Running out of ideas for extending naps

[sushidave]

My 7 month old DD never naps for longer than 30 minutes at a time and I?m running out of ideas for extending her naptimes.

After a nappy change, lots of talk of sleepy time, the same story (all in a dark room), she takes about 15 minutes of rocking, singing and sshing before going down. Transferring her to her cot is hazardous as she often wakes at this point, starts flailing arms and legs and we have to start all over again.

She?ll nap after about 2-3 hours of waking, so usually at around 9am, noon and 3pm, but is grouchy on waking and quite fractious on and off throughout the day. She?s clearly overtired, hence the mission to extend naps. Night time sleep isn?t bad; we get a 7pm-12 stretch, followed by a BF at midnight, and then a few resettlings every couple of hours, waking for the day around 6am.

Each Monday I try a new tack for extending naps. So far I?ve tried:

• Pick up/put down. She hated this and got very upset.

• Trying to get her to start a new sleep cycle on waking by using the same method I used for getting her to nap in the first place. She just gets upset and wakes herself up.

• Leaving longer waking times between naps. This just made her more grumpy, harder to settle, and naps are no longer.

• Leaving her to cry for 10 minutes on waking. I thought this might work as she has napped for up to 2 hours on long car journeys and we?ve had to let her cry between cycles. Doesn?t work at home though.

Not sure if it?s relevant, but she?s on 3 meals a day now, has just started reliably sitting up, and has a dummy for napping/sleeping.

Does anyone have any other good ideas for extending naps, or do I accept that she?s one of life?s catnappers? I'm all out of ideas and running low on patience!

You could perhaps try shorten the time between naps, certainly the first nap 2 hours after wake up? My DS went to 3 hrs closer to 10mths I think. I'm sure he went on 2,3,4 routine about that age, ie 2 hrs for first nap, 3hrs for second and so forth. He stayed on that months. Should say my DS is a good little napper but I need to put him to sleep in pram otherwise he'd be awake all bloody day. His night sleep has always been frigging awful but thats a whole other thread :)
Good luck..

I agree with the swivelHips, the 2-3-4 routine tends to work for us. The time's aren't set in stone though, for example my 8mth old dd usually does 2 1/2, 3, 4. The basic idea is that they should manage longer awake times as the day goes on.

One of the main problems may be that you are doing a lot to help her to fall asleep and so, when she wakes from the first sleep cycle (30 minutes), she cannot go back to sleep by herself.
You could try gradually reducing the props that you are using to get her to sleep. Easier said than done though I know! We had to do this when dd always fed to sleep. I gradually progressed to just lying with her in our bed (pretending to be asleep myself) until she 'taught' herself how to nod off, without the boob. The next stage after that was putting her in her cot to self settle.

IMO 'pick-up-put-down' is too over-stimulating for a 7 month old. We only picked up if dd became distressed.

You may find that she needs a third nap (not too unusual at 7 months). She may be overtired from lack of daytime sleep and, once she's caught up a bit, you may find the naps lengthen naturally, and her nights may improve too. The theory of 'sleep begets sleep'.

Despite trying everything, self soothing will only happen when baby's ready but you can do all you can to encourage it

Hope something in there is useful, good luck.

Sorry, ignore the 'three naps' bit - just read that she IS on three, doh!

My dd did this and it drove me crazy, so much effort for so little reward. She is 9 1/2 months now and I have been night sleep training and suddenly day naps have got longer. She did 90 mins this morning, and sometimes does longer in the pm, but 30 mins again today. I think a lot of babies do suddenly get better at 9 months. Hope your dc gets better soon.

Your post brought back memories, my dd was like this. The only place she would sleep for longer than 30 mins was in the sling but that only worked for a few weeks.
I tried PUPD (didn?t work). Dd has a dummy and I tried removing that as a prop (didn?t work). In the end I resigned myself to putting her down for a nap (in cot after a feed or by walking for miles with the pram) every couple of hours during the day. I don?t think dd ever had any deep sleep during the day until she was 7 months old or so. It was a miserable time.

On a positive note, her afternoon nap eventually got longer when I weaned. After a filling solids lunch (lots of cheese..) and a big bottle of formula she?d sleep for an hour or so more often than not at one of her naps. So at 7 mths she?d have a 30 min nap around 9am, another 30 mins nap around 11am ish (usually in the pram while walking back from a stimulating activity) then an afternoon nap around 2pm then early bedtime 6pmish. Could you try something along those lines and see if it keeps her tiredness at bay?

Hopefully things should improve for you, I found dd?s naps got longer when she started crawling and now she?s dropped to one nap. It also helped once dd could find the dummy and put it back in, I think you can get a teddy that has a dummy velcroed to it or something, you could try that?

Thanks for the supportive responses. Loads of useful stuff in there, and good to hear that there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

I?m keen to try the 2-3-4 pattern. One question: for say a 2 hour gap between naps, do I count from the point that DD goes to sleep or from when she wakes up?

DH and I had a good chat tonight about what strategies we could try next, and we?ve decided to reduce the number of props starting with the rocking, i.e. settling her in her cot rather than in our arms, but keeping the dummy and the sshing for now. Also being consistent across day time and night time settling to sleep.

Nicknamefail, how have you been sleep training?

And she should expect an increase of cheese on the menu , which is never a bad thing.

Gradual retreat. Working really well. Woke last night twice briefly but has a cold. Before that had been sleeping through. Hurray!

The gaps in the 2-3-4 routine are the 'awake times' so you count from the time they wake until the time they go to sleep again.
For eg: wake at 7am, asleep again by 9am, then next nap is three hours after they wake from this nap, then bedtime four hours after waking from 2nd nap, iyswim? If the final four hour awake time is too long, just do a short catnap a couple of hours in.

My DD only starting having long naps when she went from 2 to 1 naps in a day at about 9 or 10 months. I kept her up until after lunch (12ish) and then she would sleep for an hour and a half.

my thoughts:

1 can she self settle at all? if not, then it's going to be more difficult to get her to go more than one sleep cycle for naps. her sleep pattern at night sounds a lot like DD's before she learned to self settle. we taught dd to self settle using CC but I appreciate that's not for everyone.

2 work on extending the lunchtime nap. aim to start that one 3 hours after the morning nap ended, so if she woke at 9.30 begin at 12.30. if you have a baby who doesn't need much sleep, maybe even 3 hr 15 would be better.

3 My method for extending the lunchtime nap is by using the pram - I put dd in the pram (with snoozeshade on) at the start if the nap, rock her until she's asleep, then listen out for any waking up at around the 30/45 minute mark. if she starts waking up I rock again till she goes back to sleep. she will quite often sleep for another hour or more this way. I've been doing this for months and dd has gradually started to do a long nap without any waking up. I suspect this has just happened naturally rather than as a result of my nap extending, but the nap extension has worked well in the meantime to prevent overtiredness.