When do babies start long afternoon naps

[Dinosaurus86]

DS is 5.5 months and sleeps ok at night (he wakes up to feed but generally goes back down fairly easily) but nap resists in the day. He will occasionally have a longer nap if moving in the pram early/mid afternoon but otherwise it’s rare to have anything longer than about 45 mins.

I’ve tried various techniques to extend the naps as suggested by Huckleberry but they don’t seem to work. I think he’s not quite there yet, developmentally. Although annoyingly he naps better for my mum, despite me trying all the same things.

I just wanted to ask, if you had a nap resister like mine at a similar age, did they ever start having 2+ hour afternoon naps in their cot or is it just not going to happen?

It would just be so helpful if he would nap longer and without me always having to take him out for a walk. I might actually be able to get something done!

They start taking long naps just around the time you need to start cutting the nap short to not affect bedtime

Exactly what I was going to say 😕

You do have to teach them.

mine was a shockingly awful sleeper until we caved and did sleep training. However..she had a 2-3 hr nap every afternoon from about 1 until she was 3.5yrs. To achieve this I had to have a proper nap routine and make sure I was consistently home…

Praise be!

It will never ever cease to amaze me that people think babies and toddlers will spontaneously understand that they need a proper restorative lunchtime nap without being taught. Ditto proper night sleep.

DD has only done a long naps a couple of times when she’s been really poorly. They were half an hour until she dropped to 2 naps which were 45 mins each. Then when she dropped to one nap it’s usually 1.5 hours.

To be honest I preferred the short naps as I could time them around a car journey somewhere or trip to see my mum. The longer nap in the middle of the day is such a pain for going out to do anything.

Can’t wait for her to drop the nap completely!

The 2 hour daily nap is a thing of utter bliss (when it's your first and only child of course)

Go out all morning, come home for lunch, put the baby down, have some unadulterated peace and quiet, go out again all afternoon.

Absolutely no need to be out all day.

And it never ceases to amaze me that people think those of us with crap sleepers haven't already tried all these things 😂 routine, lol, why didn't I think of that? 🙄

Probs need to try harder

Mine would cat nap when they were over tired, then it would be a 45 minuter and knock on chaos. If I started nap time earlier, before they were yawning, then they'd settle for a longer nap.

I have a 6 month old who has a 20 minute nap every 2 hours and is also up every 2 hours at night. It's slowly killing me

Haha! Very mixed responses but thanks everyone! It seems there might be hope yet that he’ll start taking slightly longer naps.

To be honest, it’s more the fact that they either need to be on me or moving that’s more of the problem. Even 45 mins in the cot would be great. As I mentioned, he will allow my mum to put him down in the cot sometimes which is really frustrating because when I try it he immediately wakes up (and doesn’t go back to sleep even if I wait a bit).

Sleep schedules for babies and toddlers are a strange thing for me to get my head round. All babies are different and I think the best thing for you is to adapt to what your baby is doing and make it work for you as best as you can rather than trying to force something because other babies do it

My dd is a brilliant night sleeper but doesn't have very long daytime naps. I try not to stress it or push for it to be a thing

My babies were always put down in their cot with blackout blinds for their nap. Consequently they slept for about 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 hours a day, all three of them. I found if we were out and they had to nap in pushchair the most they slept was an hour. Then they would be grumpy.

What age did they start doing that @caringcarer? We do have blackout blinds in the bedroom but he still won’t go down in the cot.

Mine started consistently going into the cot for a longer afternoon nap from about 8mo. I didn’t sleep train.

Mine on 2 naps a day by 4.5/5 months. Afternoon nap around 2.5 hours, morning nap shorter as our and about

Thanks all. He’s still on 3 (occasionally 4) naps at the moment: early morning, late morning and then afternoon. Bed around 7, or 8 if he has an extra nap.

Mine had a one nap of about 45 mins late morning at that age and then dropped naps altogether just after 12 months. I was gutted 😂