5.5 month old 30 min naps. How to increase them?

[LillyLeaf]

DS is 5.5 months and only naps for 30 minutes when he's in his snuzpod. I can sometimes extend it to an hour if I can resettle him but it's rare. He'll happily nap on me for 1.5hrs in the afternoon (which I actually like sometimes, but don't get much done).

He sleeps in the dark with white noise. He usually needs me next to him and touching him to fall asleep but has fallen asleep without me a few times.

His awake times are 2 - 2.5hrs with 3-4 naps.

Has anyone had any success in lengthening naps? Or do they just naturally happen? If at all?

Do you make things quiet when he sleeps/naps? I found that carrying on as usual and making normal noises helped to keep my dd asleep longer as she wasn't disturbed by anything.

@saffire I tend to be very quiet but he does have white noise playing so I thought that would be ok. I don't think he gets disturbed he just wakes up after 1 sleep cycle.

I think it was around this age that my son started to do this. There was absolutely nothing I could do the lengthen the naps. He grew out of it eventually. I think it was a developmental thing.

I’d like to know this as my LO only does 1 sleep cycle. It did look like she was going to extend the afternoon one last week as several days did a long nap but this week she has failed to extend it and cried out. Normally wakes happy so wondering if it does just occur naturally or whether I’ll need to do anything. LO is just behind yours so 5 months and 10 days

DD never really napped for more than 1 sleep cycle. I was always very jealous of mums talking about 2-2.5 hour naps!!

DD only every managed 1 sleep cycle by herself until she was 1 and went down to one nap. For her afternoon nap I used to put her down for the first sleep cycle, run round the house doing whatever jobs I needed to do and then go back to her for when she started to stir so she could sleep on me for another 30-45 minutes. She'd sleep longer in the buggy or if she was in bed with me for the nap.

Mine lengthened naps at about 7m. Before that it was usually 30-40 mins.

I used to go in 5 mins before the cycle was over and use the white noise machine and rock the snuzpod. All while lying on the floor so that I wasn’t seen . It did work and then DD could do it herself after a few weeks.

Don’t know, we have just enlisted the help of a sleep consultant at a huge cost to try and correct this. We have tried everything that is written online to no affect.

It’s common, sadly, ours is 7m old.

My baby didn't this and then at 7 months stopped and started napping for 1 to 2 hours. Nothing I did would change it, just know it will stop naturally by itself

My DD did this until about 9 months. It's really frustrating but none of the advice helped us to lengthen them.