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My son, who is 9 months old but is a preemie – so his adjusted age is 7 months, struggles to make it thru each day b/c he's not napping long enough. He usually wakes up around 6am (sigh), when I pick him up from his crib and let him lay next to me in bed (usually squirming and batting at me…) till about 7am. I put him down for his first nap at 9am, and almost without exception he sleeps 40 minutes. That's it. Once in a blue moon he'll go an hour or so, but that's rare. Then he usually does pretty good till about 12:30ish, when I put him down for a second nap. 40 minutes. About 75% of the time if I run in there as soon as he starts stirring, pick him up, put the paci in, and rock, I can get him to sleep for another half-hour/40 minutes. So he is usually up by 2pm. Then we struggle. I can't get him to take a 3rd nap anymore. And by 4:30/4:45 he's exhausted, fussy, but can't sleep. If I let him cry it out he just cries for a whole hour. So then we try to get him down no later than 6/6:30, but though he falls asleep right away, sometimes he's still so exhausted he'll wake up multiple times before midnight and cry. Last night I finally went in and picked him up after 40 minutes of crying – over an hour and a half after he'd gone to sleep.

He wakes up once or twice a night to nurse. That's usually fine.

Any ideas/suggestions???

Hi there,

I'm a newbie :) at this forum and at parenting :) I'm a mother of a eight month old son and what jbatts posted sounds like my current situation with my son and I. I also love Nicole's response (thank you), but am really wondering what and how came of the story…posted a while back I see…but if you're still around, or someone else has a similar situation to share, I would love to hear back from you.

Almost at my wits ends with night wakings for what seems to be habbits or sleep associations to feeding (bottle now) and short naps. I know what I've got to do (I've read the author's book which is great), just gathering up the mental strength to go through a week of sleep training…

Thanks again for feedback.