Fucking 30 minute naps again! No Ooooh!

[AgathaCrispie]

My DD's sleep has been absolutely all shot to hell for the past two and a half months. Around 6 months she started extending her naps from the dread 30 minutes, but it was very haphazard and we never got into a routine. Then for a few weeks she reverted to waking up after 30 minutes. It was awful because she can kind of last longer between naps, but not really because 30 minutes isn't long enough IYKWIM. She'd still be tired when she woke up, but I had a devil of a job getting her to nap more frequently - she just WOULD NOT go down. Then it all started to go okay again and we were often getting hour-hour and a half naps.

She's now 9.5 months and for the past two days has woken up after 30 minutes at every nap. I can't take this again! I've tried getting her down more frequently to make up for it, but just end up bouncing her (all naps are in bouncer - NOTHING else works) for 30 minutes/45 minutes/giving up for half an hour and trying again. She just won't go down until she's been awake 'long enough' - but it's too long because 30 minutes isn't enough sleep.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH. Please don't suggest keeping bouncing. I do. It doesn't work.

Dd had 30 minute naps until she was 13 months old.
Nothing worked at all.
I think it's just the way some babies are

But what did you do Time? Put her down more often or just deal with a chronically overtired baby? It wouldn't be so bad if I could at least get her to nap more often but getting her down sooner than 3 hours after waking is nigh on impossible. She's had an hour of daytime sleep the past two days. She's so tired and I think this is making the nights even worse.

I've just had a week of this, after several weeks of good long naps. I've gone back to my old trick of running the hoover while she's asleep - really seems to help. Have you tried any kind of white noise?

Now if only she'd sleep somewhere other than my lap...

Yup .
Could never get dd to go down more often.

2 times 30 was just her thing it fucking sucks .

I completely understand and hope your dd naps better soon .

Fwiw as they get older she can handle the awake time better

Ugh. If only she wouldn't get my hopes up with these stints of decent napping!

We have white noise at night Utini but it's more to keep background sounds out. Doesn't make a jot of difference in the day.

TBH she's on the brink of growing out of the bouncey chair so I'm fucked anyway. Bring on the Mega-Grumpy, I guess!

My dd1 only ever had half hour naps, cut down to only 1 half hour nap around 1yo and cut out naps altogether around 20 months. To be fair we stopped her having them as she wouldn't go to sleep at bed time.

Dd2 is 14mo now, she's very variable sometimes will nap 1.5 hours and sometimes only 40 mins, but she would only nap twice a day and recently seems it's being cut to only once a day regardless of length, she won't have any more naps. She has all naps in buggy, or car seat if we're out. The longer naps seem to be linked to buggy being in same place with white noise loudly blocking out any other sound. So I'd perhaps try buggy with white noise, and I would give up trying to get her to have extra naps as she probably won't. She may not be as miserable if you stop trying to make her sleep?

I assume you don't use the bouncer at night, so you must have a method to get her to sleep not in the bouncer?

There's always going to be times, little phases, where baby needs extra help to sleep well. My 2y9m old still has times she needs extra input from me. Just because you cracked it once does not necessarily mean 'that's it, hard work over'.

The 60-90 minute naps you were getting - were you resettling part way through? Or having to keep bouncing going? Or were you just leaving her static in the bouncer and she stayed asleep throughout?

I feed her to sleep at night Fate, a previously effective solution that has gone to hell along with everything else, because these days she wakes up and protests when I unlatch her - no matter how deep a sleep she is apparently in. I had another thread about my utter failure to get her to settle in-cot. The naps were actually the easiest, which is perhaps why I'm going slightly bats about the return of the crappy cat nap....

Sorry! You asked a question: The long naps just happened naturally. No additional bouncing. I have tried both a continuous bounce and a resumption of bouncing when she stirs. Neither has ever worked. I can't figure out any underlying factor or anything I've done differently for the good naps.

The long naps just happened naturally. No additional bouncing

And I assume at the time this was not just an occasional, exceptional occurance? This would suggest that the developmental leap to be able to link sleep cycles has been passed.

This would further mean that there must be a cause for then regressing back. She evidentally can extend naps, but isn't.

Most likely cause would be over-tired induced poor quality sleep. I assume when you started getting longer naps that you started adjusting the daily routine to accommodate. I'd suggest maybe you adjusted it too far, too much and baby wasn't coping well with either the lengths of awake time or total amount of sleep. So now you're back in an over tired cycle.

Keep the short naps frequent. And when you do start getting longer naps, err on the side of keeping awake time on the short side and encouraging more sleep, rather than more time awake.

I would also start working on independant sleep tools (dummy, comforter toy, muslin blankie etc). Because feeding to sleep and bouncy chair are not good for lobg term independant sleep. If I'm honest it sounds to me like you are heading towards cosleeping and/or naps on you - whether that's what you had planned or not.

My dd (now 1) has always been shit at naps. Quite often 5 minute power naps! FIVE minutes! Does she sleep ok at night? My dd has silent reflux and at around 10 months I finally convinced a gp to give us a different/additional medicine and it helped significantly at night and a bit during the day. When we fail at putting her to nap in her cot during the day we resort to putting her in the pram and walking her to sleep. Does that work for your dd? She goes to nursery full time now and they have the same problem as us which makes me feel like less of a failure and sometimes they give up and let her skip one of her naps. It's so odd as usually her naps are really short but then randomly she'll have one mammoth one eg nearly 2 hours about once a month. And Sod's law that's always when you actually need to get them out of the house or something.

Fate I also think she's overtired. The issue is how on earth to persuade her to sleep sooner. I don't know how. She hasn't napped on me since we moved to the bouncer. She won't go off unless fed and still won't go off sooner than about 3 hours after waking. I routinely bring her into the spare room with me when she wakes at night but she whirs about like a Tasmanian Devil almost as badly as she does when I try and settle her in the cot. I just don't know how to get her to be still enough to fall asleep, or how to comfort her without boob when she's in a state. Picking her up just seems to make her angry. I assume because she expects boob. I feel like I know what the problems are, but any attempts to do anything different just leave me with a screaming crying baby. She's so content most of the day, but getting her to sleep is horrible.

Same thing here. It is soul destroying because you know they can do it now! I also completely fail however hard I try to get her to take a third nap. Now taking her out in the buggy every day and can tip her over the 40 minute mark about half the time.
Please update if you see any change!

Mrs I'm envious! Even when we were having some good naps she'd wake up in the pushchair after 40 minutes - even if we were still moving!

What kind of bouncer are you putting a 9.5 month old in?!

Could this be a sleep regression? There is one at 4 months, one between 8 and 10 months, and one around 12 months. My DD is 8 months now and it sounds exactly like her at 4 months during her last regression. If your baby learnt to link sleep cycles together but has now reverted, then it could be that.

We sleep trained DD after the 4 month regression passed (she returned to sleeping fine at night but would still only catnap during the day) and it worked a treat, but I appreciate that method's not for everybody.

Any change? I've sometimes had some luck resettling when she's very tired. But she'll still never take a decent nap on her own. I don't think it's overtiredness as she now often sleeps through since we sleep trained at night. I can't face doing it in the day on my own but it's looking like that's what she needs - but really almost think we'd both rather the short naps!