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Honestly, for us, we never figured out Xander's sleep signs. We just figured out how long (roughly) he could stay awake, and regardless of whether he seemed tired or not, put him down for a nap!! Nothing else worked except just being all "Okay, it's been <insert length of time>! Time for a nap!" And he was a serious cat-napper - his naps were anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, but mostly they were on the shorter end, so I think he still did about 4 naps a day at 5 months.

I know with Xander, if you missed his window, he'd get overtired (i.e. refuse to sleep). I'm guessing that's what's happening half the time with your LO too. I don't have a lot of advice on how to figure out when to put her down though since I never could figure out Xander's tired cues!

I hope things get better for you soon.

We're right there with you! During our golden sleep period at 3.5 months, they were sleeping through the night and getting 2 two hour naps and a couple cat naps. Damn I was getting so much rest! Anyway, 4 months hit and it all went to shit. Four 45 minutes is average these days and if they hit one hour I consider that a success. For a while I was doing everything I could to keep the naps going - holding them both for an hour, nursing one then the other for the whole nap, putting them down for naps in the swing and RNP, etc. I was spending my whole day in the dark nursery in a battle of wills, fighting them to sleep. Then I read that some babies don't consolidate naps until 6 months, so I've just given in to the 45 minute naps. We started sleep training a couple days ago (whattt? I know!) and naps have significantly improved. Blake slept 5.5 hours during the day yesterday! Also we only got 3 naps yesterday so maybe that will be the new norm?

@Mae: just wanted to send you some patience and hugs. We have not figured out anything consistent for naps other than that her Zippy seems to help. They're not predictably timed, a predictable length, or a set number, no matter what we do. Girlfriend just doesny like sleep, it seems. The only thing that is consistent for us is that she sleeps better with her Zippy than without. Has the Merlin helped Fia at all?

@Mae: Ok so I have no idea what I'm doing about naps. To be honest, I barely know what I'm doing for nighttime. I got to chapter 2 of the Ferber book, then it was bedtime. So I just looked up a cliffs notes version online and went for it. And it worked? Then the next day for naptime I had no additional information and just tried it for naps too? Except when they wake up they are just up? I just make them fuss it out for the beginning of the nap. This worked yesterday by not today so far. Blake pretty much goes right down - a couple fusses, flips I to his belly (this is new!) and then is asleep. Alice is a hot mess but I knew she would be (high maintenance drama girl!). They both only slept 30 minutes for their first nap. I'm going to read more about it, but I might give up nap training. I really need it though because it's so hard to get two babies down for naps at the same time when they need a long nap routine, nursing, rocking, etc. by the time one is good to go, the other is way overtired. Sigh.

As far as awake time - it varies? When they take a good long nap (one hour +) without waking and needing to be nursed in the middle, they hit two hour awake time on the head. When they nap less than 45 minutes their awake time is more like 1.5 hours. Sometimes as little as 1 hr 15 minutes. The transition to a longer awake time was really tough though. I was either misreading cues or they could not handle being awake longer and being happy at the same time. So they'd get super cranky and I'd think nap time! And they'd be like nope, I want to be awake for another 45 minutes but I'm going to grump about I the whole time. Luckily we just waited that or and we made it through that.

It sounds like she has a 30 minute sleep cycle. You could try doing the wake to sleep method (try to wake her just a tiny bit or replace paci around 25 minutes), or you could sleep train so that she can learn to self soothe and string her sleep cycles together. Although sleep training at 5m can be kind of a crap shoot.

My son always had pretty short wake times as a younger baby. Even now at 11m he does best when I put him down for his first nap after 2 hours of being awake. I've learned with him that sometime the sleep signals mean it's too late or that he's been tired for a while. It was better for him to just go by the clock.

And fwiw, we've never tried to push awake times or drop naps. It just kinda happened naturally.

@Mae: right there with you for naps. I thought that I have a baby with high sleep needs. Her naps are 45 mins, so I am holding her for like 2 naps to get longer naps. And I will let her have 2 45 min naps. That works OK for her. I was really frustrated when these short naps started happening box she was a baby who use to take 3+ hour nap before 3 months

@Mae: I was determined to put baby down at the first hint of tiredness, just before that first yawn. Ha! Sometimes my little one would yawn 10 minutes after waking up from a 90 minute nap. Then what??? He certainly wouldn't go to sleep so soon after waking up. Now I just wait till he's good and tired to put him down and it seems to be working better for us. Can't give advice since our nap situation is pretty sad, but good luck to you!!

@Mae: We are starting to have the same issue at night (my LO is 3.5months). I found a lot of the info on her blog really helpful, as well as her Facebook page. A lot of people have posted similar question on there that she has answered. Even just knowing others are having the same problems seems to be comforting!

Changing sleep environment to be as dark as possible really improved his naps. There aren't longer yet but he does go down ALOT faster. Now we are working on developing a consistent routine with nursing being the first step for bedtimes and when he wakes up for naps.