Hellobee Boards

It sounds like her naps are all really short and probably not getting her any real restorative sleep during the day, leading to being overtired at bedtime and not being able to settle in for the night. Have you read "healthy sleep habits, happy child"? that really helped us. It did involve some CIO but we did it on a timed basis. We let him cry for 5 mins then went in and soothed him back to sleep... the next time he cried, we waited 10 mins... next time, we waited 15 mins, and all other times after that 15 mins. We only had to let him cry for 15 mins once or twice. It taught him how to fall back asleep on his own if he woke. It's not for everyone but it worked really well for Wagon Jr.

We had to do some CIO around this age to get rid of sleep associations.. We also went to a 2-3-4 schedule to make sure she was awake long enough before bedtime.

I second @Mrs. Wagon. This was about the age that we did the same version of CIO. We also gave up all forms of rocking to sleep at this point as well.

Our LO did have a pacifier and it seemed to really help. We did have to do some pacifier replacement in the first couple of hours of sleep as she wasn't able to locate the pacifier and get it back in her mouth in her sleepy frustration.

I agree that her naps are too short to be restorative. My LO is only 4.5 months old and was starting to get in the habit of waking up after 30-40 minutes, which left him cranky and tired. I started to let him fuss for a while after he woke up and he eventually went back to sleep for another 1.5 hours each time. After two days of that his morning naps have been two hours long with no real wake ups. We also recently sleep trained at night so I knew he is able to self-soothe back to sleep.

I still haven't mastered sleep, so im one to talk, but at 6 months, I believe my kids were only taking 2 naps... Another nap at 4:45 would have been too late. What if you move bedtime half an hour up?

Good luck!