How to extend 30min lunchtime nap to 2plus hours?

[LittleOne76]

Any experience? My DS is 5.5mo and only naps for 30-40 min at a time. He needs to nap every two ish hours as a result so takes about 4 naps per day. He sleeps from about 8-8 most nights and wakes 2-4 times each night. I feed to almost asleep... So think he associates sleep with boob. Getting back to daytime naps, had anyone managed to get a cat napier to extend tfheir naps? Thanks

I think they just do it naturally in their own time, usually when they get more active. Not much help i know, but i spent some time trying to get my DS to nap for longer and all it did was stress me out. Live with it for now is my advice but don't stay in because of it.

DS is 15 mo old now and will sleep for a good two hours or more every afternoon. I seem to remember his naps became noticeably longer from around the time he began to crawl (8-9 months) and dropped his late pm nap. At that age he had an hour or two in the morning and the same again in the afternoon. You find with babies that as soon as they get a routine, something else comes along and it changes. Next you'll be worrying about whether he's ready to drop naps or whether he's sleeping for too long!

Oh and at 5.5 months i fed to sleep. It wasn't until 7.5 months that DS began sleeping for 12 hours. He's now a reliable 7.30-7.30 (no wake ups) little man with no 'sleep associations'. And he never needed 'sleep training' to get him out of bad habits.

I tried everything to extend DS's 30 minute naps but unfortunately nothing really worked - I could sometimes get him to sleep longer if I patted his back as he a started to wake or with white noise - but it was only when he was around 10 months that he started to take longer naps himself. He preferred to take his longer naps then in the morning and only took a long lunchtime nap when I dropped his morning nap altogether at 13 months. At nearly 2 now he sleeps happily for 2.5 hours at lunchtime. Bliss.

Thanks both. That's really helpful. I am not keen on the hard core sleep training and at the moment he's only waking a few times each night which I can handle. I can also live with the short naps and will be patient and let him settle into longer ones when he is ready. We will just do things around the naps. Luckily, he likes napping in his buggy so that's always an option.

It's funny how they develop and change so much.....

I found dd always slept best if I started her off by going for a walk then once asleep return home and leave her in the buggy in the hall. I got all errands done and a cuppa, she got 2hrs kip. People will no doubt shriek in horror of not napping in a cot but hey....she's alright....

My DS has always been like this ... brilliant overnight but has rarely napped longer than 40 mins during the day since he was about six weeks old (8 mo now). Whenever I asked Health Visitors / Doctors etc they always said not to worry about it and just be grateful for the brilliant nights .... and not to do anything that might impinge on the night time sleep.

I do find that the hairdryer will send him back to sleep if he wakes very quickly after falling asleep.

Just watch for it suddenly changing - about 5.5 months my DD suddenly went from 4x30mins to 2 naps of variable length. Like one of the other posters, at about 9-10months they started getting longer and sometimes I can now get her back to sleep if she wakes after 30mins.

Don't waste energy worrying (easy to say) and yeah naps in pushchair, sling, whatever, all good!

I wasted hours trying to extend DD's naps.....in the end she did it herself at around 13 months. Up til then it mostly 40 mins naps. At 18 months she now sleeps 1.5-2 hours at lunchtime. You can, if you like, wait til you hear the first signs of wakefulness and then rush in and resettle - so shush pat or feed or whatever. This might teach him to transition between sleep cycles but then again it probably won't. For my DD she had to learn to walk - then the sleeping came! She will walk up the stairs for a nap now if she is tiredd!!

I was referred to a sleep clinic with DD about 2 years ago. This was an amazing, NHS run clinic with a health visitor who specialised in sleep and who worked with us for 3 months on a weekly basis. (why there isn't one in every area I don't know!)

One of the things she had us try was averting a wake up. Our DD woke up after 45 mins from each nap (and all night every night). You could set your watch by it. We tried creeping in about 4 mins before she woke and trying to shhh her through the light sleep/wake up. The idea was to get her body used to sleeping through more than one sleep cycle. We picked one nap a day and did this for about 10 days (doing all the usual stuff at the other nap times). We then left alone for a week and then started it on a second nap time. We had some success with it and it wasn't too restrictive to my days either.

However, I think the advice about just accepting things as they are if you can live with them is very wise. If you're getting enough sleep to feel ok you could just relax and wait for it to naturally change. I ended up fairly obsessed with sleep and it wasn't good for anyone in my house!