How do you extend naps?

[beginnersluck]

Extending daytime naps seems to be a well accepted way of improving night time sleep - but how do you do it?

If they nap in the buggy and wake after 30mins, how do you get them back to sleep again?

And naps at home - if feeding back to sleep or rocking doesn't work, what do you do?

If they nap for 30mins, apparently, they are over tired. A sleep cycle is 45minutes, so they will (if put down at the right level of tiredness), sleep a minimum of 45mins.

How old is your dc? Dd is 8mo and I put her back in her buggy no more than two.hours after she wakes in the morning. She gets a little push for a bit, and drifts off. If I leave her to it (and have caught her at the right time), she does the 45mins.

A little trick to make sleeps longer is to.go back.in at around 35mins and give the buggy a rock. Back and forth, enough to rouse them out of that first 45min cycle but rather than wake, the rocking sends them into another cycle.

It works like a charm for.me, and others.on here who have tried it say it works for them too.

What is your dcs current sleep patterns?

He is 7mo and generally does 45mins - but we're trying to do No Cry Sleep Solution (worked amazingly after just a few days - but a week in it has gotten a bit worse again). It says that a nap less than one hour is not enough. (I always wondered about this 'magic hour' though, seeing as a cycle is supposed to be 45mins). Plus everyone says they should be napping 3-4 hours a day - which is just not possible if naps are short.

Sleep pattern is that he generally wakes 5:30-6:30am, then naps 2 or 3 hours later and then again, 3 or 3 1/2 hours after that.Then depending on how early he's woken from his second nap, he may have a third or he may just end up being super-tired before bedtime which isn't good at all! I generally go with his sleepy signs (eye rubbing etc). I've tried putting him down before the eye rubbing etc and it just means he won't go to sleep.

Normally if he is napping in the buggy we are on the move as we can't fit it in our flat - it used to be that if we stopped, he'd wake up so now we just keep walking. So if he wakes, I don't know what our strategy should be as we're already pushing him along. Maybe I should stop moving once he's asleep and just find a cafe or park to sit in?

I used to do one 45 minute nap in the morning, one 1.5+ nap in the afternoon either in bed with me or on my lap so I could feed/rock back to sleep, and then one 45 minute nap late afternoon.

Not all babies will do longer naps. DD was a serial short napper - 40 mins max was all she ever slept, no matter what I did. I tried wake to sleep, wearing her in a sling, pick up put down and many other 'techniques' at 10 mo she started stretching out one nap by herself until she did have one big nap in the day. For 10 months everyone else I knew was getting at least one longer nap from their baby in the day, I felt I was doing something wrong.

With hindsight, I wish I hadn't stressed over it & had just accepted she only needed short naps during the day.

Currently pregnant with DC2 & will be going with the flow this time.

Sometimes you just have to accept that's the way it is.

Hope you find a solution though

Ditto. I stressed about it but it was fine in the end. I spent about three months hovering over her between 7 and 10 months ready to try to placate her back to sleep if humanly possible. I usually managed to get her sleeping to about 50mins, and sometimes I could get her out beyond an hour, but pretty rarely. Then about 10months she sort of got it. I still sometimes have to rock her back to sleep or stroke her back - rocked today actually after 1hr15 as she woke up and screamed, which is when I usually try, and she's 17 months. Basically I she wakes up crying I will try for about 10mins to keep her lying down and stroke her, or if she's squirming give her a cuddle and gentle rock. If she's happy, I don't. It's not easy! I could never get her to stay asleep in the pushchair. Good luck.

Thanks for the responses - I guess I should chill out a bit! It was just so great when he did randomly have some longer naps when we started NCSS and I really want to do anything to get him to sleep well at night!

I like the idea of trying to help extend one nap a day - that seems more manageable. And although wake to sleep scares me, it has had many good reviews so maybe I should try it!

Thanks!