Lovely DS won’t nap

[Emarosa]

We have a lovely, super curious 10 week old DS. He’s wonderful in every way… but I recently read that babies his age are not supposed to be awake for more than two hours before a nap. DS sleeps well at night (wakes once for a feed and settles quite well afterwards), but getting him to sleep during the day is a struggle. He just seems so curious about everything and fights his sleep.

I try everything … rocking, singing, white noise, dummy (v hit and miss), dark rooms, contact naps, cot naps…

He sometimes drops off but usually for short spells of time. I think I spend most the day trying to encourage him to nap (usually while he grins at me :P)

Does anyone have any advice or ideas to share?

Do you put him down before his awake window ends? I find even if I went 5 mins over it he would be a nightmare to put down. I always put my baba down 15mins before his awake window ends. X

I don’t actually. He has only recently started settling at all in a cot, so before it was just contact naps. What approach do you take?

This reminds me of mine, he was a curious wide awake little thing that didn't follow any of those windows. I never did figure it out consciously, it just sort of gradually got better. That's not very helpful in the moment I know. I stuck with the white noise and darkened room, and now it's a good sleep association for him.

With my 11 week old we have no particular schedule, I'm not actively trying to get him to nap. He has contact naps, and will sleep in the sling , push chair and car but when he gets these naps and how long depends on what we are doing. Will your DS sleep in pushchair etc? I think it can be easy to get very fixated on naps. I'm trying not to worry about it too much till he's more like 6 months when he probably will need a more definite nap schedule.

So awake window is 60 to 90 mins. So put him in the cot at 1 hour 15. See how that goes. From 8 weeks I put mine in a routine. Bath and set bed time.

It is a struggle at that age - it's normal for it to be a struggle. I took mine out on a sling walk for each nap at some stages. In a few weeks' time it might well get easier or even harder again to get him to sleep at home - just see what works best for him and for you through the next few months!