Help!!!! Afternoon nap is a nigtmare

[Mareta]

DD is 7.5 months and her afternoon nap is a nightmare and getting worse. She sleep very well at night although still wakes up once for a feed (breastmilk). She usually wakes up between 7:30 and 8am and after having breakfast she will go back to bed for a morning nap two hours after she woke up. She will sleep for 30 or 40 minutes. She has never slept longer than this in the morning.

Our problem appears in the afternoon. She has lunch at 1pm and after lunch she goes to bed. Today she is still in bed complaining after 30 minutes nap ONLY. I am running out of ideas of what to do to make her sleep for longer. TBH I just don't knopw what else to do. I have let her cried, I have sleept with her (it is the only way of getting her to sleep 90 minutes). I know she can sleep for at least 90 minutes because she has done it with me but she won't do it on her own. I have tried laying by her side. Please give me more ideas of what I can do to improve her afternoon nap.

She has dinner at 6pm, bath at 7pm and then she has BM and goes to be at around 7:40pm with no problem at all.

Any advice will be much appreciated. Thank you in advance

Can her lunchtime nap be earlier a little earlier? Maybe she's a bit overtired so wont nap properly? Or it could be she's going through a developmental phase, learning a new skill so sleep is a bit potty?
What does she eat for lunch? Have you introduced a new food which could be hard to digest?

Just a few thoughts - sorry I have no actual suggestions for help!

Thank you for your reply. I can try to give her lunch a bit earlier. It doesn't matter what she has for lunch, we have been having this problem for a while now.

We do BLW for lunch and she eats anything that I give her. I am running out of ideas myself .

I'll try your advice about doing lunch earlier and also her nap and see what happens. Thank you again

I was going to say the same as Iggly!

Also, do you try to re-settle her when she wakes from her nap?

does she need a longer nap? dd only ever had 30-45min naps. then none at all by the time she was 18 months. she just didn't need it.

ILTMIMI: what do you mean with re-settle her? Sometime I do put her in my bed with me and she will sleep for longer. That's why I know she can sleep for at least 90 minutes. However I don't think being in bed with her is a solution as sometimes I need to do other chores in the house.

Could you tell me how to re-settle a baby once they have waken up?

Thank you

With ds he sometimes woke up too early from a nap so I would re-settle him to sleep. As soon as I heard him make waking up noises I would rush up the stairs, pick him up and gently rock him to sleep again.

At first it would take a while to settle him, then the re-settling time got shorter and shorter, then he would stay asleep on his own.

Some people would argue that this stops babies from self settling, but in my experience it hasn't. It has somehow taught him to stay asleep longer.

Thank you, I think I will give it a go. I can't lose anything for trying it.

I'll see how this afternoon nap goes. Thank you again

I just saw your post, and can remember that was the point at which my ds1 changed from having two naps to having one long one. As she is sleeping so well at night and not waking ferociously early, perhaps you could put her down at 12.30?

My children all had two hour naps in afternoon, ds2 took a while to learn to resettle hmself half way through - it ws frustrating to say the least. But once they had dropped morning nap I would say it was quite easy for them to sleep for two hours after lunch. And they went on till they were 2-3 yrs. It was fabulous, I used to have a nap too, or just potter. Always the same time every day, and always in their cots.

That GF advice that all babies need to sleep after two hours awake works SO WELL at beginning, that you can forget that they can go longer at 7.5 months. Their sleep patterns do change subtly.

P.S. Didn't really follow GF otherwise [disclaimer]

Hi - I too followed GF advice for sleeping and found that the 2 hour gap was good until about 10 months - when started to stretch out to 2.5 hours.

I'd try the 2 hours from waking for her afternoon nap and if that means an early lunch... so what!