Naps at 6 months

poohbear033

DD is a terrible napper but STTN. We are lucky if she sleeps for a total of an hour during the day. She goes to bed at 8pm and is up somewhere between 6am and 7am. She has been doing this for at least a month. We just got back from a 3 day trip to Chicago, which is an hour difference from us. She also cut her first two teeth during that time. Insight? Advice? Should I even be concerned? Can you tell me about your 6 month old schedule?

HopingforChange

I am no expert but if she STTN and isn't fussy during the day, i would call it good!

poohbear033

Thanks. DH has been bothering me to get her to nap more. We are both teachers and home for the summer. He ends up getting stuff done around the house and I play with DD. I think he just wants me to do more.

HopingforChange

Ha! Classic husband stuff. My DH is a teacher too... Will your DD ride in a carrier while you get things done around the house?

poohbear033

Thanks ladies. She usually takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap if we are lucky an evening nap, but like I said they are short. If we are going somewhere she will sleep in the car, but it isn't possible to be gone everyday at nap time.

poohbear033

Thanks! Today she did well, we had a 35 minute nap in the morning and a 55 minute nap this afternoon. If she takes some sort of nap this evening we should be good to go.

ETA: We got a third nap for 30 minutes, but my parents came over 5 minutes before bedtime and we ended up putting DD to bed awake at 8:30, she went to sleep eventually.

etc35173 said:

poohbear033 said:

Thanks ladies. She usually takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap if we are lucky an evening nap, but like I said they are short. If we are going somewhere she will sleep in the car, but it isn't possible to be gone everyday at nap time.

I have terrible reading comprehension...you did say an hour total and I thought you were looking at 1 nap per day.  At six months is when a lot of babies start nap consolidation and most will start napping longer around this time.  DS didn't have longer naps until about 7 months. I would stick with a wake window of 2-3 hours, if your putting her down closer to 2 and she is only sleeping 20 minutes try moving her window closer to three hours.  If you have it at 3 already she may be overtired which can lead to shorter naps as well...try moving it closer to 2 hours.  It sounds really contradictory but playing around with your awake time can work wonders for naps.  

We also had a cat napper so I know it can be really frustrating to finally get them to sleep and they wake up after such a short time but most babies do naturally start napping longer as they drop naps and their sleep cycles mature.  When we dropped down to two naps per day I started getting at least an hour and now at one its not unusual to get a 2 hour nap or even longer.  If your DH is suggesting you try to get her to nap longer (rather than just more often) I wouldn't worry about that.  I tried everything and nothing worked until DS was developmentally ready to make it through his first sleep cycle.  

roo1oo

I wouldn't worry about total sleep time too much. Baby will sleep if she needs sleep. You can't force a child to sleep more, so just roll with it for now. But I do agree on keeping awake times to a max of 3 hours. A little older and you'll get that 4 hour stretch in the evening before bed.