My 7-month-old has never been a great napper, but normally would have at least one long nap a day so it wasn’t too bad. His night sleep is ok (at the moment, anyway…) and he usually just wakes up once for a feed.
Recently, he’s been struggling to nap more than 30 minutes at a time. He’s a very stubborn, alert boy so once he’s awake he’s awake - there’s no getting him back to sleep.
I have always nursed him to sleep which I know isn’t ideal. Unfortunately, if I don’t nurse him to sleep he will barely feed at all because he’s too easily distracted to feed when he’s wakeful.
I might try to break the milk-sleep association but I guess I’m just wondering whether his 30 minute naps might get better naturally or if there’s something I need to be doing or what.
He sleeps about 11 hours at night, 3 naps in the day - so 1.5hr total day naps isn’t really enough. It doesn’t make any difference whether I feed him to sleep then put him down on the sofa with me, or by himself in his cot, or have total blackness, or have white noise - he’s awake after 30 minutes. 45 at a push. I don’t think he’s getting any deep sleep so he starts getting really fussy as the day goes on. Without feeding, or a dummy at a pinch, he will NOT go to sleep. He could be exhausted and been awake for 6 hours, but he cannot get himself off to sleep.
He used to be able to get himself off to sleep at bedtime from fully awake but he can’t even do that now.
Help 😞