What to do When Baby Wakes from Nap After Only 20 Minutes. Ideally, baby will take a much longer nap than 20-30 minutes. Read reasons baby wakes after a 20 minute nap, how to solve short naps, and what to do with that short nap in the meantime.
If your baby wakes from a nap after only 20-30 minutes, you can be sure that it isn’t because he had a full nap. Baby woke early for some reason other than being fully rested. If baby is waking after only 20-30 minutes of sleep, it it is time to do some troubleshooting.
There is an exception to this. It is if you are at the point of almost being ready to drop a nap but aren’t quite there. For example, when Kaitlyn (my second child) was in the process of dropping her 3rd nap, she would take only a 20-30 nap some days in place of that third nap. But other than that situation, you know that if your child wakes after only 20-30 minutes, the nap was not long enough.
You probably already knew that a 20-30 minute nap was not ideal. What you want to know is what to do about it. There are a lot of options of what to do, and your course of action will depend on you, your child, and the age of your child.
Reasons Babies Wake After 20 Minutes
You naturally want to access the situation and try to figure out the reason your child woke up early. Once you identify WHY it is happening, you can work to prevent it from happening in the future.
Learning to Self-Soothe
If your child is just learning to self-soothe, waking early from the nap is quite normal in my experience. As they get better at putting themselves to sleep, they get better at keeping themselves asleep. If your baby is just learning to self-soothe, have patience with this sleep training process.
If your baby is learning to self-soothe, it is often helpful to wait 10 minutes before you go in and intervene in some way.
Startled Awake
If your newborn is not swaddled, they may have startled themselves awake. Newborns have the MORO Reflex. This stays until 2-6 months old. If you suspect this may be waking your baby, try swaddling.
Took a Power Nap
Newborns are very hard to keep awake for a feeding and will often doze off. If you are allowing your newborn to take little naps (knowingly or unknowingly) during feeding time, it can lead to your baby struggling with the next nap.
You want to do everything you can to keep your newborn awake for that entire feeding. Read Keeping a Newborn Awake During Feedings for more on this.
Never Actually Fell Asleep
Something I didn’t know with my first two children is sometimes babies will lay in bed quietly for 20 minutes and then start crying. I saw this on my video monitor with my last two children.
If this is the case, your baby most likely needs waketime adjusted. If the length you are doing was working great in the past, you likely need it a bit longer. Try adding five minutes and then work up from there. Typically a waketime that was too long will result in crying at the beginning of the nap–as soon as you put baby down.
Wake Window is Off
On that topic, nap issues are commonly caused by your baby’s wake window being too short or too long. You need it just right for your baby to sleep well.
>>>Read: How to Tell if Baby is Overtired vs. Undertired
Pain, Sickness, or Discomfort
It is normal for a baby to struggle with sleep if they are in pain or sick. You will want to address the pain or sickness and help your baby be comfortable so they can sleep well. You will also have to be patient as they get over the sickness.
There are many possible causes for pain for a baby including gas, reflux, and allergies.
Your baby also might just be uncomfortable. You may have overdressed your baby and she is super hot. You may have underdressed your baby and he is really cold.
Your baby also could have soiled their diaper since you put them down for nap.
New Skills
As your baby gets older, they develop countless new skills and abilities. These range from gross motor skills, like rolling over, to fine motor skills, like using fingers, to verbal skills, like talking.
Learning new skills is very exciting and there are times babies just want to practice their new skill rather than sleep. Your baby might get in bed and work on those skills for a while, then be too tired and struggle to fall asleep. Learn How to Stop New Skills from Disrupting Naps and Sleep here.
Stimulation Levels are Off
Babies need just the right amount of stimulation levels to sleep well. If your baby had too much or too little stimulation during awake time, sleep will be difficult. Stimulation comes from sights, sounds, smells, and activity.
More Nap Help
Here are some posts that can help you troubleshoot reasons for waking early from naps:
What To Do in the Meantime
Once you are working on that, you need to decide what to do in the meantime. It takes time to fix baby waking 20 minutes into nap, so what do you do with those short naps while you are trying to find the solution and solve it?
- If you can quickly see the reason for the early waking (too hot, poopy diaper, etc.), your first step would be to alleviate the reason. Change the diaper. Change the clothes. Fix the problem.
- Decide your next course of action. You ultimately want to get your baby to go back to sleep. Read How to Put Baby Back to Sleep for help. You might want to put your child back in the crib to go to sleep again. You might want to move your child to a swing, hold your baby, or baby wear to preserve this nap. You might want to try to get your baby to sleep in the crib. Here is a post on options for what to do when your child wakes early: Waking Early From Naps/Won’t Fall Asleep For Naps
- If you decide to try to keep the nap in the crib, do a quick nap routine again. This helps to communicate to your baby that is time to sleep still.
- Try the Baby Whisperer’s tactic of Pick Up Put Down for a no-cry way to try to get your baby to fall asleep.
- When Kaitlyn would wake early from naps as a newborn, it was usually after an hour long nap. At this point, it was better for her to move to the swing to finish out the nap. There were two times she woke after 20 minutes of sleeping. Those two times, I had her CIO (Cry it Out).
- If your child has a good enough nap, often CIO in the middle doesn’t work. If the nap was really short, then it often does work.
- If CIO doesn’t work at first, try again at an older age if your child still has napping problems. Several moms have found that once the baby got older, it suddenly worked.
Conclusion
As you resolve the issues preventing your baby from falling asleep and staying asleep, your baby will be able to sleep longer than 20 minutes. Good luck in your troubleshooting!
Related Posts
The Babywise Mom Nap Guide
The Babywise Mom Nap Guide eBook helps you establish successful naps from birth through the preschool years. It is a great resource!
Gary Ezzo, co-author of Preparation For Parenting and On Becoming Babywise, states: “Whether it is talking about establishing good nap behavior or offering solutions to sleep disruptions, this is a practical resource that I trust and recommend. The book is well laid out and answers just about every question a new or seasoned mom might have about babies, toddlers and sleep. We view this as more than a nap guided; it is a resource of encouragement that comes with compassion.”
This post first appeared on this blog in June 2008