Help! Baby fussy after walks.

[user1490285009]

Hi ladies,

Every time I take my 3 month old out for a walk ( in her carry cot or baby carrier), she becomes super fussy and misses all her naps in the day (making for an over tired cranky baby at night). I don’t think it’s her getting over stimulated because she’s laying flat and I usually have the hood up, besides she spends most of the time with her eyes closed. She opens her eyes the second we come into the house and she’s fussy and upset the whole time thereafter.

Any ideas what could be going on? Any tips? Thanks in advance

Is she napping when you’re out? I think you might struggle to get her to nap twice. As for why she’s upset I understand sleeping whilst moving is not the best quality sleep. DS is crap with daytime naps though and is grouchy by 4pm even if he does get a good nap.

^ So basically I might not be the best person to turn to for advice.

So she's asleep when you're out? Both of mine always wake up as soon as I stop pushing the buggy and depending on where they are in their sleep cycle can be furious about it. Are you timing walks with nap times?

Do you leave the house every day to do something i. e. Class, group or walk?

@PurBal

😆😆😆 that’s ok, hopefully someone can give us useful info/tools.

@Wagglerock

She has eyes closed but I don’t think she’s sleeping at all. We are only ever out for about 45min-1h and I time it in her awake period. So she wakes up, I change and feed her and we go out for a little walk. So when we come back I expect her to sleep as that would usually be the time of her nap.

It’s not just that she doesn’t sleep. It’s also that she becomes super fussy and cranky. So I can’t even leave her seated. I spend ages trying to calm her down.

@IneedSocks I’ve recently stopped going out with her so often because of this issue. So I take her out about 4x/week. Before I noticed this issue we used to go out everyday.

I think your expectations might be a little high - most babies will go to sleep with the movement, so even if it's not a deep sleep she sounds like she might be dozing and then obviously won't go down when you get her home. Why don't you just take her for a walk when it's nap time instead? With both of mine I let them have a look round for 5-10 minutes so they can see trees, clouds etc and then put the hood down and that does the trick. If they wake up before home, I move the hood back (unless it's sunny/raining obviously!). I've got a 10 mo and there's no way I could take her on a walk for an hour and her not go to sleep.

@Wagglerock fair point, I might be having too high expectations.

I have tried taking her out in her sleep window yesterday but it didn’t help much, it just shortened the sleep window, which makes sense. This is because she’s still quite small and has long sleep windows and short awake times. She’s awake for about 1h and sleeps for 2-3h after it. I can’t be outside for 2-3h with her till she finishes a sleeping. So she inevitably wakes up from the change in environment when we come in, removing her coat etc. Then she’s back to being super cranky. It’s a catch 22, maybe I just have to be patient till she grows out of this phase.