Napping Q: When did they nap longer than an hour?

JEliseS

My girls are 7.5 months, and will not nap longer than 1.5 hours tops, but that's rare. It's usually more like an hour. I've done the, wait 15 minutes to see if they go back to sleep, and that doesn't seem to work. Anyone's babies do okay only napping 2 hours a day? It seems like they are trying to transition from 3 to 2 naps a day because their wake time is increasing. BUT, if they won't nap longer than an hour at a time, seems like that isn't enough for them. They technically sleep through the night, but it's 7PM-5AM, wake up to eat, back to sleep until 6-6:30AM.

Is it just a stage and eventually naps lengthen?

ColleenS629

Mine started napping for 1-2 hours around that age... before that it was 40 minutes-1hr (after we sleep-trained... before sleep training it was 20 minutes or not at all unless they were sleeping on me- then it was 2 hours). I would say for at least the past 2 months our schedule has been 5:30 or 6pm bedtime, dreamfeed before I go to bed around 8:30 or 9pm (I know, it's crazy to still be doing this at 9+ months- I am going to try not doing it tonight), wake around 5am, 1st nap starts around 7:30am (lasts 1.5-2 hours typically but sometimes as short as 30 minutes on an off day), up for 2-3 hours, another nap (if the first was 1.5 hours, this is also usually 1.5 hours; if the first was 2 hours, this one is usually 1 hour), then awake until bedtime. I am still trying to work on a better system because their awake time between the second nap and bedtime is too long for them. I'd love to shift bedtime and waketime an hour later, but they wake around 5am no matter what time they go to sleep and they are freaking the eff out by 5pm so I don't like to push them much later than that.

TripMomma

I think we started having good luck with a scheduled 2-3 hour nap around 9 months. They never did take two scheduled naps though.

besu-chan

They started fighting the third nap about a month ago and about a week after they finally dropped it for good (a couple of weeks ago), their afternoon nap jumped to two hours. Their awake time also went from 2 hours to 2.5 (longer in the afternoon before bedtime), which helped I think. The awake time stretched out that extra little bit when I started doing solids just before they had been showing sleepy cues before. That kept them engaged and happy a little longer. BUT I have one girl who, although she is sleeping 2 hours in the afternoon, only sleeps 30min in the morning. She has never needed as much sleep and is finally sleeping better at night so she just doesn't need as much during the day. My other I wake up after an hour in the morning so she's sleeping at least 3 hours during the day (plus 11-11.5 at night). This is coming from just over a month ago when their longest nap was 40 minutes and their longest awake time was 1hr15min, so it happened fast.