18 m.o. won't nap alone

[RubyOrganique]

Any advice to encourage napping or even quiet play in her crib? She will nap well (an hour or so) in the car or in bed with me/DH but fights a nap on her own something fierce. Usually the time going down exceeds the time napped.

[calgal1111]

DD was about that age when she gave up napping altogether. I hated it at first but as you said it got to the point where it would take me 2hrs to get her down for a 45min nap. Then I finally said fine if your done your done and the little stinker goes down for bed at 7pm every night now. And I love it. If this is the case I know it stinks and it will take a week or two of some crankiness but it will get better.

Good luck!

[chipper26]

Mine has difficulty napping alone, too. She naps in our bed now. I rock her to sleep in the rocker, then transfer to our bed. I lay down with her and nurse her and then sneak away. Some days she'll last an hour on her own, some days 50 minutes and on good days, she'll stay down for 2 hours on her own.

Many days I go up when she starts making noise half way through the nap (around 50 min - an hour) and nurse her back down. If I haven't fallen asleep with her, I can usually sneak away again for awhile before she wakes again.

[RubyOrganique]

If I can get there fast enough, I can sometimes nurse her back down. But we're getting close to having to wean (I'm going away on a trip) and frankly, my supply has dwindled considerably. We have thought about letting her nap on a mattress on the floor - perhaps it's the bars on the crib that make her feel disconnected from us.

As for being done with naps, they've been so irregular lately that for me it wouldn't be that much of a change. And if she would go to sleep for the night at 7, I would feel like I could get some of the things done I can't do when she's awake. We'll have to explore that idea a little bit more.

We've been blessed with 2 really good nights, so I'm more able today to look at the nap thing objectively! Thanks for the tips.