4.5 month old won't nap!!

[mumtobeinsept]

Hello,

I'm looking for some advice pls.

I have a 4.5mo who really battles with day time naps. To give you some background she goes to sleep around 9pm and wakes up around 6am which I can't seem to be able to change no matter how late I take her to bed!

So in her 15 hour wake window I am lucky if I get 2 naps out of her which total to no more than an hour to one hour an a half in total.

I am lucky that she sleeps 9 hour stretch at night but the days are really killing me and I really don't think it's good for her to be awake for so long!

She rarely shows any signs of tiredness and can go on for hours with no sleep so I have to force a nap. I have tried the usual things I do at night but they just don't work in the day. I end up spending an hour trying to get her to sleep for her to only actually sleep for 25mins.
If I leave her to just play for 5-6 hours before taking her for a nap it turns into more of a disaster with her getting really upset.

Is there a nap training routine? Every search I do keeps talking about trying to get the baby to be awake for at least 2 hours and I think who are these babies that want to sleep every hour, certainly not mine!!

I have been given advice to take her out for a walk or drive or wear her but to me that's just masking the problem and forming bad habits. Am I supposed to go walk for an hour in the cold and rain just so she can sleep for 30 mins? (Because she even holds out sleeping in the pram for a good 30 mins). I'll be going back to work soon and I can't expect my mum to be doing that every day.

Please help!! Thank you xx

Is she sleeping through?

What have you tried to help her to nap? Have you tried a sling?

Every baby is different. My first was similar and fought day time sleep. She also cried all the time if I put her down. I didn’t understand the books that said put baby down in baby gym so baby can look at toys and have a little kick. As my dd would just scream and cry and I could never put her down! For the sleep during the day I used all the tricks to get her to sleep. It doesn’t cause problems later on as she eventually slept like a champ doing one hour in morning and two hours in afternoon (this is when she dropped third nap). And at this point I no longer needed tricks to get her to sleep. When she was younger and needed help to sleep, I would bounce her to sleep, breastfeed or rock or carry her until she slept!

Currently I have the opposite. I’m trying to get my baby more awake but she can’t manage more then 30 mins or one hour max until she needs sleep! To me it’s just so strange! As I’m trying to get her in a schedule like my other two kids had - sleep 7pm to 7am. Wake and nap at 9am to 10am. Sleep again 12-2:30pm and again 4-5pm. Unfortunately my third baby can’t keep awake! So then she is not tired enough to sleep 7-11pm for feed and then sleep until 3 and until 7. Instead she goes down for them night 9:30 or later! But she is 7 weeks so I know this will change. We were very surprised though about how much she wants sleep during the day. I always try to wake her though or I’m afraid she won’t sleep at night!

Oh my gosh I could have written this post myself word for word! I’ve been resorting to taking baby for a walk in the pram but I live in a very hilly place and my fitness isn’t great as I’m post c section and haven’t exercised since the beginning of my pregnancy so it usually takes baba 20 mins at least to nod off and then I get 20 mins out of her until I get back home... The minute I walk through the door with the pram her little eyes ping open!! Would love to see what responses you get because I’m getting nothing done and she gets so frustrated and overtired which means bedtime is absolute carnage.

My other issue is that baby won’t settle for DP and so I’m not getting a single break from morning until night. This is what I’ve just logged in to search for advice on :(

Sorry I don’t have any advice for you! Other than the only other thing I do (which takes a long time) is I rock her to sleep in a pitch black room (she won’t let me rock her if there’s a speck of daylight) but I usually have to keep going back in 4/5 times before she will settle and even then, I don’t get more than 30 mins out of her.

Good luck xx

I don't know if it will be of any use but have you tried the no cry nap solution?