Ds has always been a bad daytime sleeper, right from birth. It has always been an incredible shock if he has ever slept for more than 30-40 mins. Don't get me wrong, he will occasionally do the odd hour and a half here and there but never consistently, and I almost find it more frustrating as it shows that he can do it.
He currently has a morning half hour and afternoon half hour. If he was ok on this I wouldn't mind, but i feel he is very grumpy with it and when he does do the odd long nap he is so much happier afterwards. I have basically spent the last 15 months solidly stressing about his sleep.
Thankfully his night-times are ok. He goes to bed (I.e. properly going to sleep) by 7pm and sometimes sleeps through til 7am, although after a recent period of illness he seems to have got into the habit of waking at around 4/5am. I have worked very hard to get to this place though as until he was about 6mo he was fully cosleeping and waking every 2 hours. He now goes down very happily in his cot; i just put him down and leave the room and don't need to wait for him to go to sleep or anything. He has a dummy in his mouth and likes to hold a dummy as well to squeeze and so I just leave several in his cot and he self soothes through the night, reaching out and grabbing one if he wants one (I watch him on the video monitor).
My question is, what can I actually do to improve the naps if he completely self-soothes anyway and it wouldn't work to try and shush him back to sleep or something...in fact that seems to just annoy him!
I've been wondering if I should try moving to one nap but I'm just terrified that I'll just end up with him having one 30min nap. I have tried it a couple of times and he also often only has one nap when he's at nursery (he's there 2 days/week) but it's just been really hit and miss as to whether the one nap is lengthened to an hour or just stays at 30 mins. Should I just persevere? The days where he only has one 30 min nap are HELL!
Why doesn't he have 2 hour naps like every other baby I know??!!