To have given up on naps?

[redlipstickandtiredeyes]

I do feel bad about it because my baby is obviously tired but if you’ve done absolutely everything you can and they still don’t sleep what else can you do?

OP i feel you. Our 11mo is a crap mapper. Feel I’ve spent all of my maternity leave in the nap battle. Nights aren’t great either and have taken a LOT of work to get semi decent.
So firstly MASSIVE SOLIDARITY. I think you are right to just accept that your baby will sleep when he is tired and just go about your day. I don’t think tiny babies (at least not mine) can do schedules or programmes very well - even the awake window thing didn’t seem relevant for us at this age. Your baby will be fine.

I’m not going to give advice (though will share what worked for us below - warning - ugly)
advice really pissed me off when I felt like you felt. I signed up to the Little Ones app around 4 months and it feels like it’s main purpose has been an expensive place to complain about how my child will not nap as described in their programme no
matter what. Quite therapeutic!

Eventually what worked for us was a combo of huckleberry windows, holding him the dark for naps, and letting him use my nipple as a dummy for quite some months. I really resented it most of the time and watched waaaay too much Netflix. I didn’t get to “put my baby down” for maybe the first 8-9 months of his life. 0/10 would not recommend.

If I hadn’t time again I would take him to the cranial osteopath earlier on. I took him around 8 months and it made a MASSIVE difference. Finally got him off my nips for sleeps. Woo? Who cares- worth a go if you are desperate for a break.

Hope it gets better for you but in the meantime

And as pp have said you really need to do the same thing for a couple of weeks.

Bloody hell - typos and autocorrect! Anyway hopefully you can all understand what I’m driving at!

pram = walk

netflix = baby on you

swing = baby in, white noise?! gentle music

bouncer = baby in

baby needs to sleep 100% at 2 months old. id try the above

At that age I wouldn’t worry if they won’t settle in cot etc - sling, out for walk with buggy or use the car? I’d go for a little drive and park up. Have been known to fall asleep drooling in a country lay-by 😁

shouldistop if I did that I’d still be waiting for him to fall asleep 3 hours later.

I don't mean literally put him down wide awake. 'Put him down for a nap' just means get him to sleep. And it's much easier to get babies to sleep when you do it at just the right time, if you leave it too late then they will just cry a lot. But you really have to do the same thing over and over again so they associate the actions with sleep.
At 2 months I'd still be swaddling and definitely using white noise.

So what happens when you get him to sleep?

Do you sit there? Rock? Watch a film? Eat dinner? What exactly do you do once he’s asleep?

Has it always been this way where he wakes after a few minutes? Is he uncomfortable? How is he fed?

I’ve never tried to get my babies to nap and I have 3dc. I hadn’t a clue with the first one and didn’t really know they were “meant” to nap, I suppose if I thought about it at all I figured they’d sleep if they were tired. I mean, I can laugh now. The second one was the worst by far and crap at sleeping so I did spend a lot of time trying to get babies to sleep at night and through the night and for any decent stretch at night and for more than half an hour at a time at night, I did a lot of that. But during the day, I just didn’t. I’m sure if I had a baby now with apps and all sorts I’d actually really worry about it. But as it happened I just took the babies/toddlers along with me wherever I was going, nearly always in the carrier until they were past napping age, and sometimes they slept, and sometimes they didn’t. And yes, lots of the time they whinged and cried and were crotchety all day instead, which was stressful sure but I just figured they were having a bad day and didn’t beat myself up. I think there is too much pressure now.

Can you get a better baby carrier. At least then you can move around and do things, if they are going to cry anyway it’s better than leaving them to cry on their own

@redlipstickandtiredeyes I have real sympathy- my little one is 10 months and it's so frustrating when you get them to sleep and they wake up as soon as you dare to even breathe, and I only have that happen occasionally.

I just wondered if you have tried a cranial osteopath, I took my little girl to see one for other reasons and it seemed to help her a bit. From what he said the whole birth experience is a bit traumatic to them (as well as us) and they can end up with tension or feeing of being uncomfortable. Seeing as you have tried loads and it's not working, is this something it may be worth looking into?

Would also recommend reading about the Possums Approach. Probably won't do much to help lengthen naps but when I feel like tearing my hair out because my baby wakes 100x a night, the only thing that helps me is reframing the way I look at things.

Yeah ... I really don’t think people get it. He doesn’t sleep in the pram. There’s no way I can watch Netflix with an angry baby. Tried white noise. Been to cranial osteopath. Have a swing, vibrating rocker, sling. I don’t know what is up 🤷🏻‍♀️

Are you breastfeeding? My son wouldn’t be put down so fed him lying in bed & he would fall asleep next to me latched on.
Then in the evenings he would scream & scream so I just walked. As soon as I brought the pram back in the house he KNEW & would scream again. It was a nightmare.
When you say he’s asleep for 7 minutes, do you put him down & then he wakes up? Or are you holding him?

Swaddling?

How long have you tried each of those things though @redlipstickandtiredeyes ? As many have said, it's about consistency. You probably need to consistently use one approach for a week in order to see any real difference

@redlipstickandtiredeyes sorry just seen mention of the osteopath. Does your baby sleep at night, is it just a during daylight thing or is it the full 24/7?

I know you’re tired but people DO get it. I used to lie with him lying on my chest just bouncing up & down to try & get him to sleep. Some babies don’t sleep (my first could be put down to nap no problem!)

He's only 2 months and it sounds like you've tried lots of different things which makes me think you haven't tried the same thing consistently. You really need to, it may take a week or 2 of the same thing for every nap. Preferably the same thing you do for night time sleep, dark, swaddled, white noise etc
It gets easier

I get that coffee but i can’t just sit in front of Netflix and hope he’ll go to sleep. Not without making myself miserable in the process. Hates swaddling. Anyway I do need to just accept it. It might improve I suppose.

I’ve tried exactly the same thing for day as night but at what point would you accept it isn’t working? When baby is already distressed? When you’ve sat for one hour, two? You can’t. It’s daft and it’s upsetting.

Most of us do get it. My first didn't like to nap at all, I read a hell of a lot about baby sleep until we finally cracked it.

90 minutes still sounds like a very long awake window for a nap, which means he starts it overtired, making it more likely he'll wake early.

It's really hard though when out of rhythm to get back into it.

I know it's easier said than done, but I'd be trying to initiate a nap about 45m after waking from the previous one at that age. Perhaps aim to go out for a walk at the 45 minute mark.

I'm guessing baby doesn't feed to sleep?

If (and it's a big if) you can get baby to sleep with shorter wake windows, the chaces are, he'll also sleep for longer.

None of my babies have ever slept in a pram either. One would wake up instantly if I so much as breathed loudly.

Two of my babies had reflux which was very hard but feeding them upright in a carrier helped with that during the day. At night we’re nightmares and latched on pretty much all night long to help with the pain. One didn’t sleep through until they were 7 (years).

Does feeding side lying work for you? Does your baby settle better if fed upright?

Well maybe it is baby but if he won’t sleep after 60 what can you do? I mean ... you can’t force someone to sleep, unless you use drugs I suppose and we aren’t —quite—at that stage!

Look I do feel a bit crap now. Shouldn’t have posted but no one to talk to about it so yeah.

And baby he doesn’t sleep for walks. I don’t know why, I see babies asleep in prams all the time but not mine. Sometimes will nod off after a long time walking but that’s sometimes, it isn’t consistent at all. I did have some success with the sling as a newborn but not now. Doesn’t feed to sleep.

If you think it would help, there is no shame in putting ear buds in, just one perhaps. and listening to something at the same time as feeding/caring for your baby.

My baby who woke at the slightest noise carried that on until several years old and honestly some nights I’d plug headphones into the tv downstairs rather than turn it on a risk waking the demon child a whole floor away. I’d brush my teeth at the kitchen sink before tiptoeing to bed rather than face talking down an angry child until 2am.

We do get it and it’s really hard but what you are reading here is solidarity, not blame. It’s tough.