6 month old hard to settle for naps

[claireybelle01]

My 6 month old nap times are driving me mad! I just can't get her to settle by herself. It goes a lot better at night, sometimes it's easy, we do the bedtime routine and then she chats to herself for a bit then asleep. But naps have always been a different story!! Prob doesn't help that am anxious about it. She only ever sleeps 30-40 mins at a time, and am tending to rock her to sleep and then put her in her cot. She only ever really has 1 nap in her cot a day, then I tend to be out so it's either pushchair or carrier. It's the settling in her cot that drives me mad, this morning it took an hour!! I just wanted to know what has worked for other people and whether it gets easier in time, and I just need to be patient or do I need to do some sleep training? She tends to have 3 short 30-40 mins naps a day. And what is with this notion of a 1.5-2 hour nap?! She hasn't done that in months?!?! Am frustrated.....

Marking place! Have same situation with ds

Honestly - if she self settles at night who cares how she naps in the day? Also even if she didn't self settle at bedtime - naps are always a bit different IME.

Do you have a set routine for naps? I found this worked better. So first one about 90 mins after waking, second one three hours after waking and third one a power nap.

I got dd to self settle by feeding, rocking then into the cot with a light up sea horse thing that played dreadful music. This was not a deliberate ploy - I have an older ds so had to see to him on occasion and dd would sometimes self settle (this was from 5/6 months). But I had plenty of times when she didn't due to various phases.

Ds, my eldest, sounds like your baby. He was a serial short napper until 9/10 months or so. I basically would have to run in at about 5 mins before he would normally wake for a nap and rock him back to sleep. He then got used to sleeping longer. He never really self settled, even when I went back to work and we had a nanny look after him. (this was quite common among my peers who had babies - the CM/nursery/nanny would have to cuddle them to sleep).

Sounds normal to me - my DD used to drive me nuts at nap time and it was only really when she was 13 months that there was anything like a dependable nap time (long may it last - she's just turned 2). Stick with it, 40 mins sounds v familiar to me. The babysleepsite is v good for tips about napping and guidelines for how long babies should be sleeping. The thing I found really helpful was to think of everything as a phase - good and bad :) Sounds like you're doing everything right x

My 6 month old only naps 3x30 mins a day. It's like clockwork, dead on 30 mins!!!

I've just learned to accept it as she goes down at about 7:30 and sleeps through till 8am. I'm happy to handle the lack of naps for that!!

Longer naps are, I think, partly developmental, so something she'll grow into. I also think, however, you can do stuff to help. I found at 6 months DD would go past one sleep cycle (ie sleep longer than 35 mins) sometimes in her pram, but never in her cot. So I worked on helping her learn to nap past a sleep cycle - in the pram I'd just keep moving until she'd been asleep for 45 mins and then park up somewhere quiet - this was great as it was summer so the walking helped me lose the baby weight and then it was nice to sit In a quiet park reading while she finished her nap. Not so practical given the current season. For cot naps, I'd re-settle her by picking her up and rocking her back to sleep - no talking, or eye contact, just quickly scoop her up and get rocking. This often took perseverence and would take longer than it had to get her to nap in first place (usually around 10-15 mins and I'd give up after 20) but was worth it as she'd usually go back over for an hour. And, more importantly she soon started taking longer naps. She was an utterly crap short napper until about 6.5 months, then after doing the aforementioned plus, I'm sure, her just growing into it, she got into a regular nap routine of, on average, about 40 mins in the morning and about 90-120 mins after lunch.

Just realised I didn't really answer your main point re settling for naps. I used to have to rock DD to sleep for cot naps and transfer her. Now she'll self settle at lunchtime, usually, but I still have to rock her for morning nap, which I'm fine with as it usually only takes 5 mins. We have a little pre-nap routine (into sleeping bag, draw blind, quick story, white noise on), which helps.

Are you sure your DD is tired enough but not overtired? I went by sleepy-cues until about 6 months, when that starts getting less reliable, so starting going by awake time. At 6mo, DD could go 90mins btw waking up in morning and first nap, then 2hrs btw that and 2nd nap and then another 2.5 hrs btw that and her 3rd nap.

Thank you for your support ladies. We do kind of have a routine, into sleeping bag soft music cd I and rocking and shushing, but not often tried putting her down sleepy but awake!! I like the idea of trying to get her back to sleep around the 30 minute mark by rocking again, will try that.

It's the middle nap in the day nao that I think she needs longer, as she most grumpy after that. On the carrier I can get her to sleep for longer but that's only because I'm on hand to jiggle back to sleep as soon as she stirs!!

It's comforting to know that others are having the same thing with your little ones, I guess thats what I need to hear, that it's normal!!

By the way, has anyone used a cot mobile? If so how and when?!

Merry Christmas all!

I'm watching this thread. I have a three month old and she naps mostly in the sling! Reason is I have a two year old who needs entertaining so don't have time to go up to nursery and settle her for naps (my 2 year old v demanding).

I am slightly nervous because I need to address it but how do I settle with a toddler around?

Help...

My 8 month old sleeps on me still, for about 40mins, twice a day. I got into bed at midday today with her, hoping for a sleep myself, but she had her 40 mins then we got up

Did you ever get her out of napping in the sling? How did you do it? I'm in same position now with 5 and 3 year olds to look after