Tell m about your 5mo naps?

[hopingforanother]

Hi!

Ds was a very good napper from birth to about 4 months but is now struggling. He used to settle so easily and slept for about an hour at a time.

He's now almost 22wks, bf but just introduced a bit of baby rice at lunch times. He was having 3naps of 45-60 mins. In the last few wks he started refusing one of the naps, then we were both ill and our routine went out of the window. Now trying to get back on track but with just 2 naps, one at about 10 or 11 for an hour and one at 3 or 3.30.

I take him off to bed and we do a sleepy time routine as soon as he yawns or looks tired, once in bed he almost goes to sleep with a little bit of grizzling or sometimes none but then starts sucking his hands and trying to grab his feet and ends up crying hard. Once this happens pretty much nothing will get him off to sleep. His sister was a chronic non napper and I don't want to spend the rest of my maternity leave fighting with a tired baby, trying to wrestle or jostle him to sleep, or entertaining him because he's too tired to play on his own but unable to get to sleep!

I want to know if I'm aiming for the right amount of sleep and what others do!

How many naps does your 5 mo have?

How long are they?

How much time do you spend trying to get them to sleep?

Thank you!

At 5mo my daughter (who has never been, and still isn't, keen on naps!) was having 3 x 40 minute naps a day. I think it was at this point I used shush/pat to get her to sleep in her cot. This took a few days (first day took 40 mins to settle her) but after that she would self settle for the first two naps. For some reason not the third though, for which I'd have to take her out in the pram. Thankfully she dropped the third nap at around 9-10 months.

Nothing would get her to nap longer, nothing. In the end I decided that as she was sleeping at night and jolly in the day, I'd just give up trying to extend her naps.

At 1yo now, she has one slightly longer nap or two shorter ones, but she has never had these mythical 2 hour naps I keep reading about, and I don't think she ever will!

My DD will not sleep for more than 30mins during the day but we usually manage 3 naps at about 9.30, 12, and 3. It's not enough because she's still grumpy but it's all we can manage.

Thanks Shush. Like the name! Yes I went the sssh pat route with dd, but it has never worked with ds sadly, actually it didn't work very well with dd either! I find myself sash-ing at 150 decibels :-) two short naps sounds about the same. Just need to get him asleep for those then! It's horrid because he clearly wants to go to sleep and is so close but just can't quite get there.... He has always slept in his cot and rarely falls asleep in pushchair. Occasionally he'll doze for a few minutes on the boob...

Luckily he will go down easily at night, at the mo... And sometimes he will go off in minutes for a nap with no fuss or drama.

Mamjo, what do you do with your grumpy dd? Ds gets clingy when overtired, so seem to be waggling soft toys endlessly...

How long is a sensible amount of time to get a baby to sleep? I used to feel like half an hour was a good investment but often that doesn't do the trick at the mo.

Well, Ds didn't manage a single nap yesterday. I've managed to get him to sleep just now, but had to rock, jiggle, shhh, pat etc. He's a bit too heavy for that!

I wonder if it's worth trying to get him to sleep for naps at all. Maybe I should leave him to it and not try and encourage naps, maybe he'll get over this stage magically and start getting off to sleep again. I know this won't work but I really can't be dealing with spending hours in a darkened room every day with crying baby just to squeeze out a couple of paltry naps!!!

Anyone done this? Just let them get more and more tired? I mean if you offer a nap and they don't go off quickly, let them get up and carry on? I know from experience that babies get more wired the more tired they are, but is there a point where they give up and fall asleep? Yesterday it was at bedtime that this happened.....