Six month old day time sleep strike!

[PrincessShcherbatskaya]

You'd think I'd know this being my third child but DS is 6 months old and is having real problems with napping during the day and I'm at my wits end. Advice would be much appreciated.
He sleeps well at night. He usually goes down between 6.30-7.30 and will sleep to 5.30 - 7am waking maybe once, twice at most for a feed (I'm bottle feeding now).
At night he is easy to settle, he has his bath, then a feed and self settles in his crib, great.
But during the day is not so easy.
He will only sleep while being pushed in the push chair. Then he will stay asleep for about half an hour then be wide awake again. He's just so grumpy basically all day from lack of proper sleep that it's making life pretty miserable right now. I'm feeling myself getting so stressed, he's clingy and whingy when awake and doesn't want to be put down at all. I could literally spend all day just holding him. All my instincts tell me he is over tired and that's why he's so grumpy but I'm wondering if I'm missing something, teeth? Hunger? I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and feel so useless.

Sorry for the long post, just desperate for some advice!

[FATEdestiny]

I would say that the clinginess, whinging and not wanting to be put down are all because of over-tiredness. I would guess he would be less clingy, whiny, grumpy an put-downable if he was getting more sleep.

You are not useless! You are doing your best.

Have you tried feeding to sleep in the daytime? Babies don't really 'self-settle', there will be some comfort there he needs to get to sleep. I wonder since you said about feed then sleep at bedtime if your sons sleep comfort feeling is coming from having a full tummy from his feed?

The difficulty in not establishing an independent sleep comfort in the first 6 months (when babies often don't need one) is that once older when they do need their comfort to get to sleep, it is harder to establish from new. Some things babies use as a sleep comforter include:

• Movement - rocking, bouncing, car or pushchair movement
• Sucking - dummy, nipple, fingers, sucking toy or blanket
• Comfort toy, blanket, special teddy to hold
• Tickling (self or being tickled)
• Patting (self or being patted)
• Hair twiddling

Maybe your LB has just got to an age where he needs a comfort trigger to help him sleep?

[PrincessShcherbatskaya]

Thanks for your reply - yes I'd never really thought that he might be needing a full tummy to go to sleep, I'll give that a try, thank you.

[purplemurple1]

Mine also wants full tummy to sleep so hopefully that helps. I've also just started wake to sleep for her morning nap. She wakes after 40min so at 35min I shh and if needed rock the pram a little to get her into the next sleep block, she then normally sleeps through for a couple of hours.

[PrincessShcherbatskaya]

Thanks I'll give that a try. He woke this morning after 45 mins and seems happy enough but I know he'll be miserable later on. I'm going to give both these things a go and hopefully it'll help.