Looking for Help w/45 min. naps

[jaosmith]

Hi all,

I am new to the site, but have done a combination of BW and Babywise w/ my almost 8 mo. old since birth.  He has been a chronic 45 min. napper, with short sections (a couple of weeks) of good napping.  We will do PU/PD and go to 1 hr. 15 min. naps for a week or so, then something will throw him off.  He just caught a cold and has had only 45 min. naps for 5 days now and PU/PD is not working this time.  I do PU/PD and he calms, but then lays there in crib wide awake, no soothing, no settling.  If I leave the room cuz he is calm but awake he just starts to cry again and we do the whole routine over but never get back to sleep.  Want to try w2s, but not sure how, plz HELP!  Oh, and he is strong enough now to pull himself up to standing in crib, often find him standing at end of crib near door crying when I go in to do PU/PD.

Liam's Mom

Liam's schedule:
approx. 7:30 am wake/nurse/solids
approx. 10:00 am nap 1
11:30-12:00 Nurse
nap 2 depends on how long nap 1 was, may be as early as 2pm, or as late as 3pm
4pm or 4:30 nurse/solids
7pm or 7:30 bath, ready for bed
8pm nurse and down to bed

Liam has no problem sleeping through the night, just napping

[malialeanne]

If he's sleeping well at night, it may be that the routine needs tweaking. How long is your first nap? Looking at your schedule, it looks like 1.5 hours. If it's a 45 min nap and he's waking at 10:45, a 2 p.m. nap would give him over 3 hours A time--that might be a lot for a not-quite-8 month old.

Here's link to a post with approximate A times for different ages: https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=84884.0

Does he sleep without props? (Paci, etc)

[jaosmith]

He sleeps without props, and goes for about 3 hours total of awake time after his first nap, that's with me watching for signs of tiredness.  Yesterday he took two nice long naps (did the same thing I do every day) and today he is back to 45 minutes and on top of that woke up 1/2 hour earlier than normal this morning.

[malialeanne]

45 naps can also indicate undertiredness. If he's sleeping well at night and not using props, then he knows how to sleep on his own and PU/PD won't solve the problem since the goal of PU/PD is to teach independent sleep. It can't make them tired if they're not.

If he's doing 3 hour A times without a problem he may be ready to extend. You can try keeping his up for about 10-15 minutes each day and seeing how it goes. Around 9-10 months (your ds may be ready a bit earlier) some moms find they need to do a shorter a.m. nap (45 mins) to get a longer p.m. nap. This will continue until your ds goes to one nap between 12-18 months. It's different for every baby of course, yours may be ready a bit sooner than most.

Good luck!

[jaosmith]

Thanks for the advice, he may need longer awake time.  When he was first getting out of 45 minute naps around 4-5 mos. I found that even 15 min. of awake time made the difference between a long and short nap, so I appreciate the reminder.  I will try it.  I also find that his first A time of the day is always shorter than the rest of them and I'm finding it harder to judge his tiredness since he is now so active.  I think that if I let him, he would just crawl around the house pulling up on things until he melted down.  Of course I would never let him do that, bad for both of us    Again, I appreciate the advice and will just keep plugging away at being a mom