Day time naps

[greatscott81]

My daughter is 18 weeks old and we're having trouble getting her into a routine. As far as feeding is concerned she's fine and she happily sleeps through the night. However, we really struggle getting her to sleep during the day. When she does fall asleep she is often awake within 20 minutes.

I've tried rocking, singing and soothing her to sleep. I've also put her in the pram and walked around with her but she'll often wake up before we get home and then stay awake. She gets cranky when she's over-tired and I'm not sure how to combat this! I'm attempting to put her down 2 hours after she first wakes but it doesn't seem to be working.

Any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks

My first daughter was a "cat napper" she would sleep for 20/30 minutes at a time throughout the day but as she got older she grew out of it and went to having 2 solid naps a day, a morning one and an afternoon one, then as she got even older one long afternoon nap.
If your baby is sleeping well through the night I wouldn't worry to much about establishing a daytime sleep routine

Perhaps try putting her down for a nap a bit sooner? Two hours awake is a long time at that age, and babies seem to be a bit rubbish at sleeping properly when they're overtures.

Things may improve in time too. At 18 weeks you could set your watch by my daughter's forty five minute naps, and it took a lot of practice figuring out a feeding and napping routine that fitted in with them. Six weeks down the line, most days at least one nap is twice as long or more. Nothing to do with anything we did, she just tires herself out rolling now (which she couldn't do then) and she can put her dummy back in herself, which helps massively with getting her to sleep in the first place.

So, all you can really do at this point (based on my limited experience) is wait, and hope! And try not to stress about a schedule too much, it'll only drive you mad.

mine always did 90 minutes max. awake and 45 minutes asleep. Eventually the wake time lengthens a bit and the naps consolidate but until then it's just a bit frustrating. The only thing I would suggest is getting her down by the 90 minute mark rather than 2 hours which is long for some 4mo babies.

Thank you for the advice x

I had the same problem with m DD when she was that age...I tried everything to get her to sleep during the day and every time she woke after 15-20mins and then she'd get overtired and cranky and I didn't know what to do with her. She would feed a bit but then fall asleep while feeding, and would then be awake 15mins later wanting more milk and so it went on. It was really frustrating. But she was sleeping through the night from 5 weeks.

The only thing that worked for me at that age was taking her out in the sling...after squirming and wriggling for a couple of mins she would sleep for a solid 2 hours and it made all the difference to her mood. Although I have to admit I did start to resent having to take her out for a 2 hour walk in the middle of winter battling the elements!

But you will find that as she becomes more active...sitting up and playing more, she will become more tired and will start to sleep better.

Is she feeding well? Not sure if you bf or ff but my personal experience with my DD was that I breast-fed her until she was 6 months old and struggled getting her into any kind of routine for either feeding or sleeping during that time. When I moved on to bottle-feeding I had her in a routine within about 3 days and she started getting her naps spot on - short nap in the morning and long nap in the afternoon. It may have been a coincidence, but I do always look back at that time and wonder whether maybe she wasn't getting enough milk from me and was waking due to hunger. I'm only sharing my own experience with my DD with you...not in any way trying to encourage you to ff btw!

Hope things improve for you.