Ideas to get 9mo napping?

[voxana]

My 9mo ds no longer falls asleep while nursing like he used to and it has become much harder to get him to take the two daily naps. He does seem tired so I believe he needs two naps--his eyelids go to half-mast and his eyes momentarily lose focus. I've tried putting him in the carrier for a while, or nursing, or lying him down, patting him on the back, and saying shhhh. If I were to just put him down awake and alone in our "family crib" he'd cry of course and that's not the goal, lol.

It seems like I need some new techniques to help him sleep. Any ideas, mamas? What worked for you when they no longer nursed to sleep?

[Peony]

My 9 month old is doing the same thing. What I have started doing is putting him in the carrier before I start to think he is needing a nap so then he hangs out for a while, and then eventually gets sleepy and falls asleep. If I put him in right when I think he is tired then he gets a second wind and refuses to nap. Stinker. Now I walk around putting away laundry or something else that is quiet and boring and eventually he passes out. I can lay him down in the bed once he is good and asleep.

[LadyCatherine185]

He may need to drop down to only one nap a day. My DS did around 9-10 months. He started taking his morning nap a little later (after being up for 4-5 hours) and dropped his afternoon nap, but goes to bed earlier (around 7 now). Maybe try readjusting his schedule a little bit to see if it helps. good luck!

[Jayray]

We rock/sing to sleep. If I catch him at the right time, it's really easy. We're approximately on the 2/3/4 routine--although it's more like first nap after 2-2.5 hours, second nap after 2.5-3 hours, and then 4-5.5 hours before bed. I've kind of just gotten him into this over the past month and it's working pretty well. If he wakes up early I also try to keep him up close to 9:00 to keep the rhythm of the day, but this sometimes backfires as he gets overtired and fights sleep.

I have also found that it helps my DS if I have some sort of "wind-down" before naps. It's not long, but a diaper change, some quiet play in my bedroom, playing with/"reading" a book, then sing/music and rocking.

[voxana]

Thanks for the thoughts, they were helpful! I was going to try giving him only one nap today, but he was obviously too tired by 9:30, and wasn't going to make it till 11 or 12:00. So I tried Peony's method of keeping him in the carrier till he falls sound asleep (had done this before, but might have given up too soon when he didn't seem tired). It worked and took about 25 minutes total.

I've always tried to keep ds's awake time consistent from one nap to the next, but really like the sound of the 2/3/4 routine much better, it seems to make more sense because as the day goes on he can handle longer and longer awake times.

So we'll see if I can get him to take the second nap today....