Hellobee Boards

i went through a period where i let my LO fuss for about 15 minutes--he would usually go back to sleep. before i was getting him at the 45-minute mark and like you predict, it led to cranky-time in, like, 2 minutes and needing to put him back down pretty soon. it was hard because my LO did this for a WHILE.

This used to stress me out to no end while I was on maternity leave. I finally decided that if it had been 45 mins or less, I will try to get her to go back to sleep for 5-10 mins. If it doesn't work, I'll give up on the nap and adjust her schedule.

I try to keep her eating times 3 hours apart, and sometimes that means she eats right before a nap. It's not perfectly E-A-S-Y but she didn't HAVE to eat to fall asleep so it's OK with me. And it's a lot less stressful than trying to stick to the schedule!

My LO would cry after only napping for 30 mins. When she cried I would rock her back to sleep and then hold her for the remainder of her nap. Otherwise she would be so cranky. Thank heavens I don't need to do that anymore.

I've done different things at different times. Right now I only try to extend her last nap so she isn't up too long before bedtime (thus creating a tired cranky baby monster). When I have wanted to extend her naps in the past though I've generally found that if she wakes up crying/cranky I can usually pick her up and she'll be rocked back to sleep. If she wakes up quietly or babbling happily then she just isn't tired anymore and rocking will only piss her off.

But, I feel ya. Trying to coordinate naps and eating is such a PITA.

@Meridian: lol! how old is your lo? Mine is 7.5 mo. I can't remember when she started waking up happy from naps but its been at least a few months. Not that she wakes up happy from ALL naps still. But more often than not she does. Same deal in the morning. If she wakes up crying I know to go rock her back to sleep because she's still tired. If she wakes up babbling I know she's ready to be up for the day.

@Meridian: he started having problems linking sleep cycles during naps around 6 or 8 weeks. after a couple of weeks of being confused as to what was going on, i started to let him fuss for the 15 minutes around 2 or 2.5 months. me going in and soothing him never worked because it stimulated him too much. it's really tough--i hope your LO gets over this soon!

@Meridian: I think it can go back and forth. We've had a varied history of naps (she went from putting herself to sleep and sleeping great for naps to me having to rock her and then she slept great then i had to rock her for the whole nap then i had to rock her to sleep but could set her down again then i had to rock her the whole time again then we nap trained and she put herself to sleep but only slept 30 min usually, to now finally she usually sleeps well).

So she has definitely gone through phases where she'd wake after her first sleep cycle(for her always 30-40 min) and go back to sleep. then other times she has trouble going back to sleep. For my LO it seems like the more she needs to initially get to sleep, the less likely she is to sleep a long time. Like when I was rocking her and setting her down she was far less likely to string together her sleep cycles herself than now when she learned to put herself to sleep.