Hello! I am so glad I found this board! I was a member of WeddingBee but this board is about my life now so I am excited to join. Anyways, I have a 5 month old daughter who, for the most part, sleeps like a champ at night and has since she was 6 weeks old. I wish I could say the same for the day but we have some struggles we have been dealing with. She only likes to nap in my arms. Which would be great if I wanted to be glued to the couch all day but I don't. So about 3 weeks ago, my daughter and I worked really hard at being put to sleep in my arms then transferring to her crib. After about a week, she finally accepted her fate but the joke is on me because she will only sleep 20-30 minutes at a time. Max. So, every hour and a half, I am putting her down for a catnap. Is there anyway to get her to sleep longer??? If she is in my arms, she sleeps two to three hours at a time. I am so worn out from having an over tired baby on my hands during the day and I don't know what to do. And, it isn't fair to my husband because she is so tired by the time he gets home and she is cranky when he is ready to play with her. Does anyone have the answer I am searching for? Sorry for such a long post but thanks for reading!
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I got to the point where I would just let her cry it out. She would get over tired a lot and not want to go to sleep so I would just lay her down and just let her figure it out because nothing else was working... It may sound cruel but she was just fine and it worked!
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Cry-it-out worked best for us. It's really tough at first, but if LO naps for less than one hour, I make her CIO until the hour is reached. She eventually got the clue that she had to sleep and that I wasn't going to budge.
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It sounds like she may have a short sleep cycle and is unable to soothe herself back to sleep without your help, since that's what she got used to. Have you tried swaddling for naps? Also, is it possible that she's undertired? Aside from the first period of time from when she wakes up in the morning to the first nap, most 5-month-olds are capable of going 2 - 2.5 hours between naps.
If you haven't checked out the Baby Whisperer boards, you may want to. Lots of info on what you can try to extend naps. You may also find that she starts to naturally lengthen her sleep cycle on her own in a month or two, as well. My son was a 40-minute napper, and now he's starting to go an hour, sometimes more, on his own.
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we nap trained and charlie went from 25-45 min naps to 3+ hour naps. it was life changing! she doesn't know how to put herself back to sleep after a sleep cycle without your help.
here's a post i wrote on it:
http://www.hellobee.com/2011/09/27/nap-training/
let me know if you have any questions at all -- i'm more than happy to help!
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Thanks everyone! I am not sure I am ready to try CIO yet but she doesn't cry when she wakes up. She plays in her crib until I go get her. I don't think she is under tired because she yawns, rubs her eyes and gets dark circles around her eyes. That is when I put her down. Maybe I will try to put her back to sleep immediately once she wakes up from her first cycle.
I am going to check out the references. Thanks! -
at 5 months we were putting charlie down about every 90 minutes (2 awake cycles). that might help!
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My 2 month old baby had the same problem for awhile. She slept great at night but had really short naps - usually 40 minutes to 1 hour. I had been putting her down when she was basically falling asleep on me.
Another mom told me to put her down in her crib about 15 minutes earlier (at the first sign of tiredness...after 3 yawns at the most). This was like magic to me. I would swaddle her and put her in her crib and thought there was no way she would fall asleep...but she did...yes, she fussed and sometimes cried, but I sat in the room and watched the clock and she never fussed/cried more than 5-10 minutes and I could tell she was trying to put herself to sleep and when she did fall asleep she stayed asleep and now she naps great...usually 2-3 hours...I have to wake her up most times.
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