Five month old baby suddenly resisting all naps and very moody!

[Mrsbirchall]

Hi all

Feeling at my wits end a bit..

My once content, mostly happy little baby boy has for over two weeks now become progressively harder to settle and keep happy. I know teething and developmental changes could be factors but my main battle is that he used to sleep in his cot happily at any nap (and buggy too) - sometimes grumble a bit - but now, every nap just as I even start to put him in the cot he starts crying and has recently progressed to full on hysterical screaming.

I know he's tired and it's one vicious circle as he's far more of a grump when he's overtired but it's so wearing knowing that I'm going to go through this meltdown every time. I go out with him a lot in his buggy walking as he will then sleep in that but similarly, it now takes ages for him to go off to sleep and the second the buggy stops moving he wakes up crying again! He did this when a newborn but had grown out of this or so I thought!

He also seems to wake from every nap seeing tired still - rubbing his eyes and yawning...?!

This is the longest phase we've gone through yet and it's making me sad as he used to be a content baby who some days didn't even cry but we are going through screaming matches with him at least twice a day.

I find the more I go in to see him in his cot when he screams the worse he gets as he just wants me to pick him up and when I have done this, he gets all perky and wants to play or just thinks he can sit with me (he can't be rocked to sleep any longer which is a shame) but as it can be several hours since last nap I'm determined he needs to sleep so I put him back and the hysterics begin again. It only works to leave him crying for 10-15 mins and he then goes off eventually.

Has anyone else gone through this change and is there ever going to be an other side to come out of or am I going to have this daily battle now ongoing?!! I just feel like he is regressing in his behaviour. I don't seem to have any consistency with his naps now too as he sometime sleeps for 30 mins or sometimes 2 hours whereas before this change he was more consistent with timings. Should I be enforcing more strict daytime sleep times? Could this help?..

Thanks for any advice! Help!

Ps - touch wood, he's still a good nighttime sleeper at the mo - it's just 7am-7pm that the troublesome battles are!!

He is probably going through a sleep routine shift. At 5.5 months my DD suddenly switched from her regular routine of 4 naps of about 45 mins each (usually the first one was longer) down to two, with about 3 hours awake before each nap. I was at my wits end after a week of pretty much no naps at all. The next weekend we just started from scratch, and rather than trying to make her go to sleep we watched like a hawk until she looked genuinely tired then put her to sleep. I also took her out for a walk at the times she used to nap in case she wanted to drop off but she didn't. And thus a completely new routine was established.

It was then mostly fine, with a few blips, until she dropped her morning nap at about 13 months.

Naptime transitions are really tough, I know! My youngest had a terrible time settling for naps starting at about 6 months of age. I'd put him down and he would fuss and cry until he worked himself up into a frenzy. By that point I know he was so riled up that he'd never fall asleep, so we'd give up on the nap for that go-round.

Problem was, he'd be a total grump until the next naptime. And to top it off, the same thing would happen when we tried for the much needed afternoon nap!

I was at my wit's end.

My friend gave me a white noise program that works on a vibrational level to calm the mind and help babies settle. I can't lie - I laughed when she gave it to me. Vibrational level? New age hokum, I figured.

I had to eat crow when it worked.

I would put it on and hold him for a few minutes, quietly. When he calmed, I popped him in his cot. He kind of gazed up at me for a few minutes, then he dropped off to sleep.

We didn't nap without it for the next 18 months.

I'm using it again with #2.

It came from baby2sleep.net. I just looked, and it costs $19.97 USD for the MP3 download.