Really struggling with naps w/ 6 mo. old ... please help

My LO will be 6 mos. next week.

She napped like a CHAMP for the first 4 mos of her life. 3-5 hr naps in the morning, then nap/nursed on me once or twice in the afternoon/evening. It was crazy, but she just fell into the routine and that was that. Naps were always in her swing.

Then one day right after she turned 4 mos, she just STOPPED napping in her swing. The only way she would nap was if I was nursing her. I lived on the couch. It was NOT fun.

So, I went all nap nazi on her. Worked for two weeks to get her napping well in her crib. Closed blinds, white noise, naptime book, sleepsack - I even got her to take a pacifier at this time when she never took one before! I *thought* I had gotten it down to a nice morning nap around 9 am, and an afternoon nap sometime between 1 and 2.

Well, that just STOPPED. Now the morning nap is mostly good - though some days she cries and cries - but I'd say more often than not, she goes down w/o too much of a fight and sleeps 1-2 hrs.

The afternoon nap is another story. It's like she just won't take one. It's awful. She cries and cries and cries (with me going in and out to soothe her). I just don't know what to do. Today she basically was nap-less once she woke up at 11:15. She nap/nursed for about 30 min in the afternoon, but would NOT go into her crib. This is commonplace now. She DOES go to bed early on such days, like 6 pm asleep in her crib. But really, how can she survive like this?? I sure can't!!!

Any advice on what I can do?? TIA!

Really struggling with naps w/ 6 mo. old ... please help

Have you tried spreading the naps out more and putting her down later?

DD went through a pretty quick transition from 4 naps a day down to 1 between 5 months and 10 months. It was crazy, she loved her naps but just kept shedding them as each month went by.

I found that when she was not going down and was doing a lot of nursing naps, she was ready to nap later and drop a nap (although if you're already at 2 I'd keep it at 2). She would still show her tired signals at her normal time but wouldn't nap. I'd nurse her after an hour of her not going down and she'd pass out. I eventually figured out to wait that hour out and then put her down instead of nursing (she usually nursed after naps not before). I would also get out of the house to distract her during that tired time and then she'd fall asleep on the way home to get her out of the habit of napping on me.

Hope this is at least a little helpful. I would really just keep playing with the times until you figure out what works for her. Some babies do drop to one nap very early but for your sake hopefully you can get her back to two!

Re: Really struggling with naps w/ 6 mo. old ... please help

Try putting her down for her afternoon nap later. When ds was down to 2 naps he took one at 10:00 & one around 4/4:30.