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I have no advice, only commiseration. My kids (3 mo) are pretty much the same way - they are champions of the 40 minute nap. And typically awake for 60-90 minutes in between, so I do the swaddle-rock-nurse thing seriously all.day.long somedays between the 2 of them!

Don't give up hope! I have a feeling their bodies just figure out what they need. Today M took a 2.5 hour nap at daycare! The ladies said they must have checked on her 100x because they had never seen her sleep so long. He will figure out what he needs, don't worry about what is "supposed" to happen! Hugs.

If it makes you feel any better, my ped said the majority of babies don't nap so naps are just a bonus for parents.

I'm sorry naps are so hard right now

olive took 4 naps at that age because they were so short. a lot of babies become better sleepers after 6 months. try nap training when your lo is a little bit older. now is a really tough age to nap train since it's when sleep regressions typically happen. wait until 6 months.

Yes - I definitely did give up on naps from months 4-6. They were 40 minutes, and that was that. It was such a relief when he started growing out of that.

C is a terrible napper off and on. We had about a month where she was an amazing napper but other than that... yeah, not to good.

We had to nap train her. Right now, I think she's trying to go from 2 naps to 1, so we're doing some trial and error. I do let her CIO a bit for naps and if she wakes up crying, I wait 10 or so minutes before going to get her to see if she'll fall back asleep. Normally, she will and I can get to to nap MUCH longer.

@winniebee: my daughter was the same way! She would only sleep 30 minutes for the first six-ish months of her life even though we all knew she needed more sleep. It wasn't until she learned to put herself to sleep for naps in her crib that she became a better sleeper. I don't know if your baby does that or not but I think that is what made the difference for us. It wasn't until I read a book that talked about the importance of having a baby fall asleep on their own so when their sleep cycle changed they wouldn't be startled completely awake by being in a different spot. They compared is to us falling asleep in our comfy warm bed and then waking up on the cold kitchen floor...of course we wouldn't be able to fall back asleep because we would be confused. Sorry for the long winded post, I'm not Ben sure if that will be helpful to you but it sure saved me!

@winniebee: I feel like our babies are nap twins! LO fought her naps and the more I tried, the more she resisted. Everyone told me that I should just consider myself lucky, since she sleeps so well at night, but I felt so frazzled during the day because she was so dang fussy!

What inevitably worked for us was for me to just stop stressing about it. I stopped watching the clock to see how long she'd been awake, I swaddled her (even though she was technically "too old"), I stopped stressing about eat/play/sleep....If she woke up fussy, I put her in her swing and let her swing it out...sometimes she went back to sleep in the swing, sometimes she didnt.

She'll be 6 months next week and we literally just stopped swaddling her on Monday...I'm getting 3 solid naps a day now (1-2 hours each) and 10-12 hours at night and people are finally starting to comment on what a happy baby she is (before they would tell me what a spirited baby I had!) and I'm more confident taking her out, because I know she won't totally melt down.

So, my advice to you is-Lighten up! You know whats right for your baby, so while I love (and read) tons of sleep books, I think its important that you trust your instincts.

I've sort of given up and hope it gets better on it's own. My son is 6 1/2 months and has been back on the "30 minutes or less" nap schedule for about a month now. I'm attributing it to all of his new skills he's been learning- he's just started rolling and now is attempting to crawl & sit on his own. Like you said, I'm bothered by the fact that he wakes up crying because I know that he's still tired but we've tried and his teacher has tried adjusting his wake times, letting him CIO- nothing has worked.

His night sleep has been great- he puts himself to sleep easily and STTN for 10-11 hours. So as annoying as it is I'm just rolling with it. Nap training isn't an option since he's in day care and even if it was, I don't think it's something I would really want to do anyway.

We didn't "give up" until DD was 2+. Before that, I would do anything to get her to nap, even if it was short. Now she can really get through the day without a nap so we've let go.