What are your nap techniques?

[jellylegs7]

I'd be really interested to know what people's different techniques are for getting their little ones to nap.
How do you get them to wind down?
Does it differ to your bedtime routine?

My 4 month old is good at settling for bedtime and sleeping - we use the routine of bath (every other night), boob, two stories (incorporating one consistently - "Yawn", and a red glowing white noise ladybird on for 20 minutes. Its just not translating at all for nap time! She's very alert and really struggles to switch off.

TIA!

That soundsfar too lengthy and complex for a 4 month old. Books were s daytime play activity for us until about 18 months old, when the bedtime story became established and enjoyed.

At 4 months daytime consisted of cycles of:

• Wake
• Feed
• Floor play for about 1h, until first cry or insurance on being held
• into bouncy chair, given dummy, bounced for 15 minutes to get to sleep.
• wake and repeat.

This continues from 7am to 10pm ish when I went to bed. Any awake time that happened around 7-9pm would bathtime and change to night clothes. Sidecar cot overnight settled with dummy.

From about 6 months:

As above, only naps now in cot since they are longer stretches. "Routine" involved into cot (still next to my bed) in sleeping bag, given dummy. Me lying on my bed with hand on baby as going to sleep. Feed upon waking, not up in going to sleep

From about 12-18 months:

• 2 by-the-clock naps per day at 9am and 1pm. Bed time established as 8pm.
• bath or wash, teeth brushed, nightwear, sleeping bag, one story read by Dad with siblings, give everyone a kiss, given dummy, into cot and leave.

I ebf and struggle with separating the feed-sleep. It takes ages and cries if I just put him down normally so I end up giving in and feed to sleep! He does sometimes settle himself (about once a day) but I lay next to him on our big bed. Sometimes stoking over him face with a soft comforter helps. Sometimes the sound of me patting my hand against the mattress relaxes him enough. I think it’s just trial and error. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t for me.

Glad I found his post as I was just about to ask the same question!

FATE - your routine sounds really interesting; I definitely need to get my 15 week DH in to something similar. How long does it take to bounce to sleep? I’ve never thought of using the bouncy chair!

Never mind. Just re-read you PST and saw 15 min!

I like to keep the bedtime routine and naps very different, at bedtime we do bath some nights, change, into sleeping bag and feed in the dark whereas for naps I just put her in the bouncy chair or pram and rock her to sleep. I’ve started giving her a comforter to associate with naps but I don’t know how much effect it’s having. I want her to be able to nap easily when we're out and about so found that has worked well for us.

Also I’m very alert to when she’s tired but not over tired as once that happens it takes a long time to get her off

Nearly 6 month old dd. Bedtime involves bath and massage, but all sleeps (bar the odd short one out and about) are in cot. 2 cot naps and maybe one short (20-30 min) nap in pram or carier if out walking.

For naps, dark room - blackout blinds, into cot, into sleeping bag, white noise and dummy, then I walk away. Tend to sit in the corner of the room until she is asleep.

When she was younger (up to 5 months) it was all of the above, but she was swaddled, and often needed to be patted to settle.

FATE - your routine sounds really interesting; I definitely need to get my 15 week DH in to something similar. How long does it take to bounce to sleep? I’ve never thought of using the bouncy chair!

Bouncy chair are the staple of all daytime naps in our house, until naps start extending and establishing.

How long bouncing to get baby to sleep tends to be directly proportional to how exhausted baby is. The more over tired, the harder it is to get baby to sleep. The closer to the "only just started getting tired" point, the quicker.

Time it right and baby is asleep within a minute or two. Mostly it would be 5-10 mins and occassionally 15 mins plus.

I rock and hold to nap. Total pain but both my ds’s have been hyper alert and it was either this, or spend hours settling elsewhere to gain a paltry 10 min nap.

Once ds1 was about 10 months he was too big to do this and then I cracked him in the buggy (in the house) because he liked a rocking motion. Worked well as he was ready for longer naps by then, and he napped brilliantly until he was 3.4. Plan to do the same for ds2.

Thanks FATE, she’s bouncing as we speak!

If permitted, I will make a joke. I don’t have any children yet (I want 2 in the future ), but I have some amazing tehcniques of putting myself for a nap. It goes like this: put my head on the pillow. End of story. Yep, this is exactly how tired I am