How do you encourage newborns to nap during day?

[newmum234]

My 7 week old baby will feed (formula) then fall asleep on me during the day. If I transfer him to his carrycot (which I try to do after 30-45 mins of sleep) he’ll wake and start crying. I’m concerned that he’s getting overtired, but I can’t sit on the sofa all day every day as there’s stuff I need to do.

So, I was wondering how you ensure your baby gets enough sleep during the day? What do they sleep in and where, and do you close the blinds/curtains downstairs to help them nod off? My DS used to sleep quite happily in his carrycot in bright daylight but it doesn’t seem to work anymore, so I need to find an alternative...

Download the huckleberry app for nap times and advice (free version) its amazing

Keep the room light for day and dark for evening/night

Do eat play sleep so baby doesnt rely on feeding to sleep i.e eat sleep play. Newborns sleep a lot but generally speaking the play is a bit of awake time!

They will want to nap on you at this age it is normal. 4th trimester and feeling secure with you.

Slings can help too as babies often like to nap in them

In a month or two then you will want to start getting into more of a routine for naps etc x

Sorry I meant to add that around the same time as yours, my baby (now 4 months) slept in the carrycot for hours without a care in the world but then I needed to hold for naps more. This coincided with noticing baby was more alert and aware

Now we nap in a darker room with white noise for a regular routine. This will help when a little older I hope, or in the pram/car.

there’s stuff I need to do...

There isn't. This is your first child. Imagine having 3 or 4 children, needing to run a household, cook family meals as well as seeing to the needs of your other children. In context, you need to change your viewpoint here. There really isn't lots you need to be doing. Not a couple of months after having a baby anyway - everything can wait.

I watched the entire 7 series back catalogue of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in the first few months with my firstborn. Such was my need to do stuff

To answer your question:

• Naps in bouncy chair
• Naps in pushchair which you push back and forth at home
• Go out for a walk and nap in pushchair
• Go out for a drive and sleep in carseat (not recommended regularly for SIDS risk)

Or...

• Naps on you and sit on sofa watching boxsets
• Cosleep on your bed when baby naps and nap youself
• Naps in sling if you absolutely have to do stuff at home
• Cosleep literally in the middle of the living room floor and roll away once baby is asleep

Or...

• Nap in cot and use swaddle to reduce stimulation and master the technique to lower a sleeping baby
• Use dummy to encourage self-settling in the cot

There isn't.

Okay, correction - there’s stuff I want to do...!

I used to sit on the sofa for hours with a baby sleeping on my lap and didn't get anything done. Watched a lot of TV and read books. Made sure before I sat down to feed the baby that I had the TV remote, a book, my phone, drinks and food next to me as I knew I was in for the long haul. This is of course only possible if you have only one child and I'd say make the most of it because once they're moving you'll never be able to sit down for so long ever again. Another option is to take them for a walk in the pram to get them off to sleep and then bring the pram inside your house and try and get stuff done while they sleep. Although mine used to sense I was no longer moving the pram and wake up pretty soon after we got back so this wasn't always successful.

DH is at home today and has taken baby for a walk in the sling. Is that an acceptable way for him to nap or will he be getting too much stimulation from the noisy outside world?

Although mine used to sense I was no longer moving the pram and wake up pretty soon after we got back so this wasn't always successful.

Yup mine is the same! How long were you in the sofa sitting phase for?

Is that an acceptable way for him to nap or will he be getting too much stimulation from the noisy outside world?

If he sleeps, he sleeps. There really isnt much more to it than that. Stop overthinking everything.

Honestly though, dummies and swaddles helped me. At 2 months if we swaddled him and popped a dummy in his mouth, and we put him down drowsy he would self settle. Hes always been a good sleeper, but a large part of it is a dummy and a swaddle. Take any of them away and I suspect sleep would be a nightmare.

I also kept daytime to daytime, didnt take away any of the stimuli. Thats how babies learn to differentiate between day and night.

OP im just curious - what do you do for work? You seem to like to plan/research/think about things carefully before doing them

Sorry to RTFT but I found 1 sleep cycle in a newborn is 30-45 mins so it could be that you're putting him down when he's at his light sleep cycle, so either put him down after 20 mins or after an hour?

What is it you're wanting to do?

Oh I TOTALLY get it. My baby refused to nap for the first two months of his life unless he was fed to sleep in my arms or in the pram. We just had to get on with it and do anything we could to survive. I do understand the 'things you want to do' point (which others seem to be confused about) - I felt like I needed my own time, even just to shower or comb my hair or get a snack or clear up or ANYTHING! I know it's not essential but I did feel better when I was able to do these sorts of things and thats importsnt too!

Anyway we just went out with him in the pram a lot and eventually let him have a dummy which helped. If he fell asleep while feeding and slept in my arms I took that as a welcome bonus and watched Netflix. Just do what you can to survive.

But when he was 8 weeks old we tried a sleep schedule called Little Ones (it's available online if you Google it) and this worked great. We were able to get him to nap in his crib and that was a name changer for us. Might be worth considering but don't feel like you have to get your baby to nap in the crib at the mo - just do whatever seems to work for you and the baby best. I found a lot of it was trial and error- and sometimes things that worked one day would be completely different the next!

With DD2 there were things I had to do, mainly looking after DD1 so I used a sling.

Buggy worked for us. In the kitchen, covered with a Snoozeshade and playing white noise. Jiggle back and forth with foot until asleep. This is still how she naps at 18 months (minus the jiggling).

I’ve come to the conclusion that babies are little escape rooms. You have to follow a series of clues in order to figure out how to get them to sleep. There are multiple ‘rooms’ to conquer after that though!

They’ll change as they get bigger. My first DD never bloody slept. I tried everything. The most I’d get for the first 4 months was 30 minutes in the pram but I used to have to walk for an hour before she’d drop off 🤦🏼‍♀️ Everyone says newborns sleep a lot. Mine did not. I kept persevering with the cot, a dummy & making it dark and around 4 months, she’d do 4x 30 minute naps a day.. by 6 months, she started to consolidate her naps to longer stints by herself. It was nothing I did. And by 12 months, she was doing an hour in the morning & 2.5 hours in the afternoon!

My second is 12 weeks. Initially, she would sleep anywhere and I was over the moon to have a newborn everyone talks about 😂 then at 4 weeks, suddenly would only nap in the sling.. which was fine but it hurt my pregnancy damaged back! So again, we persevered with cot naps, swaddle, dark room, white noise & rocking the co-sleeper.. and at 10 weeks, she got the idea. She doesn’t do long naps, 30-60 minutes but usually more like 30 minutes but at least they are down & I can run around doing quick jobs! She has 5 naps a day at the mo.. our next challenge is stopping her relying on rocking as she’s a long baby & isn’t going to fit in the rocking co-sleeper for much longer than 6 months I don’t think!

So I guess pick where you’d like her to nap & just persevere with it best you can. It is normal for babies to just want to be cuddled up to you. I do enjoy the odd sling nap for the cuddles!