Naps

I have posted about naps before but the boys are so cranky today and this week that I feel like there has to be something else I need to try to help them sleep better. I keep telling myself that naps are going to fall into place soon. Everyone says that it starts to happen around 4 months but we are coming up on 6 months and naps seem to be a battle around here. I don't know if it is the schedule we are on...maybe I need to change/tweak it?!

They still can hardly stay up for 2 hours between naps. Usually about an hour and 15 minutes after getting up I start to notice tired signs. Their naps today, for example, have only lasted about 30-45 minutes and they wake up crying. I try to help them go back to sleep but it never works. Ill put their shusher in their mouth and pat them. They calm down but as soon as I stop their heads pop up and they are crying again.

Here is our schedule.

7am- Wake up/change diapers/eat
8:15am- Nap-usually cry 1-10 minutes before going to sleep
9am- awake
10am- change diapers/eat
11am-Nap (usually cry 1-10 minutes before going to sleep)
11:45-awake
1:30pm- Nap( usually cry 1-10 minutes before going to sleep)
2:15pm awake
6pm-start bedtime (bath, lotion, eat, read, placed in cribs around 6:30-6:45)
10pm- crying (try to sooth but once I walk out they start crying again so I usually feed them)
1-2am -same thing

then they usually wake up another time before 7 when we get up and start all over. The schedule above reflects how today has been so far. Usually there is a 3 hour window at night from their last nap until bedtime but tonight it will be longer. Should I move bedtime way up tonight?? The day would just be much more smooth if just one nap was at least an hour and they woke up happy.

If this is confusing, I'm sorry. Any suggestions?

 

oh the 30-45 min naps...hated hated that phase. Honestly for us it lasted from about 5-8 months...we just got out of it a couple weeks ago and I'm hoping it sticks!
I'm sure they cant stay up 2hrs yet because their naps are so short. I actually used to force them to stay awake 2hrs unless they got super fussy then to bed they went.
For now you could try adding in a 4th nap...around 4:30 or so and keep bedtime the same. You could try a 6:00 bedtime but thats the earliest I would go.
Have you tried letting them cry for 15 mins or so when they wake up?

 

When my girls were about 4-5 months old we put the Fisher Price Aquariums in their cribs. It did wonders for helping them fall asleep and prevented the crying when Mommy left the room. They would just stare at them and coo and talk. Do you have a white noise machine in their room or a fan you could put on to muffle the noises of the house, perhaps that is waking them up??

 

i can't remember how you feel about CIO but i'll let you know what we did to help our girls extend their naps & you can take it or leave it. once we got to a point where they would initially go down fairly easily for their naps (10 minutes or less of crying/fussing), we started setting a timer for 1 hour. if the girls woke up BEFORE that hour, we RESET the timer for another hour & left them alone. the first day we did it, both girls cried for about 40 minutes & then went back to sleep for about 20 minutes. the next day they cried for about 20 minutes & slept for another 30 minutes. and so on until, instead of taking 2 cat naps, they were taking one long nap. even now it's very rare for them to nap for less than 1.5 hrs at a time. had they still been crying at the end of the hour, we would have gone in & comforted them & decided at that point whether it seemed like they would then be able to go back to sleep or whether we would just get them up & try again later in the day. however, they never did cry for the whole hour. we also temporarily seperated them for this process as it was a lot easier to tell who was crying when while they were in seperate rooms. GL!

 

QUOTE(miss_bossy18 @ May 20 2009, 05:29 PM) [snapback]1321937[/snapback]
once we got to a point where they would initially go down fairly easily for their naps (10 minutes or less of crying/fussing), we started setting a timer for 1 hour. if the girls woke up BEFORE that hour, we RESET the timer for another hour & left them alone.


How old were your girls when you started to do this?

 

I don't know if I am reading this right or not...

Does that mean they only had one nap each day or that all 2/3 naps were about 1.5 hours? Also, did it matter if they woke up after 50 minutes? Did you still reset the timer?

Thanks

 

QUOTE(Durangomom @ May 20 2009, 04:07 PM) [snapback]1321974[/snapback]
How old were your girls when you started to do this?


we did it one nap at a time. so we started with the morning nap when they were about 4 months old. at that time they would take another 2 - 3 naps where ever & how ever they would (usually in the swing for variable amounts of time). then once the morning nap was fairly consistent (usually about 2 hours long), we did it with the afternoon nap (which ended up sitting at around the 1.5 hour mark). we never did any sleep training for the 3rd nap as that was usually just a short cat nap to get them through to bed time (if anything, we tended to have to wake them up from that nap because if they slept past 5:30pm they wouldn't go down for their 7:00pm bed time).


QUOTE(2xthefun @ May 20 2009, 05:31 PM) [snapback]1322058[/snapback]
I don't know if I am reading this right or not...

Does that mean they only had one nap each day or that all 2/3 naps were about 1.5 hours? Also, did it matter if they woke up after 50 minutes? Did you still reset the timer?

Thanks


sorry about that! to clarify, they took 3 naps a day. this was our rough schedule at around 6 months (after the nap training):

7:00am wake up
9:00am nap #1 (usually 2 hours)
11:00am (aprox) wake up
1:00pm nap #2 (usually 1.5 hours)
2:30pm (aprox) wake up
4:00pm nap #3 (variable)
5:00pm wake up
7:00pm bed time

during the training process, i would reset the timer even if they woke up at 59 minutes. if i remember correctly though, i think Riley only did that once. they usually woke up more around the 40/45 minute mark. now, if they wake up early from a nap i usually just go & get them up. if they start waking early from their naps on a regular basis, i do a bit of re-training.

we also had "maximum" nap times to protect the rest of the day. we never let them sleep more than 2.5 hours for the morning nap & 2 hours for the afternoon nap. i found with my girls that any time they overslept for a nap they would resist or even skip other naps later in the day, which led to them being awake for too long at a stretch, which led to cranky babies, etc. i found that scheduled awakenings was actually the best sleep training tool in my arsenal. HTH.

 

Miss Bossy-
Thanks for the idea! I have one who generally takes a good morning nap (1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours) while the other sleeps 30-45 minutes. Perhaps it's time to separate them and try "training" the other to sleep longer...if I have it in my heart to let her scream for an hour, because I think that's what she'll do! Where in there were your feedings? I like the idea of working on the morning nap first, then moving on to the afternoon. Our afternoons are so variable, and generally a mess! Anyone got any suggestions on how to do this around an older child's schedule? :laughing:

How many hours of sleep are recommended for a 4-5 month old in a 24 hour period? Part of me feels like I won't get the daytime routine situated until we're STTN and consistently waking at the same time! It feels like it will never happen!

 

QUOTE(Adrianna @ May 20 2009, 08:01 PM) [snapback]1322302[/snapback]
Miss Bossy-
Thanks for the idea! I have one who generally takes a good morning nap (1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours) while the other sleeps 30-45 minutes. Perhaps it's time to separate them and try "training" the other to sleep longer...if I have it in my heart to let her scream for an hour, because I think that's what she'll do! Where in there were your feedings? I like the idea of working on the morning nap first, then moving on to the afternoon. Our afternoons are so variable, and generally a mess! Anyone got any suggestions on how to do this around an older child's schedule? :laughing:

How many hours of sleep are recommended for a 4-5 month old in a 24 hour period? Part of me feels like I won't get the daytime routine situated until we're STTN and consistently waking at the same time! It feels like it will never happen!


i nursed them when they woke up & just before they went to bed for the night. so, 7:00am, after each nap (x3) & before bed. at 6 months we were still doing a dreamfeed as well (10:30pm). Danika was STTN at that point, but Riley was still waking between 3:00am - 4:00am to nurse.

in regards to a consistent wake up time, have you tried setting one? we actually started waking the girls up at 7:00am every morning just to help set the schedule for the day. or is the problem that your LOs are waking too early?