Up to 6 months..napping routines!!

[Fifilottie]

Just a thought..I am having a bit of stress with DD's napping times. She always wants to sleep about 2 hours after she wakes and although she always finds it hard to get to sleep in all circumstances she only takes about 15 mins of soothing for her first nap(about 9am...she wakes at 7). I always then try to get her to take a nap at 11.30 as she always seems really tired.....it never works. So today I left it until after her mid day feed and she didn't sleep at all. I spent two hours trying to get her to nap but no luck. IN the end I took her out in the pushchair..it took me forty minutes for me to get her to sleep(she only accepts a forward and backwards motion while I sit on a park bench...yes am desperate and she is fussy).....well, she slept and then a bloody barking dog woke her but that is beside the point, so in all today she had about 1 hours nap altogether and she isn't a happy lady when she hasn't slept well. I miss a happy baby. Naps are a problem...any way what are your nap routines? where do they sleep? what time and how did you enforce or manage to create them? Please help, just want to get it right as she really just doesn't sleep when she just feels like it. Shes needs needs soothing! Cheers all.(she is 19 weeks)

DD is 13 weeks this week and also manages to stay awake for a max of two hours after waking. I watch for her tired cues (yawning, 7 mile stare) and as soon as i see them i take her up to her cot, put her in her grobag and we have a 5 minute cuddle/wind down at which point i put her in her cot, pop her dummy in and close the door. It usually takes her a bout 5 minutes to drift off. she babbles a bit and sometimes grizzles. if she cries properly i go back in and cuddle her til she is calm again and then put her back in the cot. It rarely happens these days but when it does it usually only takes me going in once to send her off.

She wakes at 7am and is usually back in bed by 9am. She will sleep for approx 2 hours and be awake for 11 where she will feed and probably be back in bed by 1pm sleep through to around 3, eat, play and then back in bed around 5pm for a cat nap until about 6pm where i will get her up and let her have a kick around until about 7pm when she has a bath, bottle and then bed by 8pm.

We have done this since she was 1 week old (though the times were different then, she would only stay awake for an hour max) so it is a routine which is firmly embedded.

When we are out and i can see she is beginning to get tired i take the toys out of the buggy and i put the sunshade down to limit her stimulation. She will usually sleep though not for as long as she would at home.

i think the key though is to have a ritual to go through that she learns to associate with sleep and to start the ritual as soon as you see her tired cues. If you wait too long she will get overtired and it will be much more difficult to get her to sleep.

wow, you are soo lucky. I have aimed for such a routine but she finds it hard to sleep longer than 30 mins at a time. I see the cues for tiredness too but she needs so many types of soothing regardless. I put out a thread on here for white noise as she needs everything...ssshhhing, rocking while the hair dryer is on and she has a comforter/blanky. She is a problem sleeper(she takes after me I think). I am realy stressing about this. You are so lucky sugarplum...just wish someone told me to set routines from the start. Can't help but feel I could have avoided this...everyday is a struggle..doesn't change the fact that she is gorgeous though...of course.

ps have never used adummy as my mother would be devestated..do you think that in this cirsumstance it would make a difference(she is bf)

My DD is an absolute treasure and i an know how incredibly lucky i am that she is so chilled out.

we have found having a dummy very useful. DD finds it very soothing and non productive suckling time is something every baby needs. I always swore i would never use a dummy but it helped DD so much and we only use it for bed time/naps so i got down of my high horse about it

TBH It sounds to me like your DD is hyperstimulated (hence the need for you to use white noise/hair dryer etc to block out the other stimulations and allow her to fall asleep). Perhaps when she wakes after that first 30 minute sleep she cant settle back down to sleep longer because of stuff going on around her. My husband is a bit like this. He cant sleep if there is anything going on around him.

When you put her down for a nap, do you put her in a quiet room? maybe some blackout blinds might help you establish a nap routine.

Have a look at the Baby Whisperer books/website. In particular stuff relating to touchy babies. I think you might recognise your DD.

HTH.

I wouldn't worry about routines at all. We never did and it just stresses you out if baby doesn't want to sleep at the 'proper' time. You can spend hours trying to 'get' a baby to go to sleep, which is pointless - you can't enforce a nap! Let her sleep when she wants to. Do you bottle or breast feed? BF to sleep if so - easy!

She is breast fed so I use this at bedtime...yes very handy and a lot easier...feeds don't seem to work that way in the day though. She goes a bit sleepy after them and then feels playful(if she has slept enough previously in the day). I would love to let her sleep when she wants to but even if she wants to the problem seems that she can't really get to sleep very well at all by herself. She kind of needs a lot of help in the right direction.

Gonna have a look at the baby whisperer site...haven't had chance yet..

Octaviapink, the point of a routine is to help train the baby in good sleep habits which is good for both baby and parents/rest of the family. You are right in that you cannot just tell a baby to go to sleep at the appointed hour and expect it work, the same way it wouldn't work for an adult. A good routine will work with the baby's natural rhythm and establishing it is a gradual process. There is no enforcement.

Feeding to sleep is all very well but by doing that at every nap the baby will never learn to self soothe. It is much easier to teach a small baby to sleep independently than it is to try and teach a toddler. I think it is one thing to feed to sleep at bed time and during any night feeds but a whole other ballgame to do it for daytime naps.

I have been worried about the feeding to sleep at night time...but after trying all other options it seems to be the most relaxing method for me...so much easier than spending two hours of rocking and shhhshing...oh dear. Having another day of a tired baby today except that she slept for one hour for her morning nap today...yay, this is a good thing. Lunchtime again has gone to pot...so frustrating when I try so hard!! What good website cover this baby whisperer thing by the way? Did a search and I found some forums on it and believe it or not some American shopping site hehe...

Hello, if it helps my DS was a bit of a nightmare sleeper (he could stay awake for hours) and I did try and push for a broad routine, it took about 2 weeks of angst and using all sleeping methods (mainly going out in the pram when it was nap time)but suddenly he just got it and did it... at about 4 months. He gets up about 7am, sleeps again for 1 hour at 9-10am, then milk at 11am and sleep again at 12.30 until about 2.15, then a shorter nap about 4.15-5pm. I got really anal about it but now I just make sure he has no more than about 3.5-4 hours in a day and isn't asleep after about 5.15pm to ensure he goes to bed at 7pm. I put him in a sleeping bag and use a dummy each time, the bag now means sleep so it is a good cue for him.... and yes, sleep cues evaded me for months and then suddenly they were really obvious... the staring and he now rubs his ears, eyes, back of head. I hope this helps and good luck!!

ok, thank you chelly71. Will try the sleeping bag cue but hope it isn't too hot. Noticed your feeds are every four hours. DD feeds every three hours. Don't know how to negotiate feed routine with nap routine. Is your DS breast fed. Am considering bottle feed but she wont take it. Wish someone could just write down a good three hourly feed routine with naps involved for me....am at the end of my tether., LO

Fifilottie, how does this work for you...

7am - wake up, feed then play
8.30am - nap
10am - wake up, feed then play
11.30 - nap
1pm - wake up, feed then nap
2.30pm - nap
4pm - wake up, feed then play
5.30pm - catnap
6.30 - bath then feed
7-7.30 bed.
10.30 - dreamfeed

That is based on Baby Whisperer E.A.S.Y philosophy. Eat, Activity (play), Sleep, You time.

re the baby whisperer site, just realised that the website doesn't have a lot of info, just the forums. you might be better off getting the book. Amazon have them for about £7 i think. www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Baby-Whisperer-Connect-Communicate/dp/0091857023/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books &qid=1279145318&sr=1-1

we use sleeping bags too. We used to use swaddle pod but DD has grown out of it so we moved to sleeping bags. in this heat i use a 0.5 tog one. it is basically sheet weight.

sorry that 1pm one should read:
1pm - wake up, feed then play

Actually, SugarPlumFairy, our dd was fed to sleep for the first five or so months of her life, and after that was quite happy to fall asleep without it. It's a complete myth that feeding them to sleep ruins their ability to self-soothe or in some way prevents them learning how to put themselves to sleep.

THank you everyone for your replies. Sugarplum..just read the routine now and funnily I always aim for something like that(but recently changed it to no nap between 11.30 and over lunchtime.That was probably a mistake so I like the routine you set out...She is sleeping now(went down at 8.30...yes) and am going to follow the routine and see if it works. I might be able to miss the dreamfeed as she normally goes down at 7/8 and sleeps through til morning(for that I am lucky I know). Thank you for writing that out. Sometimes it is just nice to have something to follow I guess. Right well, lets see how it goes and I'll let you know. Advice astoundingly appreciated btw

How do you do a napping routine whilst feeding on demand? This is really puzzling me. I want to try a nap routine but never know when my baby will be hungry!

We tried the Baby Whisperer routine but it really stressed me out, wasn't EASY at all - used to take 90 mins to soothe ds to sleep and then when he actually did go to sleep I didn't know whether to wake him as it was food time or whether to let him sleep again - tried it for 4 weeks and felt like a complete failure by the end.

can'tthink: Baby Whisperer says don't feed on demand, that it will result in a demanding baby, which I now think is completely wrong.

We then went completely the other direction, got a sling and he slept almost exclusively in that for the next 6 months of his life - so easy, no need to be at home for nap times and no need for a buggy! Used to feed him to sleep all the time which was fantastic as well, we decided to start to break the habit when he was about 14 months so that dh could put him to bed too - that worked well, I think he was just ready. As someone else said on a different thread, all other mammals feed to sleep when young and they all grow out of it, so do human babies! I certainly found it much easier to change our routine when he was ready rather than fighting him as a small baby. Also, I found the Baby Whisperer odd as I reckon she is setting you up to fight against biology - breast milk has all sorts of hormones to make you and the baby feel sleepy, so to wake the baby up then with 'activity time' seems perverse, just so they can then go to sleep without being fed. My life became much more enjoyable once I let go of the guilt of not keeping to the routine and feeding to sleep!

I like the idea of routine but really really try to follow them but if my DD goes against them I accept that and try to figure out the difference between. Nesomja..my Lo has a big problem with napping in the day she takes ages to get ot sleep....ahhh it's a night mare. She had a sling in the first few weeks but now she hates it. Maybe the hotter weather. So I try to go by a routine and if she doesn't like it then that's cool. It is all about trying to learn the best way together whatever it may be....

So Sugar plum, my routine of the day

Wake up 6.30 feed(1hour, good feed),play(while mummy expresses and baby eats hands..surely you are full my little girl)
8.30 Dd shouts at me and rubs eyes, go upstairs, put her down, cries for cuddle, cuddle then blow hair drier for 10 mins...asleep.
9.30 awake and then feed...good feed, plenty of nutritive sucking..good good
10.30 onwards..baby bouncy time, play with Dd otherwise she shouts at me
11.30 story time, cuddle and then put down in cot..oh no needed hair drier again. Lovely though she slept until 12.30.
12.30 feed again....and then a lovely mummy and baby play

2.30 pushchair sleep in kitchen. Pushed her backwards and forwards. Worked

3.30 feed again......took her to the train station after this to meet Daddy but she didn't sleep. fell asleep during a feed at 7.30. Bedtime...she will sleep through

So tried and wished to follow the plan but she has her own control on this sometimes. I am willing to understand the need for routine and the need to judge what this should be by monitoring her own actions and times for sleepiness and feed. Just this way it is hard to fix it!

ps cantthinkofagoodname..how old is your DC. You will find that feeding on demand is kind of a beginning phase until you can work a routine around him once you have seen how often he likes to feed then you can work the nap routine around it xx Not that I can talk xxx good luck to you xx