Crap naps and I dam not know what to do!

[singingpinkmonkey]

Apologies in advance for the ramble but I'm just feeling very overwhelmed at the mo.

My son is 6 months old and we have always struggled with naps. This weekend has been the worst we've ever had it and things haven't gone well this morning either.

Basically, he sleeps really well on a night time. He does wake up a couple of times but is able to settle himself back to sleep without too much intervention from me.

Daytime naps are a completely different story. Generally he wakes at between 6:00 - 6:30am and has a bottle and breakfast. I then try and put him in his cot for a nap at 8:00 - 8:30am and after crying and a lot of soothing from me he will nod off.
Then 30 minutes later he will wake up and no amount of settling will get him back off.

From then on the day is a mess as I'm constantly trying to gage when to put him down for his next nap and he ends up screaming and I give up.

I feel on edge all the time and get really annoyed if I have to leave the house as I feel like I can't get into any routine with him.

I expected this when he was a newborn but I read that at 6 months he should be consolidating sleep and that if he's having short naps at this age there is something wrong.

I just don't know what to do.

Naps never last longer than 30 mins whether he is in his cot, my bed with me, pram or car. I feel I have tried everything but nothing works.

Occasionally he has slept longer but there is no rhyme or reason to it, it just happens but not often!

I guess I just needed to vent as I'm so down at the moment.

Am I putting him down to early or is 2 hours too late?

[AutumnGlitterBall]

Mine is the same. Half hour is his usual though sometimes he will surprise me with an hour or more. But mostly it's half an hour on the dot. We just try to plan our days in three hour blocks to accommodate his sleeping, with us being in the car or walking at the time he's due to drop off. If I'm not going out, I'll still take him round the block and leave him in the buggy. He does sleep almost constantly from 7:30 pm to about 6:30 so I've just accepted that he doesn't want as much sleep during the day.

Are you sure your boy is definitely tired when you're putting him down? That might explain the bad temper if he's not sleepy yet. He might go another half hour up and then be ready for a sleep when you try again. For me, it's been trial and error to find something that works and it doesn't mean it works every time.

[Timetogrowup2016]

Sorry to say by daughter took 30 minute naps until she went to one 1-2 hour nap at 13-14 months

[singingpinkmonkey]

It's nice to know I'm not alone with it.

I think if I can just get a bit more organised with it then I will feel better.

I do get the feeling that sometimes I'm putting him down before he's tired. Maybe I should leave it another half hour and see if that works!

[FATEdestiny]

You can get organise, have routine and predict naps when they are only half an hour. As PP says, just divide your day into 22h30m blocks and plan to go out after 2h awake time, so baby naps in the car or pushchair. Or do it the other way and plan to be home after 2h awake time to have a cot nap.

Awake time is very child dependant, but 2h would be a good approximation for this stage. I'd probably have gone for 90m plus settling time at this stage, but 2h is good too. Gauge by your child's tempriment. If he is happy, alert, playing and not grumpy after 2h, he can probably go longer.

I use grumpiness and clinginess as the main ways to gauge when nap time is due. If baby is crying, wanting to be picked up and held, then this would be telling me baby is tired. I'd expect all awake time to be happy/alert/independant play. It's awake time that I get stuff done - housework, cooking, shopping etc is all done while baby is happily engaged in independant play. As soon as it wasn't, I'd do naptime.

As for naps extending past one sleep cycle, 6 months would be on the earlier end of the scale for this happening. There are things you can do to help, so giving a few minutes over to trying to resettle before baby wakes up properly is a good idea. But don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work, he's still little.

[singingpinkmonkey]

Thanks ladies, I appreciate you taking the time to help me. There is some good advice there.

The putting the day into blocks is definitely helpful. I tried it today and I did feel a lot less stressed and managed to get out and about.

*FATE - The last bit about 6 months being the earlier part of the cake for nap consolidation is a relief! I read in a baby sleep blog that if he wasn't sleeping longer stretches at 6 months it's a cause for concern!! It's been really getting to me.

I guess some babies want to sleep for half an hour at a time!

[helenfagain]

My son was a terrible napper till I started using Gina Ford's nap timings at about 6 months. I don't agree with her methods etc but her timings worked very well for us.