Is she just a short napper?

[*Kara*]

Hey Kim,

Hold that A time first thing in the morning, but if she only does a short nap, you need to reduce the next A time back by about 20-30 mins to keep OT away...

[kimbo613]

Well, she stayed awake for about 2 hours after first nap anyway   First nap I'm not sure how long it was.  She was in her room for an hour, but when I put her down she was not as drowsy as she had been in the living room.  I expect it took her a bit to fall asleep and that it was still a short 40/45 min nap.  Second nap was 40 min, third nap she took 30 min to settle (after 2 hrs A time), then only slept 35 min.  Bedtime was fine, but she woke an hour later and has been goofing around in there for over an hour.  Tomorrow is church, so she'll get most of her naps in the carseat or Moby.

I'm wondering if me pushing her A time is not such a good idea now.  We've had more trouble after bed the last few nights and she has been more fussy.  But maybe that is just her getting used to it?  But certainly she can't stay at 1hr40min A time forever   Spreading the naps out with longer A times would be so good for her if she would sleep just a little bit longer.  We had been doing 4x40min naps, but the last was always difficult and too late in the day.  It usually ended up being 20 min in the Moby, but still after 5:00 and she was waking up with only 1hr30min or less till bedtime.

[*Kara*]

I'm starting to think that this is the 45 min nap monster!

Cait-naps are actually developmental for many babies until about 6 months of age... I remember it all too well!

There is really little that you can do if this is the case... Hold her A time a bit longer for the first nap and see if she comes around

[kimbo613]

Well, we have had some success getting DD to sleep longer, but we had to change our strategy.  Sat night she was so unsettled.  BT was 6:45, she was up from 7:40-10:30 when she finally seemed hungry, nursed to sleep but woke again at 11:20.  Dh went to resettle her and finally got her down for good about 11:40.  And she was bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7am   We decided to take a break from stretching A times and see if it fixed our nights, which are back to normal now.

So we went back just reading her cues and I planned to spend a lot of time resettling her, for long periods (I planned on an additional sleep cycle, so 40 min).  So I just said, well DS will watch a lot of TV for a few days, and DH and my mom have helped too when they are around.  Today was the third day, and most of the time she still does just 40 min and cries/fights the next 40 min, but twice now she has gone back to sleep!  Yesterday afternoon she did 40 min, 10 min of crying, and slept another 1hr15min before I had to wake her.  Let me tell you she was so cheerful after that nap, 7:00 BT was awesome, and we didn't hear a peep from her till 5:45am.  Of course that threw off our whole feeding schedule but you can't have everything 

[*Kara*]

If it works - go with it!

[kimbo613]

That was my thought   Got a 1.5 hr nap this morning!

[*Kara*]

SCORE!!!!