Any advice? 9 week old only naps for 30 minutes!

[llamallama]

Hello

I am a regular mums net reader but don't post very often, I need some advice or direction if anyone can help?

I have a 9 week old DD and she is great, a generally very chilled and calm baby. She sleeps well at night and we seem to have a bedtime routine sorted. She has bath at 6.30 and then I feed (EBF) her to sleep. Once sleeping I transfer her to her cot (normally between 7pm/7.30pm) She will then normally go through till 2am, occasionally 4am or even more occasionally 5am! So I have so worries that she can sleep and i assume self soothe to some extent as she must wake up during these long stretches? She doesn't tend to cry when she wakes though, even when she wakes at 2am for a feed. She sleeps next to our bed in a cot and I can hear that she is awake and starting to fret and I get to her before she starts crying.

The problem we have is day time naps. Until now she would nap for 1 hour - 2 hours but in the last week or so she has started just napping for 30 minutes, I can literally time her to the minute!

She is not yet napping alone in her cot, but normally in her pram, in the sling, or I feed her to sleep and she will nap in my lap. Occasionally I have managed to put her in her cot once she is asleep, but I think we are a long way off being able to "put her down for a nap" in her cot.

Is this to be expected? And is there anything I can do to help her to nap longer?

She only tends to have a maxiumum of 2 hours awake time between naps, I start trying to put her down for a nap after 90 minutes so so but take my cue from her and watch for yawns/glazed eyes etc.

I have tried white noise, helps to send her off to sleep but doesn't seem to impact her staying asleep any longer.

Any advice on settling babies in their cot for a nap? Is she still too little to expect her to do this?

She was swaddled up to a month old but now sleeps in a sleeping bag or one of those 2.5 tog sleep suits. I am thinking swaddling again might help, but then again she clearly doesn't need it if she sleeps well at night!

Any advice? Sorry for being rambly!

It's quite normal - mine slept 45 minutes. They just need lots of naps!

You can try patting/rocking/feeding etc 5 minutes before they usually wake to try to get them into the next sleep cycle, with the hope that they'll soon learn to stay asleep by themselves - though this never worked with ds. I just accepted he had short naps, but I'd try to ensure he had one long nap a day in the sling/pram, or by holding him so I could feed and rock him back to sleep when he woke, or by going to bed with him and sticking a nipple in his mouth every time he stirred.

He started doing 2+ hour naps again at about 7 months, really suddenly.

My 4 month old DS only has 30 minute naps. When he was tiny he would sleep for over an hour, then it dropped down to 45 mins, and now he is mostly clockwork, waking after 30 mins. If he seems to still be sleepy, I try to settle him again, but this never works, he won't go to sleep again til his next nap ( he can only manage 1-2 hours of the waking world before getting sleepy again).

I had almost the same issue and was tearing my hair out as I could really have done with a longer break in the day. DS would wake up like clockwork after 45 mins, crying inconsolably as if he'd had a bad dream so I always had to go to him and get him up. Even though he seemed tired he'd never go back to sleep. The only way he'd slept for the 2 hrs I thought he needed was in his pram- maybe he felt more cocooned. But I was too tired to do 2-hr walks every day so had to put up with the crying thing.
I persevered with putting him in his cot for naps and using the same settling routine- he'd cry and if longer than 10 mins, I'd go and resettle etc till he fell asleep but I didn't feed him to sleep. He needed 3 naps a day because of the short midday one and the last nap I took him out for a walk always.
Long story short: he eventually stopped waking up crying after about 6 months and now does about 1 hr 40 or 2 hrs at 1230- he's 13m.
I think they get there in the end and the main thing you're after,I guess, is good self-settling habits so that night-time sleep is undisturbed for you. A great book I found is Mark Weissbluth: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.

My DD did this and I used to go in and get her up and assume that was nap time over. Then one day, she was napping in her pram and I heard her stir so I went in and put her dummy back in and rocked the pram a bit and she went back to sleep - for another hour! I was delighted :) I started to use monitors even if she was only in the next room so that I would hear her start to wake and get in there quick to get her back to sleep before she woke up properly. After that, 1 1/2 naps became the norm not any more though

She was possibly a bit older than 9 weeks though, before she'd nap anywhere other than on me.

DD is 13 weeks and only naps for 30 mins -45 max.
Looking forward to longer naptimes in the future. At what age did yours starting sleeping for longer Kirrin?