Agggh think my dd has dropped a nap

[Wilf83]

She has just turned 7 months & would normally have 3 naps a day lasting about 30 minutes each & then sleep all night. For a week now she's had her 2nd nap quite late so Ive put her to bed early so the third nap was cut out. Today she had her 2 naps & I put her in her cot for her 3rd nap 5.30 (which is abit late).But she is still asleep so I think that's her out for the night. But the only thing is she is still wearing her jeans & t shirt that has food all over it. Doh!!

I think most drop the third nap around 6 months ish? Can you encourage your dd to have a longer afternion nap to see her through til bedtime? 30 mins is short for an afternoon nap. What time does she have it?

She normally has it about 1ish but recently its been about 2. She will sleep for longer when she is in the buggy but hardly ever when she is in her cot. I try & put her dummy back in & snuggle her up to her comforter but she is wide awake!

Since my 7mo dd has been sleeping until 7-730am (instead of 6-630!) she's been having 2 naps a day. It seems she will often have 1.5hrs at the morning one and 45 mins for the afternoon. Can anyone advise me what times I should be aiming for dd to be asleep for these naps? I'm a ftm with a very head strong baby who fights sleep! I know on average a baby of this age should be getting tired roughly 2.5hrs after waking but she seems to be able to go 3-3.5hrs awake and I'm struggling to work out how to fit in her milk and food!

Google the 2 3 4 Routine, best natural routine going, believe me it works!!! All my Mummy friends now do this ...... Good Luck :)

My dd dropped her third nap about 6.5 months. Just started getting too late so would take her for chilled buggy ride or quick 10 min nap or early bedtime until she dropped it.

Dd usually goes 2.5 hours first thing then at least 3 but has been as much as 5 with no ill effects if lots going on to keep her interested. She's 7.5 months now.

Rachel - I read about the 2-3-4 napping and then realised that both my children followed that logic by around 6 months. That is - first nap 2 hours after waking in the morning and second nap 3 hours after waking from the first nap. Bedtime is 4 hours after waking from the second nap.

So my daughter wakes at 7, has her first nap at 9 and wakes from it at 10. Then the second nap is at 1, wakes up after 2 and is in bed by 6.30 - 7. Obviously this only works with reasonably long naps.

The gina ford routine pretty much is the 2-3-4 . It works if they are woken from first nap at 10. So the first nap should be shorter anx the afternoon nap the longer one (also helps as the morning nap is dropped and you keep the afternoon nap at about a year).

Thanks for advice. I'm really hoping she'll get into the habit of making her 2nd nap the longer one then! At the mo it's the other way round. I've never known her to sleep longer than 1hr in the afternoon. Today she got up 720 so do I put her in cot at 920 or earlier so that she's asleep by 920? She takes a long time to settle!

Hi Rachel
I've always followed the Gina Ford nap routine with my DD (now 11 mos) and it's always worked really well for us. Bizarrely the first nap of the day is always at 9.30 as Gina suggests regardless of whether DD has woken at 6.30am or 7.15- she just seems to know when it's 9.30! I wake her after 25-30 mins then lunchtime nap starts at 12.45 for us (Gina advises 12.30 but 12.45 or even 1pm seems to suit DD better). Ideally she will do 2 hours here but it's not uncommon for her to do an hour- either way she's then fine and dandy for the rest of the day. If she does only do an hour I have her in bed by 6.30-6.40 instead of 7pm so she doesn't get overtired which is apparently the largest cause of night wakings. She still seems to wake at the same time (7-7.15am). Hope this helps. Xx

Thank you. I've put dd down for first nap 2hrs after she woke. She was definitely tired. But she's spent the past 50 mins screaming her head off (intermittently) and is still awake. We are doing some sleep training with her (just over a week in now) but she never seems to settle at nap times for me. Dh got her to sleep in 3 mins the other day. Now I don t know if I should give up or not. If she doesn't have this nap she'll end up falling asleep at a time when she's meant to be having a feed or lunch?

Concentrate on sleep training for nights and when that's going well do naps as well. In the meantime use buggy etc for naps at consistent times. I would go for 9.15ish for morning and always up by 10amand 12.30 for afternoon. Struggling to settlw may mean pushing them back a bIt as not tired enough. It's trial and error!

Rachel my DD always had her longer nap in the morning and I've just switched them round. I wake her up gently after half an hour in the morning, then she'll have around an hour and a half after lunch. Only took her a day or two to get used to it. I thought this would make it easier to drop the morning nap and keep a longer lunchtime one when she's ready. She also dropped her third nap at about 6 months (11 months now).

Great thanks for suggestions/advice! That's good to hear that some babies will have longer nap in afternoon having previously had it in morning. I guess I'm stressing a lot at the moment because although she's still taking ages to settle at bedtime, she has been sleeping so well at night the past few days and I really don't want to risk messing it up!