Hi all! Hoping someone can offer some advice or at least some personal experience. My 7-month-old has been a short napper since he was around 2 months old. At the time everyone said, "Don't worry, his naps will lengthen naturally around 6-7 months." Now I'm wondering if there's any hope or if he's doomed to be a short napper forever! He generally naps for around 30 minutes, but you can't set a clock by it like I've heard others say they can with their short nappers. What's maddening about it is that sometimes he WILL settle back to sleep and I can never figure out what I've done or haven't done to get a long nap out of him. I've tried keeping him up longer, putting him down earlier, wake to sleep, etc. The other day, he miraculously slept 1.5 hours straight through, which he hasn't done in months, and I have no idea what the trigger was! He's still taking three naps a day, and sometimes I can lengthen the first nap...or the second...or the third...there's no consistency there either.
He is generally a good nighttime sleeper and goes to sleep on his own (with a pacifier) in his crib at around 6:30 pm. If he sleeps straight through until 5:45 am, I consider that a victory and he's usually up for the day...other days he wakes at 4:45 or 5 and I end up rocking him back to sleep until 6:30 am. He is consistently drinking 8 ounces every 4 hours but other than that we don't have much of a "schedule" going because of his naps. He generally goes down for his first nap about 2 hours after waking up and his A times for the rest of the day are a tad over 2 hours except for a longer stretch (3, sometimes 3.5 hours) before bedtime.
He has been napping in his swing for a long time, which we started when his naps first got short because the swing seemed to lengthen them, but I'm working on getting him back in his crib. He napped today in his crib and flipped onto his side/belly to sleep for the first time ever...but still only napped 30ish minutes. He never wakes crying or unhappy, it's just that sometimes -- if he's napping in bed with me, for example -- I can shh him and pet his head and he'll go back to sleep, but other times he's grinning away at me through his pacifier and I figure the nap is over! It's frustrating because I feel like he IS capable of taking a longer nap but most days he doesn't!
