Baby terrible at napping
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Anonymous
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Baby is about to turn 6 months and her naps are a mess!
We sleep trained and she settles herself at night without much fuss, still has one nighttime feed but is in bed mostly asleep from 6:30pm - 6:00 am. But it is so hard to get her to take a nap. She really fights it and doesn't settle herself. I'll let her fuss and do checks 5, 7, 10 mins if she is really crying, but a whole hour of that will go by without her falling asleep. How do I get her to nap? She has a quiet, dark room with a sound machine, warm sleep sack, etc. She gets a clear diaper, into sleep sack and either bottle or breast and I put her down drowsy. Same routine every time. |
Anonymous
| For me, it was just time. I did a lot of held and stroller naps until we consolidated to one nap around 12-14 months. I just had a terrible napper. |
Anonymous
| She is a low sleep needs baby. If you absolutely need a good predictable nap you will have to take it out of nighttime sleep. Don't look at sample nap schedules for her age and wonder why she sleeps way less. If she isn't cranky and hitting all her milestones she just has less sleep needs. You can also try wearing her out with baby classes, library trips, etc. |
Anonymous
| OP when are you trying for naps? |
Anonymous
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Yeah she might just not need as much nap time as you think.
Have you tried the 2-3-4 schedule? First nap is 2 hours after waking, second nap is 3 hours after waking from the first nap, then bedtime is 4 hours later. |
Anonymous
| You might be using the wrong schedule. |
Anonymous
| Most 6 months still do 3 naps a day. In your situation though I would try 2 naps and see what happens. Aim for approx times of 9-11 and 2-4…. Or something similar depending on the day. |
Anonymous
| When are you trying to get her to nap? |
Anonymous
This. You can start with a standard schedule like 2-3-4 and then adjust to see if later or sooner works better for her. I'd try a few different schedules before assuming she's a bad napper. |
Anonymous
| Two of my three kids just weren’t into naps. If she’s not cranky/showing signals of sleepiness, she might just not be sleepy. |
Anonymous
| OP here. I try to have her nap around 8:30/9 then 12pm and 3pm but am pretty flexible since we’re having such bad luck. She does like to nap in the stroller but that’s not ideal. Usually she ends up with 2 naps a day but it can be as little as 30 mins each. |
Anonymous
| OP, if you are breastfeeding, are you drinking caffeine/black tea/chocolate? If so, try a day or two without and see if if makes a difference. My kid wouldn’t nap well when I ate chocolate which was a bummer for me. |
Anonymous
| You could try going to two naps, but this was just a bad/short nap phase for us. It was horrible. It did pass though after a couple months. |
Anonymous
| My 6 month old was the same and we realized she needs longer wake windows. We started a set schedule because of it and works much better. Naps at 9:30 and 2, with a little catnap around 5 depending on how the 2pm nap went. |
Anonymous
| My kid dropped to one nap way earlier than recommended but it worked for him. Took a solid 2 hours and then slept 12 overnight and no more fussing and screaming about trying to do 2-3 naps a day |