Naps! Will she ever master them?

[Sarah2506]

I have a 6.5 month old. She sleeps 730- 7 ish, normally with one wake up for milk. She will have three day time naps of no more than 30 mins. I would like her to have longer naps, to help reduce the number of them and help her to sleep through. It's fair to say she doesn't have sleep problems, but I do. The wake up is normally at 3-4 am and I rarely get back to sleep. I am exhausted. I need longer naps to try and catch up myself!

Problem is she's not distressed when she wakes after a thirty min nap. So she just lies there chatting to herself eventually crying if she's there for an hour or so.

How do I get her to nap for longer? None of the conventional sleep training methods apply, everything assumes she is distressed!

Yes, she will. In her own time, which will probably be very soon.

Where is she napping? Dd started napping for longer at around 6 months old, but only if she was in her cot, with black-outs, white noise and soft music. That way, when she woke after the first sleep cycle, there was nothing to distract her and she went back off again.

Re: the night feeds: Have you tried a dream feed? it's worked for us.

She will get it, I promise. DD was like this and was a permanent catnapper unless she was somewhere that would rock her off when she stirred at 30 minutes, either in a pushchair or one someone so we could get her back to sleep. Does that work, can you accept defeat and go for one nice walk a day so she gets a longer nap?

About 8m, just before I went back to work (and was stressed about naps at the CM's) she started to get it. Same as you, nothing we tried helped but she did get it herself. I think everyone I know who was struggling with catnaps now has a toddler that will sleep for 1-2 hours easily.

At about 8m we did some CC for the 5am wake up - which like you I hated, I never properly got back off to sleep - as we worked out she didn't want food, water, nappy change, real comfort etc., it was just a habit she'd got into about resettling. Within 3 nights she was sleeping through, it was textbook CC (cried for 20 mins one night, 10 mins the next night etc) so it was clearly more habit than anything. Obviously not for everyone but just wanted to throw it out there.

Excellent. This is good news. She sleeps in her cot for morning nap, blacked out, silent etc. Wakes up locates toy plays in the dark:-)

Normally passes out at lunchtime wherever and then has a nap when we are on the way back from wherever in the afternoon. I often end up walking or driving around in circles to keep her asleep!

Mine all increased the length of naps once they were eating a reasonable amount for lunch (inc protein) not suggesting you rush the weaning but hang on in there!