Sometimes links sleep cycles, sometimes doesnt

[Duggeeismysaviour]

Without going into too much detail...

My 7 month old can put herself to sleep in the daytime. So, no sleep associations. Night time after first wakeup is another matter as we EBF, through circumstances outside of my control we are sharing a room so... we cosleep after first wake.

But day naps are always the same routine, always in cot, no bf ing, no rocking,white noise etc etc

She is my second child so I know things change constantly and a lot is outside of my control(and it's all ok in the end) but

WHY oh why - during the day - does she sometimes only sleep 40 mins, and other times will go through 80,90, 120 mins. Sometimes during long naps, I hear her wake and put herself back down. We are talking the same time of day (lunch), same first nap timing and duration etc.

Nothing changes, day to day. I understand about self soothing, but she CAN clearly do that. Why doesnt she do it more often??

You usually have to go through a phase of actively resettling baby to lengthen the nap. So be nearby baby during the nap and try and catch the very first signs of coming out of the deep sleep. This might just be a movement, my youngest used to screw her face up.

You want to catch it before baby actually wakes, so when moving from deep to light sleep. Then resettle back into deep sleep before baby opens eyes or makes a noise - that's why you want to be close by during the nap.

Do this consistently for all naps. Sometimes it wont work and baby will wake fully. But other times it will work and as baby gets more and more used to sleeping for longer periods, you'll have less need to do the resettle at all.

I would keep naps in the bouncy chair until they were consistently longer (90+ minutes) for exactly this reason - it makes keeping an eye, spotting the point baby leaves deep sleep and resettling back (by restarting gentle bouncing) much easier. Especially when you have older siblings around (I have 4 children)

I thought it was a developmental thing. My eldest began to lengthen her naps around that age and we had a few weeks where some naps were single sleep cycle and some were longer.

By 8 months they were all longer naps.

I never actively tried to lengthen the naps by resettling etc, although I'm sure it's worth a go.