How can I get my DD to nap?

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DD is 7 months old. Ever since she discovered the world was interesting (around 10 weeks) she has been pretty rubbish at taking long naps, occassionally she'll sleep for an hour but most of the time she'll only stay asleep for 30-40 minutes. Her night sleep used to be okay, she'd settle quickly and easily in her crib at some point between 6-7pm, have a dream feed between 10-11pm and then usually wake once or twice in the night for a quick feed before settling back in her crib easily. Then the dream feed became a wake up and demand feed. Then around 4 months she started waking more frequently and we got to the stage around 6 months where she would wake every 1-2 hours all night, and sometimes it would take an hour to settle her back to sleep. So we've started cosleeping, which may be helping with the night wakings. But now not only are we having the short naps and disrupted nights, we have frequent wakings in the evenings, and it's taking an hour or more to get her to sleep when she goes to bed at night. I'm sure that a big part of the problem is overtiredness because of poor daytime sleep so my question is how can I get her to nap for longer in the day?

I've tried blackout blinds, staying with her, letting her sleep on my chest, in the bed, in the cot, in the pram, taking her for walks, ssh pat, putting her down more often, putting her down less often, watching for tired signs, following a routine, ewan the dream sheep (she giggles at him), ...

Help!!!!

Hiya. 30 min naps & frequent waking after bedtime are typical indicators of overtiredness. 40-45min naps are often an indicator that your baby isn't quite tired enough at naptime to sleep for any longer. It may be she is caught up in an undertired/overtired loop & isn't tired enough to nap a decent length nap which leads to overtiredness by the end of the day.

Can you post your typical routine including wakeup time, time & duration of naps & bedtime & I'll try to offer some suggestions.

Hi omana thanks for your response. We don't have a timetable, I'm fairly baby led but have recently settled into quite a regular routine. A typical day is as follows (times are approximate as feeding is on demand, and I usually try to get her to nap as soon as the eye rubbing and ear pulling starts):

7am offer milk (sometimes she's fed around 5-6 so isn't hungry yet), get up, dressed etc.
8am breakfast
8.30am milk
9am nap
9.30am wake up
10am playtime/walk/activity/group
12noon dinner
12.30 pm milk
1 pm nap
2 pm (at latest) wake up
playtime
4pm milk
4.30pm tea
5pm naked wriggle time
5.30pm massage, bath
6pm story, milk
6.30pm bed

This afternoon I actually managed to get her to nap for 2.5 hours (although she woke in the middle and went back to sleep) and she settled much better this evening.

Hiya - I'm glad to head she settled much better after a longer nap the other day. Sounds like she had a big catch up nap to make up for the sleep she's been missing.

How does she settle for her morning nap - quickly, easily? And how is she when she wakes? Happy or crying?

The reason I ask this is b/c I am thinking she is in an UT/OT loop. She may not be quite tired enough to sleep any longer than 30mins for her AM nap. But with this nap being quite early & so short, she is awake quite a long time before her next nap (3.5hrs) and I suspect this is too long after such a short nap, meaning she is overtired for her PM nap & hence why she is only sleeping 1hr max. Then by bedtime she will be really overtired which is why she's struggling to settle & waking frequently. The next day, she will be overtired before her AM nap even starts (b/c of the bad night) & so she only sleeps 30mins again & so it goes on.

I am wondering if you could try a combination of 2 things. Firstly, bring the PM nap a wee bit earlier so you put her down at 12pm rather than 1. And see if this gets you a longer PM nap. It may just help her get over the OT & you might find that morning nap lengthens again if she is no longer OT.

If you still get 1hr max for your PM nap I would try & offer her a catnap at 3-4pm ish for 15/20mins which might just help her make it to bedtime. If she won't have a CN I would do a really early bedtime of 6pm.

I would also work on gradually shifting that AM nap a touch later, maybe by 5mins every few days until it starts at 9.15am & see what effect that has on the length of her nap. If she will nap for 45mins to 10am, you may find she can last until 12.30pm for her PM nap & hopefully she will sleep for 2hrs. It may be her AM nap needs to start even later, more like 9.30am & with that she might nap for say 1hr & then last the distance until her usual 1pm nap.

HTH.x

Thanks for the advice, think you might be right about the UT/OT thing.

Sometimes she settles quickly for her morning nap but she often fights it. Usually she's happy when she wakes up but sometimes she does wake up crying with her "I want to be asleep" cry.

I'll try putting her down earlier for her pm nap (will just have to be more organised getting lunch ready quicker!) and a little later for her am nap and see how we get on. She used to always have a late afternoon nap as well so we might have to bring that back for a little while and see if that helps.

You don't say whether she self-settles? We had similar issues 4-5 months but being less patient than you I decided to try to knock it on the head - the hour long wakeups combine with the frequent wakings were killing us. Taught self-settling (she could do it sporadically but it was getting less and less frequent) and nights improved greatly. We have still had issues crop up here and there but she's so much better than she was.

DD has never been great at naps so I feel your pain, now at 11mo she still has 2x30min on a nursery day, but generally things have improved a lot in the last few months - At 7mo I started sitting with her and if she looked like waking on 30mins pit my hand on her back and she usually went off again. She is now reasonable at stayin asleep but it has taken over 3 months and still sometimes she needs the hand on her back.

fififrog she could self settle by sucking her thumb until about 4 months when she just suddenly stopped, until then she'd usually go to bed awake and self settle if she woke between 6/7 and 10-11. Now she'll sometimes go back to sleep if I'm next to her but often wants to feed back to sleep. She's also started shaking her head to wake herself up if she's half asleep.

This could've been me writing a few months ago! DD, now 10.5 months, whilst she'd happily go to sleep in her cot (one battle won), would often only sleep for 30-45 mins a time, and it nearly killed me with tiredness, as this was combined with up down up down waking and grizzling from bedtime at about 7pm for maybe two hours, before she conked out. She was / is a very efficient feeder, so night-time wakings were usually 10 mins start to sleep again, so not so much of a problem.

I found that three naps helped, with the last one being super-short, 10-20 minutes around 4.30pm, to see her through 'til bedtime. Her naps have, I think, also improved since she's been crawling and is more physically tired.

Then a real breakthrough came when I read about the 2, 3, 4 theory, and things fell into place from there (...at around 7 months). If you haven't heard about it, it's really simple and based on the idea that babies need to sleep 2, 3, then 4 hours after their last wake up. So let's say your LO wakes at 7am, you'd put her down for a nap at 9am. Then if she wakes at 10am, put her down for a nap three hours later at 1pm, then four hours later at x pm, depending on time of wake-up. Looking at your timetable, it's very close to that already - so maybe stick to it like a limpet for a few days instead of being more baby-led, and see what happens...?

You have my every sympathy in the meantime, however!

Here's the article that inspired me: blogginaboutbabies.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/2-3-4-nap-schedule-for-older-babies/