6 Month old boycotts naps!

[shelldog42]

We started teaching our daughter to sleep in her crib during her second week of life.  She puts herself to sleep beautifully.  She is now sleeping all the way through the night (she is 6 months old).  We have had several phases of 45 minute naps, such as when she transitioned from 4 to 3 naps per day.  However we have been fairly successful at using PU/PD to send her back to sleep so she got at least one good nap each day, and she worked it out and went back to taking longer naps.

Last week she started or rather stopped sleeping!  One day she napped a total of one hour the entire day!  When she does go down for a nap she sleeps for 30-40 minutes, wakes up crying (and yawning), and PU/PD is no longer working.  I am doing PU/PD for over an hour consistently every day and her naps are not getting any better.

We also are entering the realm of many milestones and changes:
1.  Rolling over and getting ready to crawl (last two weeks)
2.  Starting rice cereal and introducing other solid foods (last one week)
3.  Starting to babble syllables (last few days)

Here is what our routine was before the sleep changes:

6:30-7:00  wake up
7:00 bottle 6 oz
9:00 nap
10:30  wake
11:00 bottle 6 oz
1:00 nap
1:45 wake, do PU/PD
3:00 wake & bottle 6 oz
5:00 catnap
5:45 wake
7:00 bottle 6 oz, bedtime
11:00 dreamfeed 8 oz

now this is our routine:

6:30 wake
7:00 bottle 6 oz and 1 oz sweet potato
9:00 nap
9:40 wake, PU/PD for an hour
10:30 get up (because PU/PD isn't working and she is hysterical)
11:00 bottle 6 oz
12:00 nap because she's exhausted
12:40 wake, PU/PD for an hour (or maybe not if I'm too tired!!!)
1:30 awake
2:30 or 3:00 bottle 6 oz and 1 serving rice cereal
3:00 nap3:40-5 awake (for the last two days she's actually taken a full nap)
6:30 bottle 6 oz, and to bed
11:00 dream feed 8 oz

Sometimes I even put her down to nap more often than this because she is cranky. 

Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.  I have tried wake to sleep, PU/PD, shush pat, singing.  The only thing that I think might work is driving in the car and that is something we have never done to get her to sleep and don't want to start now.  SHe stops crying immediately when we leave the nursery and we have never let her cry it out.

I'm also concerned because when we do the PU/PD she is crying the DISTRESS cry, it is heartbreaking and I'm starting to feel like it can't be good for her and it might be better for her just to have short naps and be a little tired or cranky during the day than to cry that much. 

Thanks!

~Tired Mommy

[*Natasha*]

She may be ready to extend her awake time and drop the cat nap. Do you think she could handle an extra 30min awake time. Often when they start taking 45mins naps again it means they are ready to have longer awake time.

[shelldog42]

Thanks for the suggestion...I tried keeping her up an extra 30 minutes until 9:30...it took her over 30 minutes with PU/PD to fall asleep (she usually goes right to sleep on her own) and then she only slept 40 minutes, which tells me that she was overtired?  Any thoughts?  How long does it take to transition to a longer awake time?

[*Natasha*]

Do it slower then say extend it my 5-10mins every 2-3days if doing it in 1 hit makes her overtired.

[KathrynK]

also I would start perhaps by not extending that first A time from waking to first nap- as that tends to always be the shortest one of the day. Most lo's handle a longer 2nd A time better so perhaps leave that first nap at 9am to begin with and stretch her 2nd nap later.