"Awake but drowsy" nap question

Sugarnear

We're in the midst of sleep training, and we're working with an EASY routine. So we put LO down for a nap ~1.5 hours after he last woke up. Right now, since he's not napping well, he's exhausted. Hopefully soon, it'll be more like ~2 hours.

Nap routine:

quite time ~3 minutes

swaddle from the armpits down

Hold and shh for another minute or two

place in crib drowsy with pacifier and play white noise and the seahorse...

this morning, he was out in 7 minutes (I live by seahorse cycles these days). But, he woke up about 25 minutes later. We spent another hour trying to get him back to sleep. He's clearly still tired. He would soothe himself as we ssshhed and patted, and would be nearly asleep and then he'd wake again.

We didn't want to get him up for fear of (re) teaching him that crying = getting mom's and dad's attention and getting out of the crib. But after an hour, which I figured would have been the total nap time, we had to give up.

So my question is, how long should we try to get him back down? Or should we just get him up after the initial wake up and try again later?

BamBam510

Do you use a paci?  I wanted to avoid using one but I will if he is fussing for naps which my ds does, I turn on a noise machine and he'll usually start crying pretty soon after and I just go in and reinsert his paci a few times.  Sometimes he'll be really crying and wont' take the paci.  I will sometimes leave him for a minute..no longer, to see if he'll stop.  If not I go and comfort him.   The more tired he is, the harder it is to do and usually by his evening naps I can't get him to go down on his own.  What I do normally for naps is put him in his FP RNP and rock him in that till he falls asleep.   I plan on starting to give him naps in the crib again once I can start easing into CIO.  Probably around 4.5 months.

Sugarnear

We do use a paci, and for the first go-round, he'll settle right into his nap within a few minutes. I am not "allowed' to rock him to sleep anymore because the day care lady won't do it, and she won't take him if he can't nap in his crib (and put himself to sleep).

And, naturally, daycare starts tomorrow.

Ugh.

(if we need more time, we have lots of short-term options for care, and we'll just pay the daycare lady to keep our spot open, but we'd really rather not)

BamBam510

Man that really sucks.  I don't know what i'd do if we had to do daycare (I'm a sahm) since our ds is a total nap fighter.  He'd end up screaming forever and not sleeping. 

Sugarnear

mistyblue182:

Man that really sucks.  I don't know what i'd do if we had to do daycare (I'm a sahm) since our ds is a total nap fighter.  He'd end up screaming forever and not sleeping. 

Yeah... I honestly don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. He may just take 5 30-minute naps?

WildcatPrincess

mistyblue182:

Man that really sucks.  I don't know what i'd do if we had to do daycare (I'm a sahm) since our ds is a total nap fighter.  He'd end up screaming forever and not sleeping. 

Ditto this, DD pretty much only naps after nursing.  At least if I'm there, when DH has her he can sometimes lay her down with a pacifier and she'll go to sleep.  I don't know what to tell you, I've heard sleep training is more effective closer to 6 months, but obviously you don't have the time.  GL!