Extending Naptimes?

Crying is good for her though...not like crying to the point she turns red but some crying is good, will help her lungs. When Brianna needs a nap but wont go to sleep I sit down in the chair and feed her a bottle with cereal, burp her, then rock back n forth while patting her butt and hum the song mamas gonna buy you a mocking bird. And usually in like 5-10 mins she is out like a light. I think the pick up put down is what I explained that I do, not sure but I think so. GL

Hi K.,
My son will be 6 mon. next week, and now for almost 2 months he gets 2 naps a day. We all get up early, and little to say he is the first one up. At 7 am we change his dippers and feed him, while he plays we have our morning coffee. Just about 10 am we see him rubbing his eyes and it’s time for his first nap. He has two places where he naps, one is in a cooler setting and the other is just at the nice warm temp. He gets his bottle and if he doesn’t fall a sleep during feeding we let him play with his teddy, and few minutes later he is in lala land. His next nap is around 2 pm and sometimes he holds on until 4 pm. It is normal that they sometimes nap just ½ hr. but when he was really good he would nap for 2 hr’s. If you put them to nap to often they wouldn’t stay a sleep too long. So try reducing the nap times. It works for my baby, and he only wakes up once a night. Before I forget, sometimes he wakes up and plays with his teddy; I don’t disturb him until he makes me know he wants to get up. If he is still tired the little play time will put him right back to sleep.
Good luck,
A. R.

K.,

My son napped for 1/2 hr at a time, every two hours, too. He's go down 5x/day. It is maddening, I know. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to change it. I could rock him, nurse him again, try letting him cry, not one thing worked.

Eventually, he slowly consolidated his naps on his own. By 7 months or so, he was napping twice a day, for an hour in the morning, and then an hour and a half in the afternoon. It takes babies longer to organize their sleep patterns during the day than it does to organize night sleeping. If she's sleeping well at night except for feedings, then you're on the road to improvement. A baby's sleep patterns are to sleep for 30-45 minutes at a time, rouse, and then fall back to sleep. She's not gotten the hang of going back to sleep during her nap yet. She will, it just takes time, and brain maturity. She'll get there. By a bit past one year, my son was down to one nap a day, for two and a half hours, off to sleep on his own. He is 2 yr, 4 mos, and still naps the same way. Considering the time it takes for him to fall asleep, I get three hours to myself in the middle of the day! You guys will get there too, it just takes time for some babies.

Jess

Have you tried leaving the television or radio on? Maybe she just needs some white noise in the background. Especially at night, my 6 month old little girl will not fall asleep unless there is some sort of background noise.

As far as pacifiers go, which ones have you tried? Mine did not like the part that on most pacifiers goes around the mouth, she will only take ONE certain type: Gerber Soft center silicone pacifiers, they have a button so they don't go around the mouth. they are hard to find but you can find them at target and drugstore.com (you can alos see a picture on drugstore.com)