8 month year old naps driving me mad!

[Binkybix]

My baby goes down awake in her cot, and I stay with her while she falls asleep alone. She almost always wakes up within 30 minutes or even less. It's driving me mad. I can't do anything and she's always tired. I put her down between 2 - 2.5 hours between wake times. If I try to shush her back she just gets furious.

I have a toddler too so can't be spending hours with her sorting this out.

Sleep at night is ok - sometimes wakes early and wake by sleep again.

I'm not keen on using pram too heavily because she wakes when we stop, if we go inside, of a dog barks a mile away etc etc and it means the whole day has to be factored around her timings, which means the toddler really misses out.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[FATEdestiny]

I've got four children, I understand the difficulties factoring baby's nap times (and feed times) around the rest of the family. Everything has to fit around schools for me too.

Fact is, this just is the way of things when you have more than one child. You do just have to fit baby's sleeps in and around the rest of family life.

If she's still at the short nap stage, I wouldn't bother with cot naps. I st naps in the cot once they are established as longer - more like 90 mins plus. Up until the bouncy chair when at home or the pushchair/carseat if we needed to be out.

The key to avoid over tiredness is to limit time awake, so make the short naps frequent. I wouldn't go more than 2 hours awake between one nap and the next. At 8 months old it could be shorter than this, 90 mins awake would be OK too. 2 and a half hours seems too much to me. Would be OK if baby way having longer 90 minute naps, but not for the short catnap stage.

[chloechloe]

I used to drive myself with crazy with DD's naps as she would never sleep for longer than 30min. Everything I read suggested I was doing something wrong - she was overtired / undertired / overstimulated / under stimulated and I should absolutely try to get her into a second sleep cycle.

Fact is, for many babies it is just developmental and they don't sleep for longer than 30-40 min when small. When I realised that I was a lot more chilled out - I just concentrated on making sure she had lots of naps - she was having 5 x 30 min a day.

The good news is that at some point they just grow out of it. DD started napping for longer at around 8 months. It coincided with her getting a lot more active - pulling herself up and cruising. Hopefully your little one will grow out of it soon - if must be even more difficult when you have 2 to look after. Not sure that helps - but hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel!

[Binkybix]

Thanks both! She used to do longer naps in the pram, but then they got really short and crappy! It's like she learnt to do longer naps and then forgot again, so I thought I might as well try the cot (also less disturbance from her big brother).

She takes a very long time to get to sleep too so done days I just can't face doing it as often as I should and she just has to take her chances!

[chloechloe]

It's frustrating isn't it! It sometimes used to take me 30min to get DD to sleep for 30min, so I feel your pain! The worst return on investment ever!