Naps

Why won't my child take a long nap? Or even a semi-long nap...?

Hawkins sleeps 11 hours a night so I know I cannot complain about sleep, but I need a little break during the day to recharge and get just a few things done with 2 hands. He goes down for a nap at 9am and 1pm and might take a cat nap at 5pm.

Actually all his naps have turned into cat naps. He will sleep the longest during that morning nap - maybe 45 minutes or an hour. Once or twice he has slept and hour and half, and it was amazing. Most days he sleeps 30 minutes though. Then he is cranky and sleepy all morning until his next nap at 1pm. Then he might sleep another 45 minutes or an hour.

We have been "transitioning" Hawkins to sleep in his crib for naps from his swing. I wanted to write a post on this, but I can't remember if I ever did...

He has always slept in his crib at night, but I allowed him to take all naps in his swing since he was about 3 months old b/c he just slept so much better in the swing. He would sleep 2 hour stretches EVERY nap! Who wouldn't encourage that?? Well, then Hawkins got to be 5 months old. I realized that he was about to grow out of the swing and this habit was not conducive to traveling anywhere we could not take his swing.

So, when we returned from Christmas vacation we started practicing. It took a full month (a long exhausting depressing month) to even get him used to the idea of napping in his crib, but he would finally fall asleep when I put him down. Now, another month gone by and he is doing much better. He goes right to sleep for both naps, but maybe it will take longer for him to really get used to sleeping longer stretches...???

Pray for us :)

Any tips for making babies take longer naps??