is baby napping too much?

[thecrab]

my baby is 8 months old (6 adjusted), he likes to wake up around 6am and takes two naps before midday (between 20 mins to 40 mins), he naps once in the afternoon (can be up to an hour) and then bed at 6pm.

When he wants to nap he will only sleep if we're rocking him, bed time is fine he goes down by himself.

Is he napping too much? How can I get him to be happy napping by himself? I'd love to be able to put him down in his cot so I can get on with stuff and not pace the living room shushing and rocking.

I'd probably stop him taking his first nap and bring his second one slightly forward so it becomes 2 naps per day.

Have you tried the sling? Do you out him in a sleeping bag for naps? I've heard that can help.

I would actually work on making both naps longer (look for gentle sleep training methods online, they can and do work) because at that age IME he should be sleeping for at least 3 hours during the day (2 X 90 min). I know a lot of parents don't get this with their child, but it is possible and ideal if you can manage it.

Ideally he would be up for around 2-2.5hours, sleep for 90-120min, up for 2-2.5hours, sleep, 2-2.5hr, then bed routine/sleep.

Might not work exactly with those timings, but look at what his tired signs are and adjust the awake time to suit.

By the way, I only dropped my DS's third nap around 8-9 months. He was having 90 min X 2 and a 40 min late cat nap.

We did take DS to sleep school/did sleep training which made all the difference. Before that he hardly slept at all (talking max. 1hr all day at only 3-4 months old) and was quite bad overnight too.

My DS is 9 months. His routine for the past approx 2 months is 2x 1.5hr naps per day and he sleeps 11-12hrs per night. From my friends with similar aged babies, this is about average. Longer naps came about 7 months and that allowed the drop to 2. Had some super early bedtimes and car journeys to nowhere during the transition phase though. We do roughly a 2,3,4 schedule, although at the moment 2.5,3,3.5 is working well for us. Obviously there are crap nap days where it all goes up in the air!

DS settled in his cot for night time from quite early on and then I worked on self settling for naps cos I knew he could do it. Spent a few days where I stayed at home and put him down in cot for every nap under same conditions as bedtime.