Does anyone have any nap Extension success stories or luck with nap training? Looking for some hope for the future. Every day they seem to get shorter and she has more trouble going down for them, and I can not Google "short naps" one more time!
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How old is your LO? Maybe you're keeping her awake too long?
DS is 6mo and does best with about 2hrs of awake time at a time. If he wakes up crying after a half hour (more often than not), I can sometimes extend it by rocking/shushing/patting again, and making sure he goes back in the crib with a pacifier.
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She's a little over 4 months. I tend to be super careful with her awake times, but its been harder and harder to get her to go down for naps and with such short ones we do 4 or 5 a day. My husband and the babysitter have had some luck extending naps, but not me... which always makes me feel like garbage, especially because I'm with her more than everyone else. @Mrs.Someone:
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Are we talking 10 min or 45min short naps?
My LO became a chronic 45min napper when home (he would take 2+ hours at daycare) from about 3/4 to 6/7 months. We still get some 45 minuters at 9 months. I didn't end up having much luck extending his naps, and adjusting wake times didn't really help either. We ended up feeding him closer to nap times so we were sure he wasn't hungry when he woke and just going with it. I would usually try to rock him in a dark room for a few minutes with the white noise still on when he woke up early. Usually within 5 minutes I could tell if he was ready to get up or not. And if he was ready to get up we just put him down after another age appropriate wake time, if that meant 4 naps a day, then so be it.
They do eventually grow out of it!
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Could your wake times be too short?
We ended up going with the long side of whatever was age appropriate because he still didn't melt down, would go down pretty easy, and it stretched things enough so he wasn't taking a thousand naps a day.
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Until about 6.5 months I either held my LO for all her naps, or if she woke up early I'd run up and rock her again and about 50% of the time she'd fall back asleep. She usually took her best/longest naps with me just holding her the whole time... but I know that is early hard to do! We nap trained at 6.5 months (because at that point she wouldn't nap in any way other than on me at all so i was completely beholden to our house 24/7 it felt like) and it did work for her falling asleep, but I lost all control of nap length. Her naps were definitely shorter on her own. Even now 3 months later she will often have better naps (1-2 hours) but sometimes still has 30-45 min naps and there is just nothing I can do about it if I don't want to rock her.
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They will naturally get longer around 6 months. A long nap before that is 45 mins or more. I pretty much held her for all naps until I went back to work at 4 months, then my nanny held her until 6 months. We didn't have to do any training since it just happened on its own. Good luck!!
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@msplatypus: what awake time are you using? At that age we were at 90min. But 30min naps are really common when they're that tiny! DS is just now starting to take longer naps.
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@Mrs.Someone: usually about 90, but she often won't fall asleep for another 20 minutes even with a good amount of time to wind down. She used to nap on me but stopped about a month ago and will just fight me if I try to hold or rock her to sleep.
@BadgerMom: her naps were 45 to 50 minutes now they are 20 to 30 minutes and get progressivly harder to take as the day goes on.
It seems most people say I just have to wait it out, it's hard because she's obviously so tired
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@msplatypus: Does she give you sleepy cues? Maybe experiment a day with 75mins, and another day with 2hrs. Babies are a mystery!
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Honestly, the only thing that worked for us was time. She would only take 30-40 min naps for me until we trained her to fall asleep on her own at 7 months. Then they started getting a bit longer every time we dropped a nap. Now at 18 months she takes one 1.5-2 hour nap a day. I would not have thought that possible this time last year! She STTN great, just took shitty naps and didn't seemed to be too tired in the day so at least I didn't have to worry about that.
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@Mrs.Someone: I think I might play around with awake time this week, thank you for the advice!
@Charm54: the strange thing is... she's always fallen asleep on her own. We would wrap her and feed her as a newborn and put her down awake. I think I just need to relax and help her through it, it's hard though.
Ironically enough she's been napping for an hour and 20 minutes this morning. Although I think it's because she got immunizations yesterday and they seem to make her sleepy.
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I feel you pain. We have a similar issue. I know that DS will grow out of it eventually but I really feel like I'm spending my entire day trying to fight him to sleep.
Have you tried letting her nap in a baby carrier/sling? I sometimes take DS out in ours in the middle of the day and he'll fall asleep after maybe 30 minutes or so. Or sometimes I'll put him in it, rock him to sleep in the house and just do a couple chores or eat lunch while he snoozes.
It's just a nice way to alleviate the constant must-make-baby-nap pressure, even if he doesn't sleep for much longer than usual in the carrier.
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As for falling asleep on her own - DS used to as well up until he was about 2-2.5 months old. Once he started becoming more alert and aware of the world around him, he really started to need our assistance to help him calm down and fall asleep. Maybe your LO is experiencing something similar.
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I don't know if I would call it a "success story" because it was hard, but I was able to extend naps by watching the video monitor like a hawk. Like clockwork she would start stirring at the 40 minute mark (I think - I can't remember anymore but it was always the same amount of time) and I would sneak in her room, scoop her up before she was fully awake, and rock her back to sleep. Once she was 100% asleep I could lay her back down. This would usually get me another 45 minutes and a happier baby, but it was time consuming!
Obviously this was not nap training, as nap training teaches them to fall asleep / back asleep on their own. We have sleep trained at night successfully but even at 16 months I have to rock my LO to sleep for naps. Every time we tried nap training was a 100% disaster. But when we switched to a 2 nap schedule, they naturally lengthened and she actually became a great napper for the most part.
She also napped really well in the car - always has and still does - and so some days we would just go for a drive just for everyone's sanity. Hang in there!
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