Frustrated with sleep books....

sorry, this is sure to be a vent, plus I don't feel good. but, why do the sleep books have chapters about 5-9 month olds and talk about them taking primarily 2 naps for several hours each?????? HSHHC says only a small fraction of children take a third nap, can that be right?

my girls don't sleep long for naps at all. up at 6:45ish for the day bed at 7:30ish
nap 1- 9:00 for 45-60 minutes on a good day
nap 2 - 12:30ish for 30 minutes usually ( i can't get them back to sleep when they wake up from this one)
nap 3 - varies between 3:30 or 4 for 30-60 minutes usually

i thought they are supposed to sleep 3-5 hours during the day, most day's we dont' hit 3 hours and i feel like they need to sleep longer b/c they get crabby about an hour after then get up, which sucks, i feel like i have two crabby babies all day long. I dont' mind the 3 naps if they actually got rested but some days we have 3 half-hour naps and those days are awful... i feel like every day is different and it's so frustrating.

any ideas... I'm sure there is no hope of this getting better anytime soon. from other threads it seems like mostly they'll be on 3 naps until at least 9 months.

thanks for listening

 

My ID girls are just a few days older than yours (b'day April 3) and they only take 2 naps a day.
Here is our day... up at 7:00.
Nap from 9-10:30ish
Nap from 1:30- 3:30ish
6:45/ 7:00 down for the night.

I really wish that they would take a third catnap- maybe 30 minutes or so- but they just wont. At night they are soooo tired. Sometimes they are down at 6:30 and still sleep through till 7:00.

Those short naps kill me. If they wake before I think they should, I rock them until they are drowsy again then put them back down. I wish I could be of more help!

 

when my boys would take a little "snap", aka catnap, for only a half hour, I would not go in there until the nap time had expired... at least an hour, max an hour and a half... sometimes they would go back to sleep, sometimes not...they should be sleeping longer in the morning (i.e. 9 to 10:30) and then not down again until around 1, so after lunch worked for us... sometimes if you take them outside in morning and wear them out a little, they sleep better... then you can keep them up longer before the next nap... and if you are able to eliminate the 3rd nap, then you can move up the bedtime then they will get more rest at night as well... don't get frustrated... it's not a quick thing that happens over night, but consistency is very important and gradually they will become accustomed to the new routine... my kids are SO much happier these days...HSHHC saved me

 

At that age mine couldn't stay up longer than 1.5 hour at a time... even now it's 2.5 hour max, and still 2 hours most of the time, so needless to say, they're still having 3 naps a day! Sometimes they're short, sometimes longer, I just adjust their bedtime accordingly.

 

On "normal" days (as if!) mine wake at 6ish, I bf them, and if I can put them back in their cribs w/in 45-60 minutes, they often take their best naps of the day! So then they're waking up at 9ish. It's kind of anti HSHHC timewise, but when it works, it really works. DD then needs to sleep at least every 1.5 hrs, so we're definitely 3x/day nappers. DS is a horrible sleeper/napper, so I just take what I can get with him. He's not quite ready to fuss it out in his crib for the hour that Weissbluth suggest. He just gets hysterical, so I generally either skip trying him in the crib, or rescue him fairly quickly. When I do try for the hour it's just too sad. He wants his mommy! I'm glad to hear other folks are using (or wishing for) the 3rd nap, though. Are anyone else's kids going down for a morning nap so soon?

 

QUOTE(eechy @ Oct 14 2008, 07:27 PM) [snapback]1026362[/snapback]
On "normal" days (as if!) mine wake at 6ish, I bf them, and if I can put them back in their cribs w/in 45-60 minutes, they often take their best naps of the day! So then they're waking up at 9ish. It's kind of anti HSHHC timewise, but when it works, it really works. DD then needs to sleep at least every 1.5 hrs, so we're definitely 3x/day nappers. DS is a horrible sleeper/napper, so I just take what I can get with him. He's not quite ready to fuss it out in his crib for the hour that Weissbluth suggest. He just gets hysterical, so I generally either skip trying him in the crib, or rescue him fairly quickly. When I do try for the hour it's just too sad. He wants his mommy! I'm glad to hear other folks are using (or wishing for) the 3rd nap, though. Are anyone else's kids going down for a morning nap so soon?


For a while they would wake up at 5am, we would feed them and they'd go right back to sleep until 7-7.30am. Now if they wake up early we leave them in their crib and they usually fall back asleep. We tried to feed them and put them back down if they woke up after 6am, and it ended up in two very upset babies, so we gave up on that.

 

I honestly think it all depends on the child no matter how hard you try or what books you read. My DS was a horrible napper until he turned 1 when he would finally sleep on his own in his crib. He is now 2 and is an awesome napper (it only took 2yrs). I look back at it now and realize there wasn't much I could have done about it back then. I think the books are a good guide but not every child is going to fit into the exact mold. With my twins I am much more laid back and realize that they will come around as they get older. One of my girls naps really well like at least 3hrs each nap and the other one barely sleeps and hour at a time, I'm just going to wait it out to see what happens.

 

At that age mine could not be awake longer then 1.5hrs!! So potentially could you try and put them down for naps just before they start to get fussy? Maybe they are overtired and really still need that third or even 4th nap. At that age mine were up and down for like 5 naps/day, because their naps were usually only 45-60min.
Actually right around 5.5 months I started a new rule in my house, all naps were to be 1.5 hrs long (well the two main naps were to be that long, the third cat nap could be shorter), so I would put them in their cribs and leave them for 1.5hrs. They often woke up at 45min and cried a bit but then they sometimes actually fell back asleep. We still have this rule in our house actually. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
If I have learned something about kids and babies it is that they aren't 100% consistent - even when you are!!

Good luck - I hope you find something that works for you and your LOs.