Baby cries before every nap/sleep

[Natpat81]

Hello

Need some advice. Baby is 16 weeks and fights every sleep by screaming her head off. The only time she doesn’t is walking in the sling but it can take 45 mins of walking before she falls asleep, and then I have to keep walking to keep her asleep so only really an option once a day.

Even contact naps as soon as I lie her down in my arms she will scream and it can take 30 mins of screaming to get her to sleep, and she rarely naps longer than 30 mins.

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been trying to put her in her crib for one nap a day. The quickest she has fallen asleep is 25mins after crying, and many times she’s been crying for an hour (at which point I give up). All times she has napped for 30 mins at the most. I try to put her down whilst still happy but showing signs of sleepiness (rubbing eyes/yawning). Sometimes this is after being awake for 1 hour, sometimes it’s 1.5 hours. If she’s screaming constantly for 5ish minutes I pick her up but most of the time she’s still screaming in my arms so I put her back down again.

Shes in a darkened room and I try to do a routine with lullaby, sleeping bag, feed then white noise. I did attempt to introduce a book but she can’t hear me over the screaming.

I want to do the same in the evening but she screams more in the evening so even getting her to sleep in our arms can take hours, never mind the crib.

All the sleep advice for babies online or in books seems to be for babies that aren’t crying. I don’t know what to do for a crying baby. It’s possible the crying is sometimes due to over stimulation or tiredness, but I try putting her down earlier and it doesn’t make any difference. She cries a lot anyway, even when she wakes up from a nap and/or has just been fed.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

I should add that sometimes I can only get her to nap for 1 hour total during the day (split into 3/4 naps), and some days she will be awake for 5/6 hours before I can get her to nap. Which would be fine if she were happy but she clearly is tired.

Hey, 4 months is quite hard on sleep - they go through a bit of a sleep change and it’s so so normal that they fight sleep a bit or do 30 minute cat naps. It’s so frustrating though!
Just wanted to say that your baby is not doing anything out of the ordinary, it’s just not a particularly pleasant phase for a lot of parents.
I know it’s hard, but honestly the best thing you can do is accept that baby will be doing short naps for a bit and sticking to a bedtime / pre-nap routine. That is really important and will pay off eventually when their sleep cycles get longer.
We sleep trained at 6 months and that helped a lot, but we had to just sort of survive through the 4/ 5 month sleep regression.
Keep trying to put her down for naps as one day it might just click and she’ll do a better sleep.

Thanks @Richie23 for your reply.
It sounds like now is just a time to muddle through!