When does she wake up and when do you put her down for her naps? Also, how does she wake after 45 minutes?… is she crying, or just up and ready to go? If she’s crying or fussing, what happens if you let her fuss for a bit? Will she go back to sleep?
During Sarah’s first year or so, we never had the greatest luck with long naps. Eventually we realized that it wasn’t dark enough in her room, and when we installed some blackout shades over the windows and played her “night night” music as we did at bedtime, she started to get the point of what was expected of her. But her naps were never fabulous. Night time sleep was great!
I followed the timing set out by Weissbluth for Sarah. By 8 months, we were only doing two naps and an early bedtime- can’t remember exactly when he suggests doing this though. I also can’t remember the exact times, but we did something like wakeup at 6am, nap at 9am, nap at 1pm, bedtime at 6:30pm. I tried and tried everything to get her to take long naps. I found that cutting out the 3rd nap in the late afternoon and moving the bedtime earlier did help me to get a BIT longer out of her at the 1pm nap time- sometimes 1-1.5 hours, but mostly still an hour, and sometimes only 45 minutes.
I also think that some kids aren’t long nappers. Especially if they get good night time sleep. If it’s any consolation, by 1.5 years she was taking one 2 hour nap, and still does (if we can get her down without too much fight)!
I’m interested to see what others think of this.
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