nightmare nappers

hi everyone... I am a lurker with a question, hope that is okay. My b/g twins are 7 months (born full term) this week and are terrible nappers. My boy Luke is breastfed, Lydia is formula.. we started ferber this week for night sleeping because they have been waking a lot and have only ever been put to bed asleep (my bad, I know.. but I love to hold and snuggle them and hate hearing them cry..) So, this is night 4 with about 20 mins of crying for Luke and 5 for Lydia at night. During the day, Lydia may or may not sleep for a nap when put down awake, Luke either way does not nap, put him down awake he cries for at least 30 mins, put him down asleep and he's up in 20 mins. I know wiesbluth says let them cry for one hour for naps but I am having a really hard time with this, and our days have been pretty miserable with frustrated mom and tired cranky sad babies. Has anyone had success with cranky bad nappers they could share with me? I really appreciate any advice!
thank you
heather

 

I would just make sure that you are trying to get them down for naps really before they get tired. At 7 months, mine were going down for a nap about 1.5 hours after they woke and then about 2 hours after they woke from the morning nap. They also took a cat nap in the afternoon in their swings at about 4:45 for about a half hour to get them through the evening until about 6:30. Personally at that age, I would do anything to get them to sleep. Rocking, swings, etc.

 

I'm kind of in the thick of things myself. We started modified CIO last week for night time sleeping. We were also in the category of snuggling them to sleep every night. For naps, I'm still sleeping with them. I don't know if you're supposed to try to change all of their sleep habits at once, but my approach has been to fix the night time problems first and keep the naps constant until that happens. My theory is that you can end up with overtired babies who have issues sleeping at night because they're not getting enough during the day. Once I feel like they've really gotten into a good place at night (we're on day 10 of CIO), I'll start doing CIO for naps.

Instead of worrying about how they go to sleep for naps right now, I'm concentrating on how much and when sleep. We're shooting for a total of 3.5 to 4hrs during the day, split between 2 or 3 naps. I also want their last nap to end before 4pm so they have plenty of time to get tired for bedtime. Before CIO, I think we were sleeping too much during the day because they weren't getting enough sleep at night.

 

We are nap training AGAIN because we just got back from a trip - always a hard hurdle for us. What I have found with my girls is that tired signs are very hard to recognize and once they appear they are overtired and it is incredibly hard to get them down. They might babble or whine for over an hour, sleep for 20, and then I have to get them up. I agree with PP in that especially that first nap - try putting them back down after being up only 1.5 hours. They might seem very awake but when I put mine down awake and happy, they usually go right to sleep. It is weird...but I get my best naps this way. Also, if they sleep crappy I just assume by afternoon nap I will get a longer nap. Not so...seems like crappier naps equal more crappier naps...it is the overtired state. Good luck.