- Getting Naps Right
https://ondemand.mybump2baby.com/get-started
In this episode, Carla interviews Cate Hope, a sleep consultant, about the importance of naps for babies and toddlers. They discuss the signs of an overtired baby, the role of cortisol in poor sleep, and how to determine the right time for naps. Cate also explains the concept of bridging naps and offers tips for managing sleep schedules. Overall, the conversation provides valuable insights and practical advice for parents struggling with their child’s sleep.
Cate hope is an OCN qualified sleep consultant. After many years in childcare she started her online business Peacefully Nights Sleep Consultants and has supported hundreds of parents in improving their children’s sleep.
She offers online sleep solutions based around her 10 stage plan which guides your little one to good sleep. She believes in empowering parents and using supportive sleep coaching methods to help babies and children achieve independent good quality sleep.
Contact Cate via;
https://instagram.com/catehopesleepconsultant?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA
https://www.facebook.com/catehopepeacefulnights
sign up link for my mailing list;
https://subscribepage.io/sign-up-newsletter
to book a discovery call
Carla (00:01.938)
Hello everybody and welcome to my Bumped Babies Expert Podcast. Today I am joined by the lovely Cate Hope, a sleep consultant at Peaceful Nights. And today we’re going to be talking about something, a topic I actually need help with at the moment, which is getting naps right. And we’re going to be talking about overtiredness, cortisol, and how a good day sleep means a good…
Night sleep is that right Cate We’re going to be talking a little bit about that aren’t we? I couldn’t get my words out then but hi Cate how are you?
Cate Hope (00:30.024)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Cate Hope (00:36.328)
Hi, I’m good, thank you. Yes, it is a bit of a mouthful at the topic today, but yeah, it’s all tied in, so it’s all good stuff.
Carla (00:44.21)
It is because I think for me at the moment with Olivia, she is like at a point where she’s two and a half and she’s rejecting her naps and she’s like, I don’t want to go for a sleep. But then she’s falling asleep on the sofa at like four and we call that the danger nap. So it’ll be really good to talk to you about this today. So Cate, could you tell us a little bit about you first of all, if that’s okay?
Cate Hope (01:06.216)
Yes, definitely.
Cate Hope (01:12.808)
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m an OCN qualified sleep consultant and I’ve worked for a long time in the childcare industry and then I started my own business in sleep consultancy and for many years I’ve been working overnight in person with families in their homes, helping their children get a good night’s sleep and now I work online doing consultations as well.
Carla (01:37.618)
amazing, wow I wish I had you in my house because yeah it’s that precious sleep we need so much it just has a knock -on effect doesn’t it for everything. So obviously today we’re going to be talking about naps so why would you say a good day’s sleep for a little one is so important?
Cate Hope (01:41.256)
Yeah.
Cate Hope (01:59.592)
Yeah, so our babies just have so much growing and developing to do and they need a good amount of sleep for their cognitive development, their brain development. And babies, obviously, they’re also physically growing at a great rate and they grow a lot when they’re asleep. And I think most of us know how important sleep is. And I think it’s not surprising that one of the biggest sleep issues that parents message me about is how difficult naps are for them.
Firstly, just getting their baby to nap. And then the juggle that happens when the nap is too short, whether to wake their baby from naps or not. There are some sayings and sort of myths on this as well. So, for example, sleep begets sleep. And the one that most of us have heard, which is never wake a sleeping baby. I would say it’s best not to take these too literally, but they are based…
really on a solid premise, which is that preventing babies becoming overtired will help them to settle to sleep more easily and to sleep well. And this can go against what we feel is natural. We expect that if we’re very tired, we will sleep better. We’re ready for a good deep sleep because we’re exhausted and therefore we expect to fall asleep quickly and sleep well. But in babies and young children, it’s often not true. You know that they’re tired.
but they seem to fight sleep. They can’t fall asleep easily. And when you finally get them to sleep, they don’t seem to go into a deep sleep. And then they wake from their nap frustratingly early, and they’re often grizzling because they’re still tired. And their nap doesn’t seem to have done them much good. And this difficulty sleeping is caused because your baby is overtired.
Carla (03:48.562)
Yeah, well, do you know what, Cate? It’s funny because I have heard so many of my mum friends and things saying like, no, don’t let them fall asleep because they won’t sleep tonight. But then, you know, it kind of, it feels like if they have too much sleep, they might not sleep at night. And I imagine that’s where a lot of people are, a lot of parents anyway, are at the moment trying to prevent that sleep so they can potentially get a good night’s sleep. But that’s not the way to do it then, I guess.
Cate Hope (04:07.656)
Yeah.
Cate Hope (04:15.88)
Yeah, you do have to be careful of too much day sleep. And it is, I think that’s the thing as well, it’s always a juggle. That juggle between over -tiredness and under -tiredness. But what I find is that most babies don’t sleep too much during the day. Most babies fall on the side of being under -tired because they struggle with their naps. So yeah, but it is, you’re right, it is a juggle.
Carla (04:41.17)
Yeah, it is, it is. So, so what would cause poor sleep in overtired babies and toddlers then?
Cate Hope (04:50.12)
Yeah, so it’s a hormone which we produce naturally called cortisol and this hormone is known as our stress hormone and it actually does a lot of good stuff too. Without it we’d be sluggish all day. But one of cortisol’s jobs is to send us into what we call fight or flight mode. And when a baby becomes overtired, their bodies start to produce cortisol and this starts to send them into that fight or flight mode.
And the more tired they are, the more cortisol they produce. And that fight or flight state makes it hard for them to fall asleep and sleep well. Many parents will be familiar with this as babies can become more and more tired during the day if naps aren’t going well.
Carla (05:36.626)
Yeah, yeah, no, that does make sense. And what would you say are the main signs of an overtired baby? Because it can be hard to recognise if they’re having a bad day, are they teething? You know, what’s going on? It’s really hard to pinpoint. So is there any particular signs that you’d look out for?
Cate Hope (05:56.328)
Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of parents will be familiar with these signs. But the main things you’re looking for is that overtired babies will have trouble falling asleep in the first place. They seem to fight sleep. And although you can see that they’re really tired, they often need a lot of help to get to sleep. And then once they’re asleep, they struggle to stay asleep. They don’t reach that lovely deep sleep where nothing will wake them. They’re easily woken.
And at nap time, they’re fighting sleep, often having a short nap, and then they wake up cranky. And the worst bit is that if your baby’s overtired when they go to bed, that buildup of cortisol can cause babies to wake in the night, and it can also cause early morning waking, which it really can make sleep a problem. And to avoid it, you need to put your baby to sleep before they get overtired.
Carla (06:51.442)
Yeah, it’s like you just want, you just need to know like at what point as well, don’t you? So going on to that question really is, is how do you know the right time to put your little one to sleep so they don’t get overtired?
Cate Hope (07:06.44)
Yeah, so there’s a couple of things you can look at. It’s helpful to look at your baby’s sleep cues because it’s not always easy to tell when your baby’s ready for the next nap. Many parents will wait until their little ones are showing signs of being really quite tired before they put them to bed, which is totally understandable. But really, you want to catch them before they get to that stage. And it’s not always obvious. So the things to look out for are…
Yawning, that’s probably the most obvious sign. Rubbing their eyes, sometimes it’s obvious, but it can just be them sort of wiping a hand across their eyes. Redness around or under their eyes, that’s often more obvious in younger babies. Rubbing or pulling their ears, and children of all ages do this. They might start to slow down as they’re playing and make less noise and they might lose concentration. And if they’re feeding,
They might feed a bit lazily, gentle slow sucks as they haven’t got the energy because they’re tired. Often they can’t hold your gaze and they look away when you try to look at theirs and their movements might be jerky. They might arch their back and in older children you might see them start to get frustrated at the little things and they might get a bit clingy. So those are the sleep cue signs to look for and when you see these signs,
try to get your baby down for a nap straight away before they get over tired. And then once you get to the stage where they’re fed up crying and obviously tired, you’re actually leaving it a little bit late. That’s when the cortisol is building and they’re already getting a bit over tired. So when you see those signs, it’s worth putting your baby straight to bed before they get over tired.
Carla (08:58.322)
great that’s a great help so so then what if you’re not seeing any sleep cues because I mean some of my friends have toddlers and they no longer have a nap and they sleep great at night whereas some children need that nap to sleep great at night like we’ve mentioned what what would you do if you’re not seeing sleep cues does that mean the nap time is over and you just have to go a whole day with your little one without a break?
Cate Hope (09:23.592)
Yeah. Absolutely not. So, yeah, I get that from a lot of parents that their babies just don’t really give out the sleep cues or, you know, they just don’t work with sleep cues very well. So there’s a couple of things that you can do around that. So if your baby wakes up around the same time every morning, it can be helpful to use a schedule or a routine.
and put them down for a nap at roughly the same time every day so that your baby’s body is ready for that sleep. That works well if your baby has a regular wake -up time in the morning because then you can plan naps pretty well as the nap times will be mostly the same every day. But you might find it easier, particularly with younger babies, to use wake windows to help work out when your baby needs their next nap.
So the term wake windows is, it simply means the amount of time your baby stays awake from the time they wake up from one sleep to the time that they fall asleep for the next sleep. Wake windows are worked out by age. So start by making a note of the wake window guide I’m about to give you. And that will tell you roughly how long your baby can stay awake between naps without getting overtired.
If your baby wakes at a different time every day, this is so much easier than a routine as your baby is going to be tired at very different times. So the nap times will vary a lot. So for example, if you’ve got a six month old baby and they’ve had a random 5am wake up and won’t go back down, they’re going to need a two hour wake window and they will most likely need the first nap of the day at 7am.
However, if the next day they sleep in until 7am, that two hour wake window will mean they want a nap at 9am. So those nap times are going to vary hugely. And I think that’s what some parents find so frustrating about trying to stick to a schedule. Because unless you’ve got that sort of regular wake up time, it’s really impossible to stick to a routine without ending up with a very overtired baby. And in that case, you’d be better to go with wake windows.
Cate Hope (11:40.04)
so your baby doesn’t get overtired. So in that case, knowing your baby’s wake windows can be really helpful. So yeah, I would always go to wake windows if your baby, particularly if your baby’s night sleep is a bit sort of unsettled and not quite falling into line.
Carla (12:01.906)
That’s great. No, that’s really useful. I have heard of Wake Windows. In fact, you wrote an article for us on Wake Windows, which we’ll share below as well, obviously with your details for more information. But do you have the timings for Wake Windows available?
Cate Hope (12:16.072)
Thank you.
Cate Hope (12:20.616)
I do, yes. So, newborn baby, about 45 to 60 minutes. One to two months, 60 to 75 minutes. Three to four months, 75 to 90 minutes. Around five months, it’s about an hour and 45 minutes. Six months, two hours. Seven months and eight months, 2 .5 hours. Nine months and 10 months, three hours.
11 months, 3 .5 hours, and 12 months, 3 .5 hours. Now, then it does vary a bit, as I think you’re finding out yourself at the moment. Between 12 months and 15 months, babies will move from two naps a day to one nap a day. The window for that is quite big, so some babies do it as early as 11 months and some as late as 14, 15 months or even a little bit later than that.
Carla (12:59.442)
Yes.
Cate Hope (13:17.48)
So you’re going to move from a two -nap schedule to a one -nap schedule. Once they’re on that one -nap schedule from around sort of 16 to 36 months, it’s really more like a five -hour wake window. But every baby does have different sleep needs, so it is really just a guide. And on that note, there are schedules and routines you can follow, and these can be really helpful, especially if you can…
gently move your baby onto them. But all babies have different sleep needs, so you might need to adjust these timings for your baby. People will say to me, he can only last an hour and three quarters. Well, it doesn’t really matter. If I say to you, well, there should be a two hour wait window there. If your baby can’t do it, they can’t do it. So just adjust things to your baby. You might have a friend who has, they say, I’ve got this brilliant schedule.
and you try it with your baby and actually it just really doesn’t work for you. You can’t stick to it, your baby doesn’t like it. Just tweak things to work for your baby and for their individual sleep needs. It’s just perfectly normal, there’s nothing wrong, it’s just how babies are.
Carla (14:31.154)
Yeah, they’re not robots, are they? So it’s easy to listen to people at baby groups and things like that. And it’s like, my baby’s doing this. And you’re like, why is mine not doing that? And you do want to kind of get, especially when it comes to making life a little bit easier, because being a parent is so hard, isn’t it? I mean, for me, if Olivia does stop those naps, I’m going to be like, my goodness, like, how am I going to do the other things? And it is, it’s just a case of making sure that they work around, not work around,
Cate Hope (14:34.088)
Yeah.
Cate Hope (14:50.024)
Yeah.
Cate Hope (14:57.064)
Yeah.
Carla (15:01.06)
around you obviously babies need what they need but we’ve discovered that us getting out in the morning and coming back having a lunch and then having a nap seems to work well for us but other people might be the other way around.
Cate Hope (15:04.264)
Yeah.
Cate Hope (15:11.144)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there’s so much of that, that often, like you say, at baby groups and things, I think when you’re a parent and you find something that works for you, you just want to share it with the world, you know, and you want to tell everybody about it, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to work for everybody else. So yeah, just, you know, I think it’s just don’t sweat the small stuff and just, you know, if that’s how your baby’s sleep needs are, that’s absolutely fine.
Carla (15:40.626)
Yeah, and that’s what Cate’s grateful really because if you want tailored advice and to actually speak to her about your own baby and the own experiences, it means that Cate can actually offer advice based on your own child, can’t you Cate? That’s the benefits of working with a sleep consultant. So Cate, finally, what is abridging now?
Cate Hope (15:55.464)
Yeah, absolutely.
Cate Hope (16:04.04)
So a bridging nap or a power nap we sometimes call it, they’re really helpful. Yes, they are brilliant. And actually what you were saying about Olivia, this is the solution that’s going to save your day. They are so helpful. So it’s simply a short nap. It’s around 10 to 15 minutes long and it can happen really at any time.
Carla (16:07.642)
I know that. I know that wording.
Carla (16:18.866)
I’m all ears, Cate, I’m all ears.
Cate Hope (16:30.92)
when you feel like a proper nap is ill -advised, exactly what you were saying about the danger nap. So let’s say your baby refuses their afternoon nap, but then they’re exhausted an hour and a half before bed. You just wouldn’t put them down for a proper nap at that time. But you could give them a 10 to 15 minute bridging nap to reduce their sleep pressure and stop them getting overtired. So that can be in the car, in the buggy, it could be in the cot as well, but they could just contact nap.
on you if that’s easier. And the idea is that you’re managing their sleep and keeping them on track. So they’re just taking the sleep pressure off, but you don’t want to cause a really late bedtime. Because if you do, you know, it’s likely to impact the next day as well. And then you just, you know, it can be easy to run out of routine. This is the bit though where you would wake a sleeping baby. Because you
You don’t want to cause an issue at bedtime. So we all know that if we had a long late afternoon nap, we’d be unlikely to go to bed at the normal time, fall asleep well and sleep well. And it’s exactly the same with babies. Just put them down for, or like you say, they might just fall asleep on the sofa, you know, but just make sure that nap is just a little nap, a short nap. Wake them up.
and in toddlers I realise that might be a crotchety hour or so before bed that you’ve then got but it’s really worth doing. And then once you’ve done the bridging nap, it’s just a very short nap so don’t expect that to be a full wake window afterwards. So bedtime can be as soon as an hour or so after they wake up from that bridging nap. So it’s just really to take off that pressure, get them to just cope until bedtime.
Carla (17:58.802)
Mm -hmm.
Cate Hope (18:23.848)
and then you can just put them down usually at normal time. However, if you do end up with a baby who is bouncing around, if Olivia’s then bouncing around all over the place at bedtime, just put her down 15 minutes later than you’d usually do and just to give her a little bit of extra time and then sort of bear that in mind for the next bridging nap, you know, and think about timings around that. And bear in mind that with babies, sleep…
course isn’t linear, there will always be ups and downs. And even though you hear about babies who love to nap, there are always times when babies struggle with naps. Sometimes you’ll have a bad day. When your baby wakes early from their first nap, you struggle to get them back into a routine. If you do have a bad day, I always think the best thing is to get outside of the house if you can, use the buggy or the car, and just see if you can get them to sleep that way.
And that’s a great way of just reducing that sleep pressure and protecting against overtiredness. And then just one little final tip. If your baby is very tired at bedtime, bring bedtime forwards by 15 minutes. So start your routine a bit early and just get them down 15 minutes earlier. And that can actually just be enough to prevent night wakings and overtiredness.
Carla (19:47.122)
brilliant gosh I could ask you questions all day Cate but well that’s been so helpful for me as a parent as well so thank you so much for that and with the bridging nap finally just one more question is that mainly for kind of toddlers then the bridging nap because obviously babies are still kind of within the wake window?
Cate Hope (19:51.164)
You
Cate Hope (20:09.32)
Yeah, definitely. No, it’s for all ages. So babies, it’s really helpful for babies as well. It’s helpful if they do the sort of waking early thing, because what happens then is all your naps sort of move forwards. And then it’s maybe two, three o ‘clock in the afternoon, you’ve already done all the naps and you’ve still got four hours until bedtime. A little bridging nap there can be helpful. Or it’s really helpful if you’re trying to do a nap transition and your baby’s struggling a bit with it.
Particularly if you’re trying to drop morning nap, just reduce that down to 10 minutes. So they’re just having a little bit of a nap there just to take off that sleep pressure and then get them later to the lunchtime nap. So yeah, all ages.
Carla (20:53.938)
Cate, thank you so much and would you mind just sharing a little bit about all of the ways that you can help parents with sleep if that’s okay.
Cate Hope (21:03.24)
Yeah, absolutely, I’d love to, yeah. So if you work with me online, I use a gentle sleep plan, which I will tailor to your family. And what that does is it tackles any unwanted sleep associations, nap problems you might have, early morning waking, and it will leave you with a baby who can fall asleep independently, sleep well at night, and nap well during the day. There’s no cry -out, and just to sort of,
blast some of the myths that are around. There’s a lot of talk of, you’ve got to give up breastfeeding. You absolutely do not have to stop breastfeeding and you don’t have to stop feeding in the night if that’s something you’re not comfortable with. So a lot of it is about working with parents, seeing what their goals are and meeting them. But no, there’s no…
Carla (21:35.698)
Please do. Yeah.
Cate Hope (21:58.888)
you know, it’s as gentle and lovely as, you know, as it can be. And yeah, it’s just working with parents to reach their goals. But yeah, please do follow me on Instagram and Facebook, Cate Hope Sleep Consultant, and join up to my mailing list if you’d like to. I give out lots of free sleep tips.
Carla (22:18.258)
Yeah, brilliant. And we’ll include all of Cate’s links underneath this video. You can also find Cate in our on -demand area as well. And Cate, you are working on quite a few exciting things at the moment. So once they’re ready, we’ll pop those links under this as well. So Cate, thank you so much for being our guest today. I really appreciate it.
Cate Hope (22:34.888)
Lovely, thank you.
my pleasure. It’s been a joy.