2 month old won't sleep anywhere but home

[CamillaAUS]

Hi,

We have a beautiful 2month old girl, but she will only sleep if we are bouncing on a yoga ball with white noise. Even if we move off the ball she tends to wake which is obviously not ideal when we are aiming for naps that last 1hr+! We have tried the car, sling and pram but nothing works.

We watch her wake windows and are mindful of her cues to make sure we catch her before she get overtired. Even then she fights us sometimes. She is very alert and advanced for her age, the midwife, Dr and sleep consultant all said that she shouldn't be able to make the noises she does yet and that she is very aware. Which by itself is amazing but makes napping incredibly difficult.

My husband and I are very active and finding the strain of not being able to leave the house exhausting and unsustainable.

I should mention we are expats in Australia with no family and they aren't able to visit of course so we are doing this just the 2 of us.

Any ideas or advice/encouragement please?

Have you tried swaddling? Both of mine would never sleep any length of time I'm their cots (Moses basket) unless swaddled at that age. It was the only way they'd let me put them down to sleep. Some babies do seem more sleepy than others though. My friends baby was a lot like yours, she'd only sleep if one of them were excessively bouncing her and it was exhausting. She's 9 months now and does nap in her cot now so she did grow out of it. Wasn't anything they did, just when she was 6 months plus, they popped her in her cot and she'd have a little grumble for a few minutes and then nod off and it went from there. Hope you find another (less tiring!) method that soothes her to sleep soon! Good luck!

I’m surprised she doesn’t like the sling. Just thinking the motion of walking in a sling would be similar to the action of the bouncing and she’d be on you and you’d be able to get out of the house.

If you were out and about presumably there’s be background noise too so the lack of white noise would be less of an issue.

I’d be tempted to just stop doing it for a week and see what happens - including accepting that it could be a really tough week.

Or embrace it, babies change so much so quickly and fingers crossed this is a stage that won’t last long.

What does she do in the car/pram/sling?

Is she crying? Or fine, but just not sleeping?

My eldest was like this, wouldn’t nap in the pram, the car, the sling.. no-one believed me 😂 but she genuinely didn’t! To be honest, she just didn’t nap for more than 30 minutes at a time for the first 6 months of her life. We just did 4 or 5 short naps per day & dealt with the crying 🙈 She did go to bed at 6.30pm & do a good 4/5 hours until next feed from 8 weeks old, so that was good! I felt more like myself getting our evenings back! It did get better, she became a champion napper by 12 months & would do 2-3 hours until she was almost 3!

My youngest was better but like your baba, only slept if we bounced on a ball or jiggled her around in the sling. But we could stop moving once she was asleep at least! I was worried we’d created a really bad habit & around 2 months we persisted with putting her down for naps.. swaddling helped massively, a dummy & also out crib rocked back & forth so we did all 3 things & she’d eventually go! Was a fair bit of crying initially though .. didn’t last long. A few days and she got the hang of it! She is another champion napper now as a toddler, 2-3 hour nap! She’s also the biggest cuddle monster & the happiest child, before anyone gets on their high horse about babies crying while you try get them to sleep. I never left her, always comforted her with pats & head strokes .. its not damaged her in anyway!