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I think that sometimes tears are inevitable no matter what. For instance, I know a little girl who cried every morning at daycare dropoff for an entire year no matter what her mom tried. And Wagon Jr. has woken up crying almost every night since he was born... and he's 2 years 9 months now. We've tried everything we can think of to avoid that crying wakeup, and most nights it just comes no matter what.

That being said, Wagon Jr. cried at naptime every time but grew out of it pretty quickly once he was nap trained. Sometimes I thought he actually needed to cry to get some energy out and really be tired for his nap!

it was true for charlie. i mean like down to the minute, esp when he was younger. as he got older (9 months+), perfect timing didn't matter as much.

olive is s little more flexible and we can push her an extra 30 min. but she doesn't cry at naps either.

i do believe some babies just cry to release tension.

@winniebee: 45 minutes is standard for my guy unless he is more tired (like, less sleep the night before, or missed middle nap).

@winniebee: LO does this for some of her naps. We just let her fuss it out and then she falls asleep. She never does it at bedtime though, and thats when we just lay her in the crib. I still rock her asleep for naps.

I know every baby is different but at that age I would stretch my LO to 2 hrs between naps and that helped to get one longer nap a day (then two 45-minute naps...or sometimes 2 long and one short). For us, we got more crying/protesting if we put him down too early rather than too late. If we put him down too late then he'd fall asleep right away but take a super short nap (<30 minutes).

I think 5-6 minutes of fussing/crying at put down is actually great! I know it sucks to hear him cry but in the grand scheme of things, that is a pretty short amount of time and he is falling asleep by himself every time.

I agree it can be different with every child. With m I noticed that if I put her down for a nap 2 hrs from her last wake up it's virtually seamless. And it's important she gets an hr minimum for the first nap otherwise she's a demon child!

Seems normal to me. My oldest cried before naps and my youngest does that now. It's usually for a few seconds though but sometimes for a few minutes. My oldest stopped doing that after a while. I forget when. I do find that if I read his sleepy cues right he won't cry.