DD is almost 6 months old and sleeps good in her crib at night but will not nap there during the day. At night, we feed her dinner, give her a bath, rock her and give her a bottle and put her in her crib when she is almost asleep so she can put herself to sleep the rest of the way. Most of the time she sleeps until 5am or 6am. If DH puts her back in her crib after her bottle in the morning, she will only sleep for about 45 minutes but if he puts her in her swing, she will sleep for a couple hours.

During the day, she does not like to rock and will only fall asleep after being in her swing for quite a while. She does not nap in her crib. If by some miracle we do get her to nap in her crib, it's only a short nap.

The problem is that she's getting too long to be comfortable in her swing and it's getting harder and harder to get her to take naps. We also have a small house, so if the baby is napping, we can't do ANYTHING. If she were to sleep in her crib, we could have that time to get other things done around the house. So, how do I break her of the swing-napping habit and get her to nap in her crib? If I put her down for a nap in her crib, she just screams until I get her out, or if she does fall asleep, it's only for a catnap.

I just replied to your other thread. DS is 4 months and I have the exact same problem with naps. DS goes into his swing every morning and will sleep longer then in his crib. He does fall asleep in the crib by himself every night. But during the day, forget it. He takes every nap in the swing. I have no idea what I am going to do.

Could you rock her to sleep and then lay her in her crib asleep? I know that she would wake up right away, but with consistancy and time she should start to sleep longer and longer in her crib. You might have a rough week or two but then it would pay in the long run. I have found that you need a way to get them down for their nap or they will never take it.

She won't let me rock her during the day, but I'm going to have to try something. This napping in the swing in the middle of the living room is getting really old. I can't get anything done around her.

Do you follow simillar routine for nap as for night sleep (it should be same except maybe the pj and bath). We had the same problem, our baby slept for hours in the swing and minutes in the crib. Our swing has music and we always played music while DD was in it. Then what we did was after quite 5min, food, story, we would put her in crib when she was sleepy adn play the music from the swing. That did the trick. Eventually we stopped playing the music.

There is many ways to make your naps longer, one that worked for us that the no-cry sleep solution book suggested was to wait outside the door 5min before your baby is expected to wake up (for us it was after 25min) and as you hear them begin to fuss and wake up, you go in, and shhhh them back to sleep (whatever way works for you, for us it was to stroke the head or pat the back gently). Eventually she learned to nap by herself for 2hrs. But the trick for this is to do it when they are still drowsy and not wide awake from crying.