Extending naps - I think I missed something!

[janeya]

I am trying to extend my 4 1/2 months old sons naps but I am a little confused. When he wakes after 45 minutes (which is what I want to extend) sometimes I don't hear him - even with the monitor - and even when I get to him, he is quite happy and content and not crying or upset. So, I guess my question is, what do I do to extend the nap?

If I leave him in the cot with no intervention, then he just is awake in his cot, which means that even if I get him at feed time he has been awake for about 40 minutes and therefore needs to go back to sleep more quickly than the routine needs him to. Should I try and get him to go back to sleep? If so, how? If he's not upset and just sitting there.

Does waking to sleep work with short naps too?

Also, in terms of the afternoon cat nap - for some reason he just hates going to sleep in the late afternoon and will cry and cry. In the books it states that you should keep trying to get them to sleep and even if they only sleep for 10 minutes wake the baby up again. This I understand, but what happens if the baby just won't go to sleep? If we keep doing this, am I just training him that this time is a time where the two of us fight for 40 minutes about him going to sleep but it stops eventually?

Any help from seasoned users would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Jane

[Lana]

I am going to move this to the nap forum as I think you will get some better advice over there .

[Matthew's Mommy]

Hi there,

A few questions..

1. What does your daily routine look like? Ie. feed times, nap times etc
2. How long is the awake time?
3. How does your little one settle to sleep?

As for the last nap of the day, this can be a difficult nap, since it's the end of the day and our little ones get really tired and exhausted by then. So many of us have done a "cheater" nap-- a stroller walk or a car ride nap.  Because it's a short nap, many of us have used a prop for this one.  Also, it's the first nap to drop when you move to a morning and afternoon nap (around the 6th month), so making it different from the other naps of the day, makes it easier to drop it later.