Afternoon naps / routine or not routine? Help!

[MrsJangles]

Hi
I'm working on getting my DD into a daytime routine now - she is brilliant at night but getting her to take naps in the day is a total nightmare. First nap of the day is fine, she goes down about 9am for 30min, the problem is she doesn't seem to sleep more than 30min at a time. So, she often ends up overtired and cranky. The days I DO get her down are the days I nap with her - I'm worried I'm setting myself for disaster if I continue to do this.

She is 4 mo and still feeds about every 3 hours (she just cant' physically seem to take more milk despite me trying - she is FF). So her feed times are around 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 6:30pm, 10pm.

The advice I have been given is to try to get her down for a nap around lunchtime - however this doesn't work because of her feed times. I've looked at the Gina Ford routine, but she doesn't fit into the 4 hour cycle she 'should' be at for 4 months. She also seems to want to nap again around 11am - again for just a short time.

Any advice? If I let her lead the way, she would just kip ever 2 hours for 30 min or so. Is this also a suitable pattern or should I persist with getting her to sleep from 2-4?

I find it SO confusing and difficult to work out the best routine for her.

At four months both of mine were awake for about 90 minutes and then asleep for about 45 all day, so that's quite similar to what you describe. It wasn't long after that, though, that I started being able to slightly stretch their awake periods so they moved from about four naps to three. One in the morning, one after lunch, one at about 5ish - then bed around 6.30-7.

Might your DD be waking up because she's hungry? A baby's sleep cycle is about 40-45 minutes - if she's waking up after 30 it might be hunger that's waking her. How does she sleep if she has a feed just before a nap?

I stressed myself out to get my liitle boy into a daytime routine. We struggled for 45 mins at a time to get him to take a nap and all it did was stress me out and confuse him so that at night (when he used to sleep really well) he would wake every 2 hours! I gave up in the end and put up with his not sleeping during the day and a few weeks ago he just started napping for 1-2 hours at 11am and 3 pm!

Personally I just try to relax about it all now and whilst I'm not being baby led as such I do sort of trust that if he needs to sleep he will. We do have a routine but it's only a loose one really. He wakes up at 8am, we have a play and get him dressed then he feeds about 10am (he usually feeds about 5-6am) we play some more, he sleeps about 11ish til at least 12. Then we might go out for a bit or we'll play some more, he'll nap about 3 and feed when he wakes and we bath him at 5:30, bottle at 6-6:30 in bed asleep by 8. It works for us and it's totally different to what the books said we should do! :)

Hi MrsJangles
My DD is also 4 months and I had exactly the same problem with getting her to take naps - but there is hope!

The thing that seem to have helped is being more aware of her "sleep cues". I use to be more clock watching about when she went for naps and it would take me about 30 mins to get her to sleep for 45 minutes and she would just wake up grouchy too which was very disheartening.
So now I notice when she starts to make a noise like a creaky door, rub her head, pull her ears etc that she is tired and take her straight to her darkened nursery to lay her down in her cot and she goes off straight to sleep. This afternoon she started showing signs of tiredness after only being up 90 mins, in the past I would have ignored that and thought she can't be tired yet but I followed her lead and she did go straight to sleep for an hour!
So I would say don't worry about routines just try to notice when she is tired and then act quickly before she gets overtired and then impossible to get to sleep! By doing this my DD has gone from 45 min naps to 2 hour naps at lunchtime. Good luck, it will get easier.