ps-I know she says try for 1hr 10 mins - have a break - and then try again, but I find this will mess with her feeds, and I don't want to do that....

When it comes to naps, we had a 20 minute rule. If she wasn't settling after 20 minutes, we got her up. Then, when she started being whingy, put her back down again.

Oh, but try not to make it seem like you are getting her up because she is fussing - if you know what I mean....

It is worth persevering with them as a 25 minute nap isn't great. But they should get longer as time goes on. Once she is more used to self settling at night it should improve.

I haven't been able to get Thomas to resettle for any of his naps either. However he does normally sleep for 45 minutes so that's not too bad really although I know she says naps should be over an hour to be properly restorative. However I don't think he will really nap for longer than an hour at the moment anyway because he has a pretty regular feeding pattern of every two and a half hours during the day - so he is up for an hour and a half, then naps for forty-five minutes to an hour, and then it's time for the next feed. That means that at the moment he's still taking 4 naps a day - but it seems to be working OK for us at the moment so I'm not stressing too much about naps just yet.

I don't want to mess with his feeds either, especially since he's dropped a lot of night feeds recently so I want to make sure he's getting enough during the day. I've noticed that since he's been sleeping longer at night he's started cluster feeding in the evening again coming up to bedtime. I think it's totally amazing the way they make sure that they get what they need.

To be honest I feel like night time sleep is enough to be working on for us at the moment. This might be totally the wrong attitude as everyone says that a good pattern for naps is essential for good night time sleep. But he does have a pretty regular pattern of three 45 minute naps in the cot and one longer nap of maybe two hours (in the pram though).

thanks, ladies - I may try with first nap and see how it goes...if she's not getting decent sleep, will have a 'Mummy & Me' nap too, for the time being...

foogirl - how long was it before Abby was sleeping at night without any protesting?

polaris - I know, it's so funny, DD just had a long feed...filling up for the night!

I would agree with this. What you'll find is the more he self settles at night, the more likely he is to do that after he first wakes during the day.

Abby still wakes after 45 minutes of a nap. Mostly she goes right back to sleep. Sometimes she lies and plays with bunny for 10- 15 minutes then goes back to sleep. Sometimes she dozes for an hour and a half, but I can generally leave her in her cot for the whole hour and a half no matter what she does.

With no protest whatsoever? Probably about a month. But we did break one of her rules as we started the whole thing the week before we went away for a week. Whilst I don't think it made a whole lot of difference, she did sleep less in the night whilst we were away and tended to wake earlier (the place we were staying was blimmin freezing and she was sharing our room) it is entirely possible she would have stopped protesting sooner.

But that protest was literally a few minutes of crying - fewer than five minutes certainly and we were able just to leave her to it.

Definitely within a week there was a 90 percent improvement on how it had been when we started.

So do you ladies not give your lo a dummy for bed or naps? Thanks x

Nope. Abby never took to a dummy. I wish she had when she had colic as I became her dummy!

But seeing friends of mine with a two year old who they are having trouble weaning off (and having double trouble as the only dummy the child will take is the discontinued TT ones which sell for about 30 quid for two on ebay) Or seeing other friends having to get up several times a night to replace a lost dummy, I'm glad Abby never took to it in the end!

A week saw 90% improvement? That's fantastic - and so encouraging

Baby09 - my DD has always been a thumb sucker (we even saw her thumb sucking on a scan!)

I think regarding the naps, I'm going to aim for good night first and foremost

No Thomas never took to the dummy either - I did try a few times but you literally had to hold it in his mouth constantly or he would spit it out. He is a thumb sucker though which I know some people think is worse. But my viewpoint is that at least he can put his thumb back in himself in the middle of the night. I sucked my thumb at bedtime as a child and gave it up of my own accord when I was about 3 or 4 according to my mum.