5.5 month old - daytime sleep

[Riggles78]

My 5.5 month old has short but frequent daytime naps and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on things I could try to extend the naps!

All naps usually last one sleep cycle (about 40ish minutes) and I stick to sleep wake windows of about 1.5hrs or sometimes shorter if she is starting to rub her eyes or showing other signs of tiredness. She usually naps in her bouncer during the day, sometimes feeds to sleep on my lap and will always drop off if we're out and about in the car or pram.
She's breastfed and refuses bottles and dummies despite spending a reasonable amount of time and money on trying lots of different types with her.

The only times she seems to manage to link cycles and sleep for longer periods is in the car on the way back from my parents (about 1.5hrs drive) and I feel like that's usually because she's been awake for longer between naps than she would be at home so she's knackered by the time we head home.

I've tried extending her naps in the bouncer by restarting the bounce before she's due to wake up but that doesn't seem to work at all, continuing walking in the pram doesn't work either, she gets to the end of the sleep cycle and BAM eyes open, ready to go again.

She usually goes to sleep well at night - bath, pjs, daddy reads a story while I feed her and transfers to sidecar cot easily when she's eyes closed but not fully asleep. She's generally asleep between 7:30 and 8:00pm, wakes about 3 times in the night, generally resettles easily with a feed each time and is up between 6:00 and 7:00am.

Ideally I would have her napping in her cot during the day, but the problem is that my husband works from home all day and our office room is upstairs and shares a wall with our bedroom which is where the cot she normally sleeps in is. He generally takes quite a few calls during the day so would almost definitely wake her up frequently if I tried the naps there. She does have her big cot in her bedroom, but that's next door to our room and I think the noise would still carry from the office and wake her up. So I'm not sure that naps upstairs are really an option at the moment while husband is WFH all day. There's no room downstairs for him to relocate as he needs multiple screens etc to do his job and it looks like his team will be WFH on a pretty permanent basis now.

I'm hoping someone will have some ideas or tips they can pass on as I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do. I'm also mindful that she's still only little and it might be that she's just not ready to link her sleep cycles yet and I might just have to ride it out until she's a bit older!

Mine is 8 months and had been a pretty decent daytime napper. At that age she was having daytime naps in her pram pushed into a dark corner of the house with a sleep cloud thing from fisher price. Sometimes she would break the sleep cycle but would go back off with a bit of a pram jiggle and the cloud switching back on. I’ve also always wrapped her in a Muslin or blanket so she’s not thrashing about. I did use a two to two and half hour rule though rather than 1.5 to build up a bit of sleep pressure. More often than not though she’d nap for a good 2 -2.5 hours without intervention. When the house was noisy I’ve used a white noise maker as well I got from Amazon so you could try that to muffle your dh’s noise. I think the major factor for mine though is being wrapped up snug. I don’t think it’s advised past a certain age but she likes the security of it and she’s never alone so I go with what she likes.
They’re tricky little things babies though so what works for one may not work for another. My first would only nap on the go in the pram and only for short spells.

Could you use white noise to mask sounds from your husband’s office? I was very stressed about short naps recently too with a baby about the same age as yours, however in the last two weeks she has suddenly started napping for up to 1.5 hours at a time all on her own. The only thing we’ve done differently is committing to first two naps of the day in the cot and also bringing her downstairs first thing after she wakes for the day for a bit of floor time to tire her out before her first nap. But I think it has mostly been developmental tbh, it was like a switch suddenly flipped. Just wanted to post this to offer a bit of hope as I thought we’d be in a cycle of 30 min naps forever, and I know how tough it is when you feel like you spend your entire day trying to make them sleep or deal with overtiredness. Hope this phase passes for you soon x

Hi both, thanks for responding!

She normally sleeps with white noise so I've just put her down for a nap in her normal cot with it turned on and asked DH to try and keep it down if he's on a call (he's got quite a loud speaking voice so fingers crossed he does!!).
Will see if she manages more than the usual 40 mins!

@Itsbeen84yearss she is not a big fan of swaddling unfortunately, could never get her to sleep swaddled past the first few newborn days. Seems to really wind her up and she uses her hands to soothe herself when she's dropping off now. I'm tempted to try leaving her longer to build up a bit more sleep pressure but worried that she'll just be a big grump if we do this 😬

@EmmaInParis fingers crossed she has the sudden switch to longer naps too, I have a feeling that might be what happens with her and I've just got to be patient and go with the short but frequent naps!

I found my 3 mth old would wake between cycles if she didn't have a blanket over half of her, have you tried that? Sorry if you have! Something about being a little more cosy.

@PerfectPrepPrincess I've put her into her sleeping bag for this nap so hopefully she's nice and cosy!
She normally just sleeps in whatever she's wearing if she's having a daytime nap so maybe the extra cosiness will keep her asleep longer 🤞

How did the nap go @Riggles78?

@PerfectPrepPrincess Standard 45 mins. Eyes flew open and I left her a while to see if she settled back down again by herself but nope, wide awake!

Mine is still on contact naps mostly but we're trying to train her out of it. But maybe if you want to adjust her routine then a week of contact naps when you want them to be long ones?
Mine is falling into a habit of 45min - 1.5hr 45min - 2hr roughly, really want long naps for each but only think that's just her rhythm.

No harm in trying! She tends to still do the 45 mins with a contact nap, and spends half the time wanted to be attached to my boob but maybe that will get her over the 45 min mark!