6 month old and 1 hour naps?

[shem2005]

I have previously struggled with 45 minute naps. Everything was fine and we were back at napping apprximately for 2 hours but over the last two weeks she is napping for no more than 1 hour, occassionally (rarely) she will sleep longer.

Her routine at the moment is:
7am bottle
9am nap
11am bottle
1pm nap
3pm bottle
4.30-4.45pm nap
6.30pm bottle
7pm bed

So if she goes down at 9am, she will sleep till about 10am, try and resettle her for about 40-50 minutes and then she is up. She will usually last the 2 hours again but sometimes it is a stretch.

Is this to do with her awake times? The morning period she will not extend, it is a push somedays to get her to stay awake that long.

I think she could stay awake longer during the day if only she napped a bit longer.

Any ideas?

[Taylor's Mommy]

First a couple of thoughts.
A 1 hour nap is not always ideal, but also not bad.  Anything over 45 minutes can still be restorative and help them out.  So how does she wake up?  Is she happy and seem rested or does she clearly need to sleep longer?  IF she clearly needs to sleep longer then I can suggest 2 things:
1. slowly stretch out her awake time with very MELLOW activity (but only when you think she is ready, which she may not be yet as you say)
2. Try wake to sleep

Also, how long is her 2nd nap?  Is that also an hour?

My first instinct is that she is trying to drop the catnap, which it seems for many (myself included) is a long and bumpy process.   :lol:  :roll:

So if you feel she is best at 2 hours A time in teh morning, stick with that for a bit.  You will probably find in the next 2-3 weeks that you can stretch that out to almost 2.5 hours.  But until then, leave her morning A time as is and then try pushing out her afternoon A time by 15 minute increments every few days.  This will hopefully get a nice long nap (at least 1.5 hours), and then decrease her 3rd A time so that is not so long before bed time KWIM?  This might allow her to drop her catnap.  So then if all goes as planned, she is still getting at least 2.5 hours of naps/day which is within guidelines.

Of course on the days that this plan doesn not happen, sneak in the catnap.

HTH and let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks and good luck!

[shem2005]

thanks for your reply.

She has just gone down for her morning nap after 2 hours of A time, i will see how she goes. But today i will try and stretch out her middle A time and see if we have any success.

Both of her naps are 1 hour each and her catnap we actually let her sleep for about 1 hour as well. The problem i think is that if i was to get her up after an hour she would only be able to stay awake 2 hour so we would end up on 3 hour EASY but she won't eat then.

I think we are just in an in between stage at the moment.

Most times when i go into resettle her she will yawn within about 5 minutes so i presume she is still tired. And some times i can almost get her back to sleep.

I think i will give her another week of resettling and extending A time and if that doesn't work i will get her up after the hour and see how that pans out.

I haven't tried wake to sleep as yet but yesterday the phone rang 30 mins into her sleep and i heard her whinge for a minute and then go back to sleep, i thought 'wonderful' i will get an hour from then but 30 mins later she was awake. She is also a very light sleeper so the minute i walk into her room she is wide awake.

Thank you so much for your help. Hopefully i can report back some good news.

[shem2005]

well  had to quickly let you know that i kept her up this morning until 9.05am, so only 5 more minutes and it is now 11am and I am about to wake her for a feed.

She is usually more awake during the day so i will try for about 2.15 and see how we go. Hopefully it wasn't a one off.

[Taylor's Mommy]

taht is awesome news and I think it is a step in the right direction!  Of course tomorrow she may regress, but it shows that progress is being made.  Like I said, just go slow with the increase in A time and you should hopefully see an improvement.

BTW, many times Taylor ended up taking an hour-1.5 hour cat nap as well.  almost like she was so tired by the end of the day from not getting good enough naps she wanted to make up for it.

keep us posted!!!

[shem2005]

thank you Taylors Mummy.

Well yesterday afternoon she had another 2 hour nap, she woke up a couple of time but put herself back to sleep with little fuss. The she had an hour catnap which we woke her from.

She is about to go down for her first nap of the day and we will see how that goes. Hopefully she will continue to sleep well.

Another question: If she is awake for 2.15 hours, do i still let her sleep 2 hours - cause if I do she will run over the 4 hours for feeding? Yesterday morning i think she would have slept longer but do i just keep it to 2 hours asleep?

[Taylor's Mommy]

yes it is okay for the schedule to run a little over 4 hours.  You will find that it will naturally start to do that once introducing solids and A time increasing.