Naps, killing me

[Becnog]

My DD has been sleeping night through since 6 months which is great. She self settles (if we sit beside cot and takes 20 +mins). Her day time naps used to be ok but lately they are a night mare. She fights me like a demon bit eventually goes off when rocked in arms, I have tried self settling but won't work.....though does for child minder. She used to do two 1hr-1.5hr naps. Now she barely does 30 mins. I'm really struggling with this as she is over tired a lot and I'm home alone 12 hrs a day and her naps are.my only down time. Any help appreciated before I got mad

My DD (7 months) was exactly the same... You could set your watch by her waking up from a nap after exactly 30 minutes. She also needed rocked to sleep and would not self settle at all.

In the last couple of weeks I have tried a short nap routine of nappy change, quick story and into sleeping bag. She then goes into her cot in a dark room and I put white noise on, say good night and leave the room. I only go back in if she starts to get upset or is showing no signs of being sleepy but I am lucky in that she rarely cries when in her cot, she just plays. Within a few days she was settling herself to sleep within 5 minutes.

The trick to this working I found was getting the wake times right... She usually gets up at 0630/0700 and a nap time of around 0900/0930 seems to work best for her. She will sometimes only sleep for 30 minutes at this nap and then will have another nap around 1230
...we do the same routine and at this nap she will now sleep for roughly 2 hour and she can now manage from then until bedtime of about 1830/1900. If she Wakes early I used to go in to try settle her but realised I was actually stimulating her to wake up more so now I leave her for 15 minutes or so (unless she is crying) and most of the time she goes back to sleep. If not, I will just get her up and give her a short afternoon nap to see her through to bedtime and she will go to bed slightly later instead.

If she Wakes early in the morning I just move all her naps earlier so she isn't awake longer than 2 and a half hours (except between last nap and bedtime when she can last longer). She doesn't really nap well when we're out and about so if I know that we will be doing something later that day, I will let her sleep longer during her morning nap instead.

It took about a week and at first I found it hard just leaving her in her cot awake but things just seemed to click after that and as soon as she could settle herself to sleep, the naps suddenly got longer. Hope some of that helps you :) I know how hard it is having a cat napper!!!

Sorry didn't realise that was so long. And it was in paragraphs before I posted

Just another thought... We got rid of her dummy at the same time we started all this as a lot of the time she was waking up because her dummy fell out. It was difficult for the first couple of days as she always got her dummy to go to sleep but she doesn't even miss it now!

Wow her routine is so similar to my girls. That's so great the way you got it all working so we'll. I'd love a two hour nap. Even in childminders she will only do a half hour, yet for about two months I had her doing two over the hour and it was great. Big fans of the white noise here too. It doesn't matter how early she wakes from second nap she refuses a third nap since about 9 months so could go for 6 hours until bed (7.30 as dad only gets home at 7, otherwise it would be 7). I'll definitely give the story a shot and hopefully it will work. Thanks

It's so hard trying to get anything done isn't it? She still sometimes only does a 30 minute nap so whenever I put her down I never know how long I will have