Resettling naps

[lolsyb1982]

DD2 is 5 months. She's well into the 3-2 already.

We suffered with short naps for what seemed like forever and I could never resettle. After extending her A time considerably we started to see progress but it's still very hit and miss.

She now has an A time of 3 hours. She goes to sleep independently. If she wakes up at 45min Mark she will fall back to sleep after I've put the dummy back in but literally for 10mins and then wakes up happy so can't resettle again.... Or sometimes she sleeps through the 45min point like yesterday but then woke at 1hr 15.
Do I need to tweak again or just stick with that time? I know if I had her in the carrier she would sleep for 1.5hrs but not something I want to get into every day.

Her A times are much longer than DD1 at this age. The 2nd nap is still very much a work in progress and I haven't sussed out her ideal A time for that either as if in crib will always wake after 45 mins.
I then have to squeeze a real cn into the day to get though to BT.

Ok so having gone up there I could smell what probably caused her to wake up after that short while. Don't you just hate mid nap poos!!!!!

[creations]

It sounds like another increase on the first A time could be due.  Mine had a very long first A time but the rest of the day was shorter.  I would add 10-15 mins and see if it makes a difference to how often she can transition past 45 mins even if it doesn't go longer than the 1hr 15 (and possibly increase again to see if she can go beyond the 1hr 15).

The second nap might need s bit of teaching to 'tell' her to sleep longer than 45 mins. A week or so of using a couple of rounds of W2S or staying in her room resettling her when she wakes may help to establish the habit of taking a longer nap.  It depends if she has ever done a long second nap, if not it may be the habit, if she used to then it may be a little A time increase needed there too.
hth

[Scottishmummy]

Also around 5-6 mo naps start getting longer developmentally (even for chronic catnappers!)

The fact you're sometimes getting a nap longer than an hour makes me wonder whether she's making that transition to being able to do more than one sleep cycle by herself and with time might start doing it more consistently?

As creations says, experimenting with a slightly longer A time is also worth a try - if you get OT signs you can always go back to 3hrs the next day.

[lolsyb1982]

Thanks ladies. Shall stretch it a bit tomorrow. Today has been a day of short naps as we've had to be out and about. Least I'm getting to make the most of the sunshine!!