How to break the dreaded 40 minute naps?

[iwasagirlinavillage]

Is the only answer to this to teach self soothing so she knows to get back to sleep if she wakes up at the end of the sleep cycle? She sleeps fine at night and doesn't wake up every 40 minutes so I know she is capable of doing it. But in the day every nap is 40 minutes. Any tips to tackle this?

[Timetogrowup2016]

How old is baby ?
40 minutes naps are very very normal especially until they drop to two naps when they should lengthen naturally .
If baby only sleeps 40 minutes naps male naps more frequent and less awake rkmr between

[iwasagirlinavillage]

She is 7 months but 5 months corrected.

When she wakes up she's still tired which is why I think she needs more. Plus it's a guaranteed 40 minutes, you can set your clock by her.

[FATEdestiny]

If you always try to resettle back to sleep after every nap, she'll learn to sleep for longer. It will take time though, and proactively teaching her.

I kept naps in the bouncy chair until they lengthened. So at baby first stirring I would put dummy back in and begin rhythmic bouncing to get baby back to sleep. Cosleeping for naps with immediate boob access may also work. I didn't move to cot naps until baby wasn't waking between sleep cycles, so naps became longer.

If you are waiting for baby to passively gain the skill of lengthening her naps in her own time, or if naps are suck that movement and/or some thing to suck aren't possible, it will happen but will take longer. Allow for up to 12 months old for naps to lengthen on their own.

I'm the mean time, keep short naps frequent to avoid over tiredness, 60-90 minutes awake time between one nap and the next.

[PontypandyPioneer]

Mines the same except 30 mins! I've had two babies who catnap and it's so frustrating!!

He's had 20 mins this afternoon, and I've just spent 25 mins rocking the pram back and forth to get him off again.

I'm very jealous of people who say their babies nap for an hour or two - I can honestly say that between my two DS's, this has happened a handful of times!

[Jasquers]

Mine did 30 min catnaps ftom around 1 month. I decided to go in when he woke and patted him back to sleep. Sometimes he would fall back asleep quickly, other times it could take up to 20 mins. It's worked though as within a week or so he started sleeping up to 2 hours a nap! Continuous white noise and dark room also.

[superking]

Both of mine started stretching out their naps of their own accord around the 7 month mark, fingers crossed you may find it just happens by itself!

[mimiholls]

My dd self soothes and would still only nap for 40 mins up to about 7 months so I don't think it's down to that. Naps often lengthen as they get a bit older I would just wait for her to progress naturally and in the meantime have more naps throughout the day. You could be there forever trying to get her to go back to sleep after 40 mins and in my experience it's just fruitless.

[Newmother8668]

Fate is correct. Even if he seemed drowsy for 5 min afterwards and still woke up, you need to teach him in a bouncy chair. So, some naps, my baby will do up to two hours on his own and will wake twice but resettle without me doing anything and some naps, when I see him stirring, I bounce him back to sleep, which I did today. He ended up sleeping for 90 min, as I bounced him back to sleep twice. My baby is now 5 1/2 months and went through 4-5 weeks of sleep regression and now it's just getting better.

[AndIAskMyself]

With my DS it happened quite naturally. One day he woke after a nap and he was so cranky and I could tell he wanted/needed longer so input him straight back down. This happened a few times, and then one day he woke from a nap, I could see him on the monitor and he just lay there not crying. I had some jobs to do so I finished those up and by the time I had finished he had just gone back to sleep himself. So from that point on I would just leave him at every nap if he didn't cry or get agitated. He would always go back to sleep around 10 minutes after opening his eyes.