2.5 then I adjust bedtime accordingly to ensure his sleep pressure has built up enough x

When my baby was younger than 4 months id let her sleep as much as she wanted during the day, would just wake her at 7am every morning. However since I got into a routine, now at 7 months I wake her from most naps, she naps at 0845 and I wake her at 0930. Then second nap I put her down about 1240 and I'll wake her at 1500 if still asleep. I then start her bedtime just after 6 and she's asleep by 6.45

It’s probably different baby to baby, but ‘in theory’, babies have a sleep tank and their sleep pressure needs to be high enough to sleep well at night. For example, my LO has a sleep tank of around 13 hours in a 24 hour period. If I want him to sleep say 11 hours overnight, then I need to cap his day naps at 2 hours. If he has more day sleep than this (like he did a few weeks ago when he was ill) then we have split nights, where he’s awake for an hour or 2 in the middle of the night. I also don’t want him to nap beyond 4.15pm, as his current wake window before is around 3h15-3hr30 and we want a bedtime not much later than 7.45pm. We aim for 2 naps a day, of 1hr15 and 45 mins on our current schedule, so I do wake him if he goes beyond that for his morning nap to try and keep the rest of the day on track. If he does a short morning nap he can have a longer afternoon nap.

We’ve only recently at 9.5 months got him on a schedule though - before this I was going on sleep cues and we had a LOT of night wakes. Since he’s been on a schedule, he is sleeping much better at night, and sleeping more overall in a 24 hour period. He’s sleeping less in the day compared to before but doing longer nights. Every baby will be different in terms of how much sleep they need in a 24 hour period, how many naps they have and how long for - there’s defo no one size fits all

I always cap naps.

My boy has whatever naps he needs - 3/4 and he has around 2.5 hours (this is all naps combined) and sleeps fine but he does generally sleep better if he has 3/3.5 hours worth of naps

I've always followed my children's cues. 95% of the time, if they're tired & and sleeping, I let them sleep.

Babies are meant to sleep like 13 out of every 24 hours. So there’s basically no such thing as too much sleep as long as they are awake enough to eat