mums of 2+ how to avoid baby becoming overtired

[omama]

Mums of 2+ and particularly those who do a school run - how do you manage to see to the older dc whilst also ensuring the baby gets the sleep it needs?

I am really struggling at the moment with dd (14 weeks). She isn't very good at self settling yet. In fact its a real struggle to get her to sleep when we're at home full stop. Following bronchiolitis & colic she has been rocked & cuddled to sleep since 3 weeks old but it is so so impractical when I have ds to look after too. I am working on getting her to settle in the cot with mixed success (nights ok, naps not!).

Mornings are particularly problematic as she often needs to nap before its school run time, but I have to get myself ready & ds (4) ready for school so don't really have the time to spend rocking/ soothing/ cuddling her to sleep. So she has to wait until we leave before she can have her nap in the pram. Needless to say by the time we are ready to leave dd is inconsolable & very overtired. I've tried putting her down in the pram when tired but she wont settle while its stationary, nor is she the sort of baby to just fall asleep wherever she is sitting eg bouncy chair. I have a stretchy wrap which she is sometimes happy to go in - other times has the biggest rage you have ever seen - but she is now getting too heavy to carry so I need some new ideas!

[FATEdestiny]

What about a dummy?

My DD was hard work for the first 8 weeks because it took me 7 of those weeks with constant perseverance to get her to accept the dummy without gagging on it or spitting it out. As soon as she accepted the dummy and started using it to suckle to sleep, everything got easier.

It does take time for the baby to fall in with family routine, but it will happen. It has to when you are doing school runs, because these points in the day cannot change.

How do I do it?

On the best days DD doesn't wake up until 8am, after which time I have sorted the three older children and then can focus on feeding baby. On the days when she wakes early and is ready for a sleep before the school run, she is put into pram when tired, swaddled with dummy.

I rarely dress baby before the school run. She is usually fed and nappy changed, but the dressing happens when we are home from the school run.

[AnythingNotEverything]

My first thought was a sling. That way you can rock her while getting ready. Something like a caboo close is good at that age.

[omama]

I could cry. I had a huge reply typed & lost it. Thanks for your replies.

Anything - we have a caboo. Mixed success. She's now getting too heavy & its hurting my back.

FATE - we have had a dummy since she was a week old. She took it really well until recently, but we are now in a period of 'The Dummy Wars'. Now she spits or pulls it out as soon as I put it in, in favour of sucking her fingers. However she cant quite settle to sleep with fingers alone & eventually cries. Cue time to pop dummy back in, she spits it out & sucks fingers. Lather, rinse, repeat many times over til she eventually settles. This can take up to an hour by which point she is very overtired, & is something I dont have time for in a morning. I find it incredibly frustrating as I know that if she would just take it, she would calm down. TBH Iwould quite like to get rid of the bloody thing as all it seems to do is piss her off cause a lot of stress.

I've tried settling her in the pram but she wails like a banshee (constantly spitting dummy out) til we leave the house, then stops immediately the moment we step out of the back door & goes to sleep, without needing her dummy. Maybe I need to persevere with settling her in there a bit more .

Re leaving dd in bed while I get ds ready - this is something I'd like to do but havent yet managed. Must try harder!! Often dd is very hard to settle after her 4am feed so ends up in bed with me - if I get up she wakes immediately as mummy warmth is gone. Plus more recently her late afternoon nap has gone to shit (refuses to settle - see dummy wars above plus ds is leaping around shouting) so she is going to bed very early at around 6.30pm so not sleeping in so late in the mornings anymore.

I get the feeling the only thing that will make things easier is time - so she's old enough to cope with staying awake that bit longer.

[SolasEile]

Not much advice except to say that my 16 week old is similar. Hard to settle for naps, will sleep in the stroller but only if it's always moving. She lived in the carrier for the past 2 months but that's getting tiring now.

I have the same problem but at the opposite time of the day. She wants to nap in the afternoon but 3 days a week I have to drive to pick up DS from preschool and she just screams all the way there and back. It is frustrating! I just hope it all gets better with time...

[AnythingNotEverything]

If you want to continue with a sling, your local sling library will help you either with the positioning of you existing sling or can recommend or rent you something you find more comfortable. If she has good head control she could go into an SSC like a Connecta. I carried DD up to over 10kg when I got pregnant and went back to work and didn't have the opportunity anymore.

[FATEdestiny]

'The Dummy Wars'. Now she spits or pulls it out as soon as I put it in, in favour of sucking her fingers.

Ahh, we've had exactly this too. DD does lots of face rubbing when tired, which pulls dummy out. She is also in the stage of picking stuff up, so likes to take the dummy out of her mouth and examine it, then get cross that she cannot have it in her mouth and look at it at the same time!

I just preserver with putting it back unless she starts getting very frustrated and touching on over-tired. At that point I've started to swaddle her with dummy in and this always solves it.

[chocolatedrops31]

I don't know if this is practical but I used to put mine in the pram on the porch outside once it was nap time and push back and forth a few times until asleep and then go back inside and continue with breakfast etc until we were ready for nursery run for my oldest.

[flipflopsonfifthavenue]

I have similar re DS2 who is 16wks. always overtired and not getting enough sleep. I don't have school run but I do have issue of home naps. I always put him in sling and sort of walk laps round the kitchen while DS1 (2.7yo) plays or watches cartoons. As long as he gets 30 mins or so it's enough to tide him over to getting out of house and he can nap again in sling. He haaaates buggy so I sling him but he's also getting too heavy (I have a soft boba)

Really need to be able to put him down at home for naps but who has time for training him?? He's often overtired and I feel so bad.

Am partly waiting for age to catch up with him and he can go a little longer between naps and his naps become a bit more predictable and then maybe I can start a bit of training him.

[Ouroboros]

I can't remember our exact routine as DS is now 2.5, but I had a sling called a mei tai which was really comfortable, he was nearly 10lbs when he was born and I kept him in that sling until he was 6 months and very heavy! It keeps them really close so good for when you need to do things like cooking. He'd sleep in it on the school run.

[redcaryellowcar]

Not that this helps, but I have similar conundrum with a one year old younger brother, so I'm following for tips! He wakes at 6 (or a bit earlier) then is exhausted by the time we leave for nursery for his older brother,, and by the time we are on our way back he often falls asleep in the car, and not easy to transfer him into his cot. He then has quite short naps usually, his nighttime sleep is terrible, and I know that better daytime routine would mean better nights but I can't work out how to do this!?

[flipflopsonfifthavenue]

I agree with rescar - am sure my Ds2 would really benefit fr better more structured daytime naps but who has time or energy to make that happen??

I guess moral or story is they survive and we survive and it all seems pretty normal. Couple of yrs from now the younger ones won't be napping at all and it'll be something else were fretting about. With two boys people have already warned me about the wrestling.....

[lornagibb1983]

We found a lovely app on the app store called Help Your Child To Sleep which helped our 2 year old establish better sleep behaviour (it encourages yawning, stretching etc). We used it before her bed time routine and it worked - she settled down to sleep much better!