I have a short napper and I need help!

[KellyC]

It sounds about right to me too - if he's waking after 35 minutes you could try doing w2s slightly earlier at 25 minutes.  Does he seem to be stirring enough when you do the w2s?  Is he still in a really deep sleep when you go in after 30 minutes at his second nap?

Kelly x

[mom2seth]

Sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn't.  It seems like if he is in a deep sleep, and is harder to stir, that's when he wakes up early.  One day I just walked in the room and he stirred when he heard the door open.  That's the day he slept almost 2 hours. 

I'm beginning to get frustrated though because now that he's napping better his nighttime sleep is starting to get all crazy.  Last night he woke at 4am and wanted playtime and didn't get back to sleep til 5:30.  He hasn't EVER done that.  Even when he was having night wakings, he was always so easy to get back down.  He's also started having a really hard time falling asleep at bedtime lately.  I used to be able to put him down, leave the room and he'd be out in 5-10 minutes.  Now he protests and cries and I have to keep going back in to pat him.  I don't know if it's just a phase or if it's because of the napping.  He's started both rolling and sitting on his own (if I put him in a sitting position) this week so that could be part of it!

[KellyC]

The rolling and sitting is probably screwing things up - there's always something to do that!  So long as you're consistent things will go back to how they were before.

I remember when I was doing w2s I started to find after a few days that Zander would already be awake when I went in so I stopped doing it and he started to get past the 45 minute mark on his own.  Have you tried not doing it and seeing what happens?!  You might find that he still has a short morning nap but is tired enough to get through a longer second nap on his own.  Remind me how old he is now?  How many hours sleep did he get the day before the long night waking?

Kelly x

[mom2seth]

He's 5 months this week.

I'm still scared that he won't get past the 45 minute mark if I don't do w2s. I was going to wait to try without it once he got consistent at extending WITH it first.  He's still hit and miss.  Yesterday I tried with his first nap and he didn't extend, then we went to the lake and he took a bunch of catnaps the rest of the day (he was happy though because he was somewhere new) and then he was back to sleeping through the night again last night. 

I think the night waking may have been PARTIALLY my fault.  It's not abnormal for him to wake up around 4-4:30 and talk to himself for 30-45 minutes then go back to sleep.  He woke me up talking and he started getting a little louder than normal (but still not really crying) and I was afraid that he had either rolled over and didn't know how to go back to sleep on his tummy or he had a dirty diaper, so I went in to check on him and once he saw me he wanted play time.  If I would have just left him he probably would have gone back to sleep.  As for the not going to sleep easily at bedtime...I've noticed it happens when he has his "2nd catnap" later (like after 6pm).  So I'm going to TRY to make sure he has no naps after 5:30.  That's hard when we're out though because that time of the evening he's always going to fall asleep in the car if he gets the chance.

[bennybean]

mom2seth, I have a consistent 45 minute napper, especially for his afternoon nap.  How much earlier do you go in to W2? Also, how much do you wake him up?  I 've tried with my little guy, but it usually backfires on me.

[osren]

We have always had trouble with naps, but lately we have been getting some 1.5 hour naps in the morning and for the second nap (sometimes the second nap will be 2 hours) My 16 week twin boys, however, have for the past 4 days been scrapping their late afternoon nap. Whereas I used to be able to sometimes extend this nap to at least an hour or 1.5 hours, now it's good if we can get them to 45 minutes, and then BAM - they're up and there's nothing I can do about it. They'll either cry until I pick them up, and will be looking at me with these SUPER wide awake eyes. The trouble is, they're up from this nap anywhere between 3:15 and 4, and they cannot make it to their bathtimes at 6:00 and bed by 7:00. Today, I tried to give them another catnap at 5:00 and it kinda worked for Matt, but I had to do pu/pd with Luke for 30 minutes, and then he only slept 10 minutes. I'm worried that skipping that late afternoon nap will have repercussions at night time. Last night, Matt slept as usual (woke a few times, easily went back to sleep with the paci, but started fussing around 5 or so until we got up at 6:45). Luke, however, was a real mess; he fussed A LOT last night, much more than usual. Is it reasonable for 4 month olds to sleep a total of only about 4 hours worth of naps?

We also have just started extending towards 3.5 EASY, so maybe that's what's causing all this mess? They can't really keep up with the A time of 3.5 EASY, but they are not really hungry at 3 hours... I think I need help with this. The most they can stay up is max 1.5 hours, with a very occasional 2 hours every once in a while. I try not to put them down when they are overtired and we keep most activities pretty tame.

Oh, and WTS is really hit and miss with us, too. I read earlier in this thread that it doesn't work with paci babies? Can anyone explain why? For WTS, I try to go in around 35 minutes and it has worked for us a few times, although we just started this past week.