Getting DS to nap longer

[isabel]

So, DS has finally gotten to the point where we can pretty reliably put him in the crib for naps. The problem is, he nearly always wakes up after 30 minutes and won't go back down unless he's being held.

What's the solution here? I'd like him to take 3 1-hour naps a day. He's 5 months old. Is that unrealistic? And how do I go about encouraging him to sleep longer in the crib? He's exhausted by bedtime and not getting nearly enough sleep during the day, IMO.

[carfar]

Around this age is when our unicorn sleeper started doing this. Wishing you luck. We never did find a solution except for time and wearing him when I really needed to get something done. I hope you are more successful. We still have extremely sketchy naps at almost 10 months. Sigh

[dcn]

Ds napped like this unless being held too. Part of it is just waiting for them to get older and to be able to connect sleep cycles. When Ds was around five months I went to a sleep consultant talk and chatted with her after about his short naps. She suggested that when he woke up after 30-40 min, go in and soothe and shush, but don't get him out of the crib. Try leaving, go back in to shush as needed until it has been an hour (since the start of nap). Then leave and when you come back do a big dramatic wake up. Open the curtains, turn on the light, say did you have a good nap?? Etc etc.

I did this in combo with being very strict about watching the clock and watching him to make sure he wasn't overtired for naps for a few weeks and I'd say when he was 6-6.5 months something clicked and he started napping longer. If he had two short/bad naps then I'd camp out on the couch with him for his third so that he wasn't a mess at bedtime.

I think troublesometots has an article that discusses short naps and steps to take to lengthen them as well.

[asoctoberfalls]

DS was like this too. It never got better until we ferbered during naps at about 15 months. (We ferbered for nighttime sleep at 9 months).

[isabel]

He stayed up from about 7:30 to 11 this morning, then napped for 30 minutes. We'll see how the rest of the day is.

I already put him in bed around 6:30, usually asleep by 7 or so, because he's so damn tired by that point. He'll sleep a full 12ish hours with two wake ups, usually.

My worry about dropping to two naps is that he won't sleep any better and then will be an absolute mess when we get home from work.

I'm glad to hear this is fairly normal though. Hopefully it will improve a bit when he's older.