6 month old. Really short naps

[Queenside]

My daughter is 6 months old and her longest naps are 45 minutes but often just 30.

Does this just improve as they get older? She has 3 naps a day so a total of about 2 hours in naps doesn't really seem enough and she doesn't seem to be in a great mood because if it.

I think part of the problem might be that she wants to do stuff and play when she stirs at 45 minutes do doesn't really want to go back to sleep.

Had anybody else had this problem and solved it of has it got better without doing anything?

My daughter was also a short napper at that age. She's nearly 18 months now and we've just transitioned to 1 nap a day which is usually about 1.5-2 hours long. I don't think there was much we did that actually got her to string together more than one sleep cycle (not that we didn't try). I think looking back that she mostly worked it out herself. She still occasionally wakes up after a short time and I try to leave her for 5 min or so to see if she can get back to sleep. Sometimes, like today, she manages it and sometimes, like yesterday, she doesn't. We stuck with three and then two naps as long as we felt she needed them (since they were often short) despite books and other parents suggesting she should be taking fewer naps. Fingers crossed that your daughter will start taking longer naps soon!

I found with both mine that once they were

(a) moving around more (crawling, pulling to stand etc) and

(b) fully established on protein meals at lunchtime (chicken casserole, shepherds pie type meals)

they made the transition to longer naps very easily. For some reason these two things seemed to help them resettle themselves after that initial 45 minutes. It does seem to be common in younger babies that they will wake like clockwork after their first sleep cycle, but as older babies/toddlers they develop the ability to resettle again...I know lots of people who have found this.

This is assuming though that the baby is able to self settle in the first place - if dependent on rocking/feeding/dummy sucking to sleep, for example, you may find they continue to wake and you need to do something specific to help extend the naps. If they can self-settle, though, you may well find they get longer without you having to do anything at all (which was what happened with both my two).

Thank you for your replies. She can settle herself so I guess I'm just going to have to wait! I prefer that really to feeling that I'm getting something wrong.

My Dd is the same. She can only manage 2 half hour naps a day, one in the morning and one after lunch. We then struggle to get past 6pm, meaning she's waking up a stupid o;clock having had her quota of sleep .

I don't get much of an evening. Because if I don't go to bed, then I don't get any sleep in before she wakes again.

McPhee when does your daughter go to bed? I make her wait until 6.30/7 but drag out the bath etc to distract her.

She's fast asleep on me by 6pm

Even if I feed/bath her late, she just.can't.make.it......

Yeah, DS was like this. Half an hour was his usual nap at around that age. He slowly started to be able to stay asleep for longer, and I guess that's when he went from 3 naps to 2.
I never tried to help him lengthen his naps, just let him get there in his own time.