Just wanted to say DO NOT think any more about what that lady told you about her fabulous sleeping babies! How wonderful for her to have babies that did that but how she thought that telling you all about it was helping you I do not know.

I could barely believe it myself when I read it - there are some great sleepers in my mother's group but they don't match that!

My DS was also a lousy sleeper and nothing would drive me mad more than people telling me smugly how great their babies were at sleeping - the obvious implication being that I was doing something wrong. It's so hard when your baby doesn't sleep as much as they are "supposed" to be sleeping, you feel jealous of the mothers that have babies that do sleep that much and you can't help but question yourself. It's soul destroying.

DS also did the very short naps and I found that I felt much better mentally when I didn't fight it even though the constant interrupted sleep was always a factor and I had days where I couldn't stand the sound of myself either because I had such a short fuse. When DS was about 11 months or so he suddenly started sleeping for longer - 2 to 3 hours at a nap time, and it was nothing we did, he just did it on his own. Mind you, that was when he started cutting out naps during the day and going to bed later at night.

Hang in there. One thing we did find helped us was that if DS was not asleep in about 20 minutes after trying to put him down, he wasn't going to sleep...so we would get him up and try again in a while.