2, 3, 4 rule

Isaac was a poor sleeper when he was a baby. Because of this, I thought I had done my homework on sleep issues, so I was surprised a few months ago to discover something completely new. Maybe I did read about it back when he was a baby, but I was too tired to absorb it? Or maybe I read and then ignored it because of my dislike of "sleep training" and artificial routines?

I first noticed the "two, three, four rule" on my own when Laurel was six months old. We had been doing it spontaneously. More than two months ago, when Laurel began taking two naps a day, I discovered that it was easiest to get her to take a long morning nap after she had been awake for two hours. Her afternoon nap seemed to work best after she had been awake for three hours. And bedtime came readily after she had been awake for four hours.

There are three benefits to this routine: the ease with which she falls asleep, the long naps she takes, and the good mood preserved by the even spacing of naps.

A day or two after I noticed this phenomenon, I read a blog post at Ask Moxie entitled Quick and Dirty on Sleep that included a description of it. Laurel wasn't the only one!

Perhaps because it developed organically, the way we follow this routine is far from rigid. Now I watch Laurel to see how sleepy she is, and then add somewhere from zero to 30 minutes to each block of wakeful time. In the morning, for instance, she might be awake two hours and 20 minutes before her first nap. I do this because two plus three plus four equals only nine wakeful hours, which isn't enough for Laurel. (At six months she was awake 11 hours in a 24-hour period; at eight months she is awake ten hours and 40 minutes.)

The most important stretch of time is the four-hour wakeful period prior to bedtime. If we have mistimed her afternoon nap and there are fewer than four hours left before bedtime, she won't be able to fall asleep; if there are more than four hours left before bedtime, she will either become cranky or run the risk of taking a catnap, which in turn will push bedtime back.

Yes, this means that sometimes I wake her up. In the mornings I don't let her sleep past 7:45 a.m., and I don't let the afternoon nap go later than 4:30 p.m. Crazy, I know!