Can you stand one more sleep post--help with naps? (long)

[sidmand]

I lknow there have been many many sleep posts, but I'm just at a total loss.

DS is great at bedtime (knock on wood, I hope I'm not jinxing that!). He used to get up quite a few times, but he went to bed pretty easily and fell back asleep after each feeding pretty easily. Now he's only getting up once, maybe zero times...I am absolutely thrilled about that!

But naps are basically nonexistent.

He has never been a good napper. A couple of months ago I kept telling him that most babies his age were taking three naps. I was lucky to get one.

I'm really trying to get a morning nap about two hours after he wakes up and then an afternoon nap around 1-ish. It's not working. Since bedtime was going so well, I tried doing the bedtime routine at naptime--no go. I've tried putting him in his crib and letting him cry (not very long though)--it's worked once in awhile, but he just works himself up so much when he cries that he can't get back from it. Screaming, sweating, tears, etc.

The swing works...sometimes...although he's starting to fight that.

Car rides and stroller rides work for the most part but a) I'm in New England and it's just getting too cold for the stroller and b) I can't drive him around forever. Many times I have spent hours just driving back and forth and back and forth. I put more miles on my car trying to get him to nap than anything else! I got so desperate I bought a crib attachment that is supposed to simulate a car going 55 mph--again, no dice.

If he was fighting naps and didn't need them, that would be one thing, but he is so obviously tired. When he gets sleep he's just a smiley little guy all the time and when he doesn't...well...

You might say to try an earlier bedtime, but bedtime is already 6:00 p.m. (and he sleeps through until about 7/7:30 a.m.). On the days when he doesn't get much of a nap, I have put him to bed (like tonight) as early as 4:30! I can't really get much earlier or he might as well stay in his crib and that's not a good solution.

Help?

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[fauve01]

well no advice, really, i just wanted to say that my DD's sleep was TERRIBLE until she started crawling at 6 months. when she started crawling she finally started taking two great two-hour naps a day; before crawling, i was lucky if she went 45 minutes in a row.

Sorry! i hope it gets better soon for you.

Anne + DD 10-03

[sidmand]

Anne,

Thanks for sharing your story. It makes me feel a bit better to know that this may not be the end (and if we're looking for 6 months, we don't have far to go)! Everyone tells me that as soon as I figure something out with DS it will change and so far, that's been pretty true. But I was afraid that the no naps was just going to continue. But I can see that he's going to be a fast one, so maybe he'll exhaust himself once he starts crawling too and be ready for a nap. I can only hope! The smiley guy is a lot of fun--the cranky one, not so much :(

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[MommytoDylan]

I have a DD just about Sawyer's age. With my first child, a boy, I realized that because he was sleeping so long at night (12 hours straight through at your son's age) he was waking up from both naps at the 45 min. mark. If I delayed bedtime until 8:00 though, he would sleep until 7:00. Because he only got 11 hours at night, he would take 2 good naps--1 1/2 hours each and a short nap in the evening. It was my experience with one so I'm not sure it will work with yours.

My daughter is excellent about taking the first nap but we are on the go so much the others are lost or taken in the car:(

HTH,
Meredith

[sidmand]

Hi Meredith,

Thanks for the advice--I too was wondering if it was possible he was getting TOO much sleep at night and so disturbing the daytime naps and I've been trying to postpone bedtime, at least a little, to see if it helped and also so DH could seem him during the week. Right now DH can go days without seeing him because he's in bed so early and DH leaves before he gets up.

But so far I haven't had much luck with postponing the bedtime. I also don't want to mess with it too much since we finally found something that works--IYKWIM. Although instead of getting later, it seems to be getting earlier. I think we started with 8:00 p.m. and it quite quickly went back to 6:00 p.m. It's been at 6:00 for awhile now though.

I'll keep trying though--but he's definitely overtired and hyper at some points during the day. Don't you wish they were old enough to understand how much they NEED a nap? I guess by the time you're old enough to understand how it would help, you're too old to take them!

How do I make it seem like nighttime for naps? Maybe if it was darker in his room? He has no problem with the crib at night, why is it such a problem during the day? How does he know?!

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[barbarhow]

Debbie-I'm right there with you. My DD is 6 1/2 months old and she will not nap for me at home. I shouldn't say never-she rarely does. She will on the 3 days that she is at daycare but not when she is at home. Up until 2 weeks ago she was a great night sleeper, too. Since then, between teething, a cold and who knows what else we have totally been stumped as to how to get her to sleep.
My DS-went through a stage when he did not like to nap and as the previous poster described once he got more mobile he started taking 2 good naps a day. He never, ever took the three that everyone talks about.
So no answers for you-just lots of empathy and commiseration. We are in New England, too. It's hard to get out lately-it's either freezing or pouring. :-(
Good luck. I hope it gets better for you.
Barbara-mom to Jack 3/27/03, a Red Sox fan
and Anna 5/12/05, my little Yankee fan!

[sidmand]

That's interesting that you say she'll nap at daycare because when DS stayed with my SIL (who runs a daycare) she said he easily took a nap when all the other kids did. I must say I was a bit shocked.

I really do think he doesn't want to miss anything by sleeping and maybe if all the other kids are sleeping too, they feel it's okay to sleep? So maybe we can borrow a few kids and have them all take a nap at once! :)

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[Moneypenny]

Sounds just like my DD at that age - great night sleeper (6 pm - 6 am)but naps were terrible. She would end up with 4 or 5 20 minute naps during the day. Up until she was about 4 months she would sleep for 2 hours if we held her, so we just held her for every nap. Once she hit 4 months or so, though, she couldn't sleep even if we held her and would end up basically getting very little sleep during the day, crying all the time...ugh, it was awful. At 5 or 6 months we did a little CIO for naps in her crib which worked for us in one day after about 10 minutes crying. We still struggled with short naps until she was 8 months old and she magically just "got it" and started sleeping 60-90 minutes at a time. People told me it would fall into place at 8 months, and I didn't believe them, but lo and behold, DD must have listened to them!

Susan
mama to my cutie pie, Avery
http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbons/ribbon_gold_12m.gif[/img][/url]
We made it to a year!

[Piglet]

Wi found the key to getting DS napping was to get him down before he was overtired. I tried to get him to bed about 1 hour after waking up. Now that he is a bit older, it can sometimes be 1.5 hours, but always shortly after he wakes up. He sleeps from 8-7/7:30 and goes for his nap at 8:30/9. The afternoon nap is trickier, but according to Dr. Weissbluth (who also recommended the early nap time) it will sort itself out more or less by 9 months. I am just now finding that naps are around 9 and 1, just like Dr. W. writes. I didn't quite believe him when I was reading the book originally, but so far it was has been quite accurate on the nap front. Also, I find that whenever DS doesn't nap well, we end up putting him to bed earlier, which causes him to wake up too early, which causes him to be overtired by nap time, etc. It is a vicious circle. I really strive to keep him up until 8 because is helps the next day go smoother. Sometimes we get into a bad stretch of early bedtime and then we use any opportunity to keep him up later - for example, when we have company over and he has more stimulation we keep him up until 8 and then reset his schedule.

Good luck!