The 45 Minute INTRUDER & Wake to Sleep
If you have read the Babywise series then you are probably aware of concept known as the 45 minute intruder. If not, I am sure you have dealt with the intruder at some point in your baby’s sleep development. This post is intended to share what I have learned about the 45 minute intruder and the strategies I have tried in order to “get a handle” on it. The main reason I am writing about this phenomenon is that I found very little information to troubleshoot this problem in the Babywise book, and most friends I spoke to either thought 45 minutes naps were normal (which meant their child did it too) or they seemed surprised and remarked that their child always slept 1.5-2hours (which meant they did not share this issue).
Understanding the 45-Minute Intruder
Babies generally sleep in cycles during the day. Normally they fall asleep and go into a deep REM cycle that lasts about 45 minutes. As babies wake from the first cycle they must put themselves back to sleep in order to get the remaining healthy sleep they need for brain development. (This is based on decades of research that notes that a baby’s normal nap should be 1.5 -2 hours). Sounds easy, right???
When many babies begin to stir at around 45 minutes, they find it difficult to fall back asleep and finish their nap. Many times parents mistakenly believe when baby wakes after only 30-45 minutes of sleep that baby is no longer tired (especially if the child begins to cry or play in their bed/crib). This is not necessarily the case. Most babies are still very tired and need to move into the next phase of sleep to get a good nap otherwise after a hour or so of being awake they may become overtired and that can lead to chronic fatigue, crying or an overall “fussy” baby.
It is common for babies to begin to habitually wake at the 45 minute mark for a few days or a week between the ages of 4-8 months (our LO began this around 5 months). This happens at this age as babies are becoming more alert and aware of their surroundings which makes going back to sleep particularly difficult. Around 5 months the 45-minute intruder began to create chronic 45-minute naps, and it became very disruptive. When our LO does not get good sleep, then she will tend to be very fussy and tired during the next cycle (which is not typical of her mood and is of course stressful for me too). This makes it very difficult for our family to stay on a stable 4-hour cycle and plan our day, her wake activities and bedtime. The good news is that this is temporary for most babies but it can be challenging to problem solve the issue.
Things I Found Helpful:
Too Tired or Not Tired Enough?
If you are confident that your baby is not hungry, then you may be dealing with a baby that is either too tired or not tired enough. This is, of course, confusing.
In the early months babies tire quickly. Most newborns do not cope well with more than 1- 1.5 hours of wake time. If you are keeping them up for longer than that they may get overtired. Overtired babies do not do anything well, including sleep. The cure for this is to put them down sooner, rather than later. Let them get more sleep, so they can get more sleep. It sounds strange but in the early weeks and months, sleep begets sleep.
As baby gets older (between 3-5 months) they will have established a rather predictable routine and their daily rhythm will be well established. They will normally go to bed around the same time, wake at the same time, nap at the same time, etc. etc. If you baby is not napping well at this point it is very possible that your baby is getting too much sleep.
If your suspect that your baby is getting too much sleep I suggest you read Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, by Dr. Ferber. Simply put, it corrects all the lies that we believe. Dr. Ferber is a sleep expert at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital. He tells you what is normal and what is not. This is important because what we hear in the community is not the norm. What we generally hear from our family and friends are “success” stories. Stories about angel babies that sleep through the night straight out of the womb and are perfect in just about every way. This is not the norm.
Many parents, especially first-time parents, struggle with many aspects of helping their baby establish healthy sleep patterns. Most eventually figure it out, largely through a trial and error process, but it may be painful along the way. These “negative” stories, although more common, are shared much less often because people generally don’t like to talk about their failures and struggles.
Reading the Ferber book opened my eyes to what is normal and what I could reasonably expect from our baby at different ages of development. Even better the book goes on to give lots of different examples of problems and how to fix them. I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you are having any trouble with sleep.
All of this to say, most of the stories we hear make us think as parent that baby should sleep 12 straight hours at night and then take (3) 2-hour naps during the day. This is just way too much sleep for any baby other than a newborn in the first weeks of life. The average 3 month old baby sleeps less than 10 hours at night and by the age of 6 months total nap time is just over 3 hours.
Wake to Sleep
In order to utilize the Wake to Sleep method for extending short naps you go into your baby’s room about 30 minutes into the nap (this is shortly before he/she starts to rouse from the first REM sleep cycle). From here you have a few choices:
Option 1.) You can pat your baby gently on the back until their body relaxes which may take up to 20 minutes. If he doesn't relax with the patting, The Baby Whisperer suggests moving onto the pick-up/ put down method if your LO is over 3 months in age. This method was too disruptive for my alert little baby so we used an alternate method noted in the Baby Whisperer book.
Option 2.) You can move or pick up your baby slightly (just enough to barely wake him/her) and then as quickly as possible GET OUT OF THE ROOM. This allows your LO to resettle while they are still tired. Then they are more easily able to fall back into the next cycle of sleep. Use this method 2-3 days in a row and your baby will quickly begin sleeping for longer and longer naps. NOTE: You will have to use trial and error to figure out the exact time to go in and the exact method that works for you but once you do it is a LIFESAVER.
Feeding and Hunger
This is a common problem that disrupts naps in babies under 12 weeks of age. A young baby who is consistently waking up at 45 minutes may be hungry and therefore is unlikely to fall back to sleep. In a typical 4-hour cycle there are two things that you can do to address this problem.
First, try and reorganize the 4-hour routine so that baby eats about 30-45 minutes after getting up from a nap. This may be hard at first but your baby will quickly readjust. This accomplishes 2 things. First it removes the association with waking and then immediately eating. Second it moves the feeding a little closer to nap time, which means baby is likely to have a little fuller stomach during the nap.
A second strategy is to add in cereal and/or age-appropriate baby foods. Do not do this immediately after nursing but give a baby a 30-45 minute break between nursing and taking food. The overall goal is to have more of baby’s food closer to the initiation of the nap. This makes it less likely that baby will wake hungry after 45 minutes. Rather baby will wake hungry after 1 1/2 hours… hopefully.
Establish a Very Predictable Routine
Having a structures sleep and wake routine is critical in the early days of sleep training. If you want your baby to take predictable naps, then you have to help him/her. This means that the naps should start at more or less the same time everyday (I figure you should be using the words “about” in front of your baby’s schedule, ex: she wakes at about 7 and then naps at about 9ish) and the number of naps should be the same every day. During this period of training you will need to forgo lots of little day trips in order to help your LO truly begin to get on a routine. Catnaps in the car on the way to the grocery store, skipping naps several days a week, or mixing up the time that baby goes down for a nap will all interfere with developing healthy naps. The good news is that if you have weeks like this (and you will) you can always get your baby back on a good routine….with hard work and persistence of course.
Reduce Nighttime Sleep
According to Ferber, most babies 3-6 months of age only need about 10 hours of sleep at night. If your baby is sleeping 11, 12, or more hours at night, then they are probably getting all of the sleep they need at night. Try backing up the time they get up in the morning or pushing the bedtime back to reduce the overall nighttime sleep.
Plan to do this for several days or maybe even a week or two before you assess the success. With my 6 moth old’s schedule she was getting about 14 hours of this total sleep time at night. This sounds in theory like an okay situation but in reality what I had was a baby who was not very well rested during the day and would get fussy quite easily. I knew what I needed to do. I had to keep her awake a little more at night to create a later bedtime AND I had to get her up a little earlier in the morning (good-bye 8:00am wake time).
I started by keeping her up only 15 minutes more at night and I also stretched each daily active time by about 10 minutes as well. I also woke her at 7am to be sure she was not getting too much sleep at night. TA-DA...within two days, problem solved. I kept extending her bedtime by about 5 -10 minutes a day until she finally got to a 8:15ish bedtime. All is well and naps are restored!!! :-) Happy Baby= Happy Mommy
Avoid Extra Long Naps
While it may be nice for baby to take a 3-hour nap, this will likely interfere with later naps. We generally do not wake our son from a deep sleep but we do open his door and “help” him wake up on his own between 1-5 and 2 hours.
Darken the Room
We are suspicious that this may have been the final key to our success. There is a lot of light in our LO’s room. I do not sleep well in a well lit room, so it only makes sense that this may be a problem for babies too. We put some darkening curtains in our LO’s room and this seemed to make a big difference is her ability to fall back to sleep on his own.
