baby playing in cot instead of sleeping!

[orlasmom]

Hi, my lo is one week off 7 months and she's started playing in her cot when I put her down for a nap. She'll play for up to an hour, then she'll get really cranky and upset and still won't go to sleep without a lot of calming down (usually shushing or white noise). I don't understand why she's started doing this, she might need more A time but the thing is that she seems really tired and ready for her nap when I put her into her cot and she just seems to wake right up when she goes into the cot, I keep the room dark and quiet - not sure what to do...any suggestions??
btw - she is teething at the moment but I think if she was in pain she wouldn't be playing in the cot, she'd be crying, wouldn't she?
thanks!

[Karin3]

With Mimi, if she ever plays in the crib, it means she's ready for longer A time.  I would start slowly trying to extend her A time by doing low-key activities.  Mimi sometimes yawns, and does what might look like tired cues, when she needs a change of scenery.  That was kind of a hard one to figure out.    In fact, I think she was right around 6-7 months, when she started doing that...

[KathrynK]

this was the age that I had to remove the toys from the cot otherwise dd would play with them and not go to sleep. As soon as I took them out she would go to sleep just fine; it had nothing to do with her A times....

[blondie_bebe]

My 6 month old does the same thing...except today I extended her A time and she went right to sleep.  I'll have to try this for the next nap as well. 

Previous to this morning's nap, she'd be fussy, yawn, rub her eyes so I'd go put her in her crib, and she'd immediately "wake up" and start giggling, taking, kicking her legs etc. 

[arial]

I am not certain that it has anything to do with longer A time.  I am going through the same thing (I also have a post about this problem).  My LO actually can play for 2 -3 hours, basically extending his A time to 5-6 hours sometimes.  I kno that this is too long for him because he wakes up 20 to 30 minutes later from his short nap really crancky. 

[orlasmom]

Thanks so much for your replies - it's great to know that other babies go through this too.
I don't have any toys in the cot with her so I think I'll try extending her A times, starting tomorrow. Hope it works!
I found her first tooth tonight - so I'm hoping she'll settle down.

[blondie_bebe]

awwww, congrats on the first tooth:) My girl got her first tooth last week too, but this playing instead of napping is not easy.  She is currently playing in her cot with the odd "fuss" but not crying. The nap yesterday afternoon didn't even happen.  Thankfully we had an hours drive so she slept then, but I hope this is a short phase

I just did shh/pat and she seemed to be falling asleep and then "pop" back to the playing...sigh...

[Scrapbooker]

This has been happening to my 4.5 month old DD who learned recently to roll over.  I have no good advice as I haven't found a cure, but you're definitely not alone.

[orlasmom]

I tried extending her A time to 3 hours today, dropping one of her naps - it seemed to help. On her 2nd nap she only played for a few mins then cried for a couple of minutes and fell asleep. She's cranky with teething at the moment so it's hard to tell how it went really - I'll try this for a few days and see what happens - thanks for the repies...
btw -she just learned to roll over recently too..

[blondie_bebe]

I extended her awake time this morning, and she went to sleep with about 5 min of sh/pt.  I'm also trying to extend her naps as she's been doing the 45 min naps.  I did wake 2 sleep for this nap and she's been sleeping an hour already, so I'm crossing my fingers