why cant my baby nap longer than 35 minutes?

[PeepersMom]

My almost 5 month old is STILL waking early from naps.  I have been working on extending his naps for almost TWO months.  I use the pat/shush.  I never - well rarely pu/pd because he is so big and frankly it is too sloppy to put him down over and over again. 

Sometimes it takes me an hour for him to fall back asleep and I think it is just the same as if I would have just picked him up in the first place.

I took away the pacifier last weekend and nights have gone well.  Naps STILL stink.  He is on 4 hour easy now and I have adjusted his awake times trying anywhere from 1hour (early on) to 2h15 min.  I am currently using 2 hours and have been for 2 weeks.  He still wakes up anywhere from 30-43 min into his naps and takes anywhere from 30min-1hour to get back down.  He is almost always crying the whole time.  There have been 2 naps that haven't needed my intervention.  It has never gotten easier consistently.  He may have one good day where for both long naps I get him back down in 15 min but rarely.  I even tried letting him CIO for a few days.  No difference.  And every new thing I try consistently for at least 2 weeks before changing up again. (except the cio - I gave that up after 4days)  But the only changes are the wake times.  Nothing major.

What in the world am I doing wrong?  I cry right a long with him.  I  just had to walk out of his room now.  I am listening to him cry his head off.   :cry: I am devastated.

I have to go back now.

I need help

[mrs_kat]

Oh, hon, I'm sorry you're feeling so frustrated.  As I write this, I know with certainty that my daughter will wake up from her nap in about three minutes.  I also know that I will not try to get her back to sleep because she will end up screaming bloody murder and I will give in and get her up and we'll both be cranky as a result.  If I just get her up, then I won't have such nasty thoughts about motherhood.

My saving grace is that regardless of whether Kenzie sleeps for 45 minutes or for 2 hours (when was the last time that happened, anyway?) she can stay awake for the same amount of time, about 2 hours.  So at least EASY isn't completely ruined like it was when she first started the short naps.

But I do feel your frustration.  There were too many possibilities of why Kenzie is having the short naps and too many possible solutions and I was just going crazy with experimenting and trying to figure out what was going on.  Like you, we've been dealing with it for two months.  The best solution for us is to just get her out of bed and be thankful that she sleeps well at night.  I'm not saying that you should give up trying to extend naps if you think you really need to.  But just know that you're not the only one who hasn't found a solution that worked, and it's not a reflection on your value as a mother.

Ah, someone's awake!  Gotta go.  Hang in there!

[KellyC]

I have to say I agree with Mrs_Kat.  I've tried different ways of extending DS's naps and all of them had me frustrated and in tears when they didn't work.  I've now decided to be grateful that he sleeps through the night, usually goes down for a nap fairly easily and is a happy little boy for alot of the time.  If he only takes a 45 minute nap then we get up and keep his Activity low key but he can still last an hour - the same as if he'd had a 2 hour sleep!  I feel much happier having taken this decision, but moms have different personalities just like our LOs and you have to decide what works best for your family.  BTW, we had 6 short naps today - that was one big chunk of my day putting Zander down for a nap!!

Kelly x

[Aarismom]

When they start to come out of the developmental phase, you'll have on and off days where one day they'll nap ok, and the next few you'll have bad naps.   Mine did that up until about maybe 5 months and 1 week, then she started having more good days than bad.

You'lve also tried CIO and it didn't work, so you might have a trust issue to deal with which will take a few days to iron out.

If you can get maybe 1 nap as decent (an hour or more) consider it a victory. Hopefully you're coming to the end of this!

*HUGS*
Sonya =P