Lengthening Naps

M

megan2008

Registered User
I have been reading the Sleep Lady's Guide for tips on helpiing my infant sleep better and am having problems getting my baby to take longer naps. She sleeps for exactly 45 minutes and wakes up bright eyed and cheery. I have tried leaving her in the crib for a while longer but she just gets more and more frustrated until I give up and take her out of the crib. My question is has anybody tried to lengthen nap time? if so, how long does it take for the naps to actually lengthen? and how long should I leave her in the crib before taking her out?

I have one more experience not pertaining to naps and was wondering if anybody has had the same.....my baby has learned to roll on her belly but starts screaming minutes after she does this. I try rolling her back but she instantly rolls back on her tummy again and starts screaming again :( Has anyone experienced this? If so, what did you do? Thanks so much for any advice :smile:
 
Gosh, if your baby sleeps for 45 minuts and seems happy, well rested and sleeps through the night, then it sounds like it's the perfect length of time for her. Why mess with something that's going well? It would be a different story if she wakes up hysterical every time.

I think some babies are just better nappers during the day with others, but in the end, if she's getting a good night's sleep then that means she's getting what she needs during the day. Daytime sleep directly affects the night one.
 
Megan2008,

I was in the exact same situation where my daughter only took EXACTLY 45 minute naps. It would drive me crazy because I could only get her down for 3 of those a day and was worried that was not enough. My advice now is do not worry about it at all, especially if your LO seems fine with it. I think they grow into longer naps. I would try to leave her in the crib at least an hour (as long as she wasn't crying). Anyways my daughter is now 9 months and a great napper. She now sleeps 1.5 hours at a time and wakes up happy. These things just evolve!

Sorry can't comment on the tummy thing though! I assume she would grow out of that too!
 
My experience is that depending on your baby's personality type they may never become a "good napper." Some babies don't like to nap. My son is a classic example--not really big into naps and never has been. But...now that he's 14-months-old and I've acquired some "tricks of the trade" I can get one 1.5-3 hour (3 is really, really, really rare) nap out of him a day--usually in the mid-morning (starting between 10 am and noon).

I think everything is connected. I know that for my son, if he doesn't get to bed at a decent hour (his bedtime is no later than 7:30 pm and usually a lot earlier) then it throws everything off for him. If he gets a good night's sleep he is up by 7 or 8 am. Then I make sure he gets a big breakfast (or as big as he'll eat)--then some playtime to "drain his batteries" as we call it. Then I know the signs to look for when he is truly tired--yawns, will lay his head down on the couch for 30 seconds with a spaced-out look.

Lately what I do is take him in our room. I have a bottle prepared for him. He drinks his bottle and then we do about 10-15 minutes of what I call "Tickle Therapy." I basically just play with him, wrestle with him,tickle him until he is so worn out that he kind of gladly lays down and pretty soon sleeps. Once he sleeps, I leave the room. However, it sounds like your baby is quite a bit younger.

My experience is that you can try lots and lots of things as far as naps go but if your child has the personality of a "non-napper" you'll probably just have to ride it out and see if it changes with time--it may or it may not. My son rarely slept more than 20-30 minutes, once or twice a day until he was probably about 9-10 months old.
 
Thanks for all the advice. The only problem with the short naps is that the bright eyed and cheery phase doesn't last long and she becomes pretty fussy. She really scratches at her eyes and yawns quite a bit so I assume that she needs to sleep more yet doesn't do it. It makes the day harder for both her and me. Last night she could barely keep her eyes open for her last bottle at 5:45pm but then woke up 1/2hour later and did this the whole night (woke up after 30 mins-hour of sleep).
 
Hello Megan, how old is your daughter? My son was a 45 minute napper. Babies go through a 45 minute sleep cylce. Sometimes its about how you put them to sleep that helps them go back to sleep - but what you do about this really depends on the age of the baby. Patting a younger baby or gently rocking to sleep (not in arms) can help a younger baby - because when they wake after 45 you can simply try and pat or rock them back to sleep. If you carry your baby until they sleep then it can be much harder. Some extra info mya help answer your question.
 
I used to rock her to sleep but now she gets agitated when I rock her so I just put her in the crib. She cries for maybe a minute and I will rub her eyes and give her a pacifier and she will sleep. Then 45 minutes later she's up again. I try to rub her eyes and sh sh but she resists.
 
I know this feeling so well! Bub used to do her 2 hours at lunch time when she was young, then suddenly began waking at the 45 mins mark on the dot, which is exactly one sleep cycle. This is really common.

The advice was to go in at the 40 min mark and as they wake up, gently do anything you can to get them back off to sleep again and into another cycle. For me this involved rocking and patting her as soon as she stirred and trying to get her back off to sleep into another cycle. Sometimes it worked, sometimes she woke fully and we had to get her up.

It actually fixed itself completely when we did some controlled crying at night as she learnt to properly put herself back to sleep after waking.

Does she fall asleep herself in the crib and put herself back to sleep at night? It could be part of a wider pattern of learning to fall back to sleep (or she if knew it before, she could have forgotten the trick of it).

Can you put an extra nap in so she's getting good day time sleep in total even if its in 45 periods? The overtiredness in the evening will only encourage the night waking.

Take heart though, she went straight back to 45/1hr in the morning, 2 hours at lunch and a afternoon cat nap as soon as the 'trick' of going back to sleep after 1 cycle was learnt.
 
if you rock her to sleep that might be the problem - seem to sleep better if they put themselves to sleep but not neccessarily an easy process. Try gradually putting her down more and more awake and just hold or pat her in teh crib. of course you could try crying it out but that is pretty hard to do if you have been rocking her. i have had a lot of nap probs with no1 and nothing seemed to work and he cried and cried if i tried to put him down - he did evolve into longer naps when he started walking but that was closer to 1 year old and to be honest we still have nap problems so i recommend trying to get her to sleep on her own.
 
try letting her cry for about 20 mins....if she is still sleepy she would derfi go abck to sleep ....if she doesn;t then i don;t think she really needs any extra sleep.....u can progressively go in and pat her every 5 mins if the crying gets to u....but i would suggest to just let her be and see if the crying is dying out....i did this for my son;s night sleep and it worked well to amke him sleep thru the night.....but his naps are still 40 mins....after waking up every hour in the night for 7 months i am really not complianing!!!!
 
Hi Megan2008,

I have managed to lengthen the 45 min nap (one sleep cycle) time with the following suggestion- for a couple of days you have sit by your baby's side right about the time you know they are about to get up. At the first sign of waking up, pat them down. Since they are already in a sleepy state, its easier for them to move into the next sleep cycle. Its a little tiresome to just sit around but it worked pretty well for me (it took me about 3-4 naps to help him sleep longer) because my son also would start getting cranky after the effect of the power nap was over.

Elizabeth pantley also had the suggestion that you do anything and everything you can incl. feeding the baby to sleep for a couple of days and not let them get out of the sleepy stage, and you will probably teach them to nap longer.

Re: crying when she gets on her tummy- is her hand is not stuck underneath? My mom said I used to get very upset as a baby when I started rolling over as well because I used to get both my hands stuck under me till she taught me how to get my hands out!!
 
Thanks for the advice. She actually goes to bed quite well now (knock on wood) and can nap for more than 45 minutes sometimes which makes me think that she does know how to fall back to sleep yet doesn't???? She still isn't consistant with how long she naps and has even gone shorter for 30 min and I know that she is tired :( As for the night wakings of every hour.....she was teething and it has gotton much better. Still not sure about the naps. Do you think that maybe she just doesn't need it despite the fact that she looks tired? If she does need it, then why does she sometimes sleep for two to three hours sometimes? Is it even realistic to have a set nap schedule b/c sometimes she wakes at 6am and sometimes 7 which makes a huge difference on when she takes a nap. Sorry, I just don't know if I will ever have a solid nap schedule ( and am not sure if I want to go through the stress of it)...... sigh
 
some moms feel totally comfortable without having a "firm" schedule. babies will sleep when they want to, but for me personally, a routine helps me get on with my life and helps me plan our day together (i.e. market runs with him, playgroup times etc...)

our son wakes up from anywhere between 6 - 6:45/7am these days. 45 minutes is a huge difference. He normally shows signs of tiredness at 8:30am (with a 6:15am wake-upt time) so if he wakes up later, I just push the nap back. So if he wakes up at 7one morning, his nap will be around 9/9:30am.
 
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