5-6 MONTH OLD Takes Short naps - How Long Do I Leave Him in the Crib?
Your 5-6 month old baby wakes up after short naps of 45 minutes, and can't fall back to sleep on his own. If your baby takes short naps, it can be SO frustrating. You don't get any downtime and your baby doesn't get the sleep they need.
Find out what to do to get your baby sleeping longer for naps and waking later in the morning. Plus, when you should pick your baby up and when to leave your baby in the crib and tips on awake times, morning wake-up, and naps.
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“My baby often wakes up after a short 45-minute nap. He’s happy to stay in his crib and he sometimes falls back asleep on his own. How long should I leave him in his crib if he wakes?’
The awake times for a 5-6 month old are about 1.5-2.5 hours.
Let’s do naps first! If your baby is 5 months and he gets woken up from a nap: If it’s less than 50 minutes or so and he’s happy, then I’d definitely leave him. It can be hard not to know whether he’s fallen back to sleep or not or how long he’s slept. So let’s just say he woke up after 45 minutes, and then he fell back asleep for another hour. That’s great. Then whenever he woke up the second time, that’s when you’d start clocking his awake time for his next nap.
If he had a short nap, and then he tossed and turned for maybe 20-30 minutes - you think he went back to sleep but you’re not really sure. Then I’d plan for a shorter awake time and then just watch his sleepy signs to see when he might need his next nap.
Shorter naps calls for shorter awake times. So if he had a short nap, I would be expecting him to be ready to nap sooner rather than later. If he had a beautiful long nap, I would be thinking, ‘OK, maybe he can go the full 2-2.5 hours’.
As far as waking in the morning, if it’s super early in the morning. Say, it’s before 6am. Then we tend to consider that a night waking, so you would want him to go back to sleep.
I would definitely leave him if he’s happy. If he’s talking, or rolling around, trying to get himself comfortable and he’s sometimes falling back asleep, I would 100% leave him.
You can leave him until he really starts calling out for you, whether it’s crying, or he’s getting louder and louder and more persistent. Then you know he’s not going to fall back asleep. Then you can go wake him up for the day.
But if it’s before 6am, or if he just seems happy, there’s no harm in leaving him.
A good thing to do around his age, so around 5-6 months, is to set a consistent morning wake-up time. What you can do is, you can write down the time that your baby naturally wakes for a week or so. It might be 6: 30 and then 7: 30, then 6: 40, then 7: 20, then 7am. Figure out the middle point – let’s say its 7am. Then you can decide, “OK, 7am is pretty tolerable. So, every morning I’m going to set my alarm for 6: 55 and I’m going to make sure he’s awake by 7.”
The idea behind waking him up at the same time every day is that it helps your day fall into place, which a lot of parents really start craving, especially around the 6-month mark. They want to know when that morning nap’s going to be. They’d love to know when the afternoon nap’s going to be. They want to know when they can make appointments, when they can make plans. So if you’re craving a bit of predictability and consistency in your day, then I would start waking him up around the same time every day.
For you, if he was waking up and then chatting in his bed at 6: 30am, then by 7am I’d go in and wake him up. Get him out of bed, start your day. Turn the lights on. Open up the curtains. Take him into the living room – things like that. So you have a distinct point in time: you’re showing his body, this is the time to wake up.
Good luck! Pat your baby on the back, and you, because he’s able to resettle himself. You’ve given him the space and the opportunity to do that, which it can be really hard to do with our young babies. We hear them and we run to them.
So, well done you, and well done your little guy for being able to be happy in his crib, and for you giving him the opportunity to settle himself to sleep.
