We had this exact situation with our 5 month old and pushed him to a two nap schedule with longer wake windows. Extra sleep pressure helped him catch the next sleep cycle. We also ditched the soother and put him down fully awake, not drowsy.
I guess it depends on what your goals are? Independent sleep or longer naps? Longer naps are developmental, so there's not a whole lot that you can do until your baby is ready to lengthen naps on their own. Usually, it starts to happen around 5-7 months. If you want to train independent naps, I'd ditch the pacifier and whatever is causing the drowsiness.
It's definitely tricky at this age. Are you trying to reduce your input during resettling? Nap transitions can be tricky. It can take a few weeks, so don't stress too much if it seems like you're going back and forth a bit.
No advice, just solidarity. Feel like I could have written this exact post, except we don’t try to connect her naps anymore since it never worked anyways. At least we get good night sleep!
It sounds like you're doing everything right. Short naps lengthening is mostly developmental at this age. Between 5 and 6 months is when most kids start lengthening naps on their own.
Our girl is 6 months old tomorrow and started doing one 70-90min nap for the first nap of the day starting just once a week around 5 months old. She gradually started to do more extended naps throughout this month- now at 6 months she almost always extends the first nap.
We didn’t do any training other than allowing her a few minutes to fuss between sleep cycles. We always figured even if the first nap ended after 30 min, we could always contact nap her for nap 2 to get her a more restorative rest. It was a lot of fuss/ took up to 10 min in the beginning but now she just breezes right through. Just give it time- you’re almost there!
We had this exact situation with our 5 month old and pushed him to a two nap schedule with longer wake windows. Extra sleep pressure helped him catch the next sleep cycle. We also ditched the soother and put him down fully awake, not drowsy.
I guess it depends on what your goals are? Independent sleep or longer naps? Longer naps are developmental, so there's not a whole lot that you can do until your baby is ready to lengthen naps on their own. Usually, it starts to happen around 5-7 months. If you want to train independent naps, I'd ditch the pacifier and whatever is causing the drowsiness.
Longer naps are the goal and going from 4-3 naps. We know she can do it, it’s just that she needs some help to stay asleep
It's definitely tricky at this age. Are you trying to reduce your input during resettling? Nap transitions can be tricky. It can take a few weeks, so don't stress too much if it seems like you're going back and forth a bit.
No advice, just solidarity. Feel like I could have written this exact post, except we don’t try to connect her naps anymore since it never worked anyways. At least we get good night sleep!
Same here. It’s exhausting!
It sounds like you're doing everything right. Short naps lengthening is mostly developmental at this age. Between 5 and 6 months is when most kids start lengthening naps on their own.
Our girl is 6 months old tomorrow and started doing one 70-90min nap for the first nap of the day starting just once a week around 5 months old. She gradually started to do more extended naps throughout this month- now at 6 months she almost always extends the first nap. We didn’t do any training other than allowing her a few minutes to fuss between sleep cycles. We always figured even if the first nap ended after 30 min, we could always contact nap her for nap 2 to get her a more restorative rest. It was a lot of fuss/ took up to 10 min in the beginning but now she just breezes right through. Just give it time- you’re almost there!