Please help me get my 3 month old to nap!!

[SamJohnsMum]

My DS really tries to avoid napping during the day it seems! I try to always start our day at 7am (although he often wants to start it earlier) and if we do that, he'll have a morning nap of about 45 mins at 8.15am. Beyond that, what happens is anybody's guess and he gets so grouchy if he doesn't sleep. We do different things every day - lunches, mum and baby groups etc, so I don't know what to do. Help!!

no advice - but have similar issue with my 3 month old... does nap but relatively random patterns after that first one in the morning.

what worked for us was really paying attention to the baby - start looking out for them getting tired as early as an hour and a half after their last nap and as soon as they rub their eyes or yawn etc then start putting them down.

it helped us to do the same thing everytime so when possible put them down in the cot, in the sleeping bag with the music on etc...we did have to sit and hold hands at first but now our 4month old ds goes down (mostly) without a fuss...

you dont need a strict routine as long as they go down when they're tired and not when they've tipped over into nightmarish overtiredness I think.

if you're out and about tho dont they nap in the buggy/car seat?

Thanks for your comments - it's nice to know others have the same problems so it's not just me!!

I'll try and do the same thing every nap time when I can. He does sleep in his car seat, but seems increasingly less likely to sleep in his pram.

I think I'm in danger of BF to sleep, so I also need to work on different sleep associations.

my 3 month old daughter sleeps very well at night, however during the day she will "cat nap" for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. She seems to be fighting her sleep.

I remember my 11 month old DS going through exactly the same at that age.
I tried different things, but definitely keeping consistent and watching out for body language signs will help.
I once read that babies spend the first three months establishing night-time sleep (or some pattern of) and months 3 - 6 establishing daytime sleep.

mine is 4 months and the same - awake at 6or so nap at 8.30 then ????? grouchy when tired!

DS1 was/is like this and fights sleep like he's afraid he'll miss something exciting. We found that he would nap best if put down before he was really tired but he never mastered the art of going to sleep himself.

with ds2, i am trying hard to teach him to settle himself but i have found that by giving our day some routine, he is finding his own within that. ie he has a bf at 7am so is happy to sleep in his cot at 8 til about 9.30 and he's identified that as nap time. we always go out about 12.30 even if its walking the dogs for an hour and thats another cue for a nap.

Brace yourself for this:

DS didn't nap moderately reliably until he was around 6 months. Until then he napped in tiny 45 minute chunks, was always tired and grumpy, and HATED going to sleep in the daytime.

The only thing that made my life easier was consciously BFing him to sleep (because at least that way he slept and he was a complete misery and constantly unhappy otherwise).

He's naturally outgrown that and now at 14 months he's just woken from a 1hr 45minute nap which he settled himself for (but you do not want to know what time he woke up this morning!)

Go with the flow, best advice IMO!