For those of you with babies that won’t nap, what did you do?

[sofasofachair851]

I have an 11 week old. Sleep overnight is ok I think? Sleeps 10-11 hours with usually 2 or 3 wake ups for feeds. Once or twice she’s slept 7 hours straight but not currently. EBF. It takes a lot of rocking and singing to get her to sleep in her crib but it works, eventually.
Pretty much since a few weeks old, day naps have been a struggle unless in the car. FOMO ++ She sometimes naps in the pram and baby carrier (outdoors, hates the bjorn indoors, dunno why). It’s exhausting and I really am fighting a losing battle. I have read everything about swaddles/wake windows/how much sleep they should get etc. Yes she is overtired during the day but nothing will get her to sleep.

My questions are:

Did you give up on daytime naps? Sick of pacing my house all day with no result
Can you sleep train naps and if so what did you do/does it work?

thanks all

Is she happy as is? If she is happy then I’d stop trying so hard (been there, it’s soul destroying) and go with her pattern.

If she’s not happy- tetchy, irritable, needs lots of proactive entertainment to stay happy - then it’s worth working on naps. Unfortunately this probably means lots of long buggy walks to cure the overtiredness.

Sleep training (controlled crying) did help us with naps but only to a limited extent and 11 weeks is too young for CC really.

All naps were either in the pram, the car or on me until she was 1 year old. After that she went into her cot, though I still do quite a lot of car/pram naps now at 2 for flexibility. It's very normal for babies not to nap in the cot, especially when small. Thinking back to when she was really tiny, I used to think she wasn't napping but actually she often closed her eyes breastfeeding and it turns out that was her nap! Kathryn Stagg on Instagram does great posts about this (she's a lactation and sleep consultant). Does she ever feed to sleep? It's a great tool if she does!

Contact napping worked for us. You can't get anything done but at least they sleep and are so much happier for it.

Exactly the same here except I don't drive so mostly pram or on me. DC2 was the same except relied on the pram even more as I couldn't sit nap trapped much when I had DC1 to care for. He started going down his bed at 9 months.

Our eldest has been a terrible napper but we don’t get too wound up about it. He has opportunities to sleep (walks in the pram, being in the carrier, the car) but we don’t specifically try and get him to sleep. We just get on with what we’re doing and sometimes he sleeps, often he doesn’t.

I didn't start trying a routine and putting down for naps till about 6 months. Before then he would nap wherever.

Thanks for everyone’s replies. Sorry if I didn’t make it clear, I’m not trying to get her on a schedule per se, just she will never nap without significant help. She has her eyes closed feeding quite often but doesn’t stay asleep for long after a feed. I will check out her page though.

i think it’s just lots of walks for me then - at least the baby weight will come off quicker!

Yeah, I basically gave up trying and semi-adopted something I heard about called the possums method- basically you get up and out earlier and forget about trying to get them to sleep.

If it makes you feel any better mine sleeps more hours at 2 years old than he did as a newborn and since just after turning one has slept through the night and had regular reliable naps almost every day, so don't think once a bad sleeper always a bad sleeper- hopefully it will improve

Mine slept on me, or we co-slept for naps or in pushchair or car. So much easier than rocking and trying to get in a cot. Then I either got a nap myself or we got out to do things.

DS was like this, I just couldn’t get him to nap for love nor money. We did so many walks, my step count was ridiculous really!

My youngest (now 9 YO) never napped longer than about 15/20 mins at once. I put him in a sling/pushchair and cracked on with life. When he went to nursery they thought he would start napping with the others but he never did. They used to put him in the reading nook chilling instead. He always slept OK at night too - early riser but some people just are I suppose.

to start with I did whatever worked - feed until asleep whilst reading or watching tv (so I had something to do too), or wandered around with her in the carrier. She wouldn’t sleep flat anywhere so I moved to reclined pushchair naps quite quickly - as she liked to look around at things. I walked for effing miles to get her to sleep and then would scuttle home and park her up in the conservatory. Finally that stopped working and I would have to schedule trips in the car around nap time. She gave up naps entirely by 18 months, it used to drive me insane the constant trying to get her to go to sleep!!!!

Mine was exactly the same, I just muddled through. I liked to give him the opportunity to nap with a push in the buggy - sometimes it worked and sometimes not. I know other parents who'd leave it until their baby/toddler just crashed in the corner of a pub or something - not my style.

For the whole of her childhood, one of mine stuck to the mantra that sleep is for the weak, she would scream and scream. In the end for our sanity I just took the line of least resistance. I would drive round and round the local bypass until she fell asleep, then I'd pull over and have a sleep myself. But we had to accept that she just wasn't a napper. We co-slept too, breast fed for 2yrs as this was the only thing that soothed her.

This will get better in time. Is this first baby? I remember being so shocked at how much help they needed to sleep with my first after they hit the 4 month sleep regression which can happen earlier than 4 months btw.

I would just do what works. If the pram works do that, if contact naps work, do that, if you need to drive them round in the car, do that. Children can sleep anywhere, it's fine. Of course, the baby will drop the naps as they get older so it won't feel like as much hard work when it's less naps.

i have one of these babies!!! She literally refused naps for so long and would nap 15 mins and then be awake. She's had a few days where she's managed to stay awake 10 hours at a time. She's also has massive FOMO, and won't even feed out and about (breast fed). She has only started consolidating her naps the past few weeks I'd say and she's 8 months now. It's just like one day she decided she can nap. We still have the odd day of rough (or very short naps). She does like a dark quiet room to go to sleep in and isn't great at napping on the go. Rarely sleeps in the car. She does sleep with snooze shade on pram but 30 mins max and wakes if pram stops. I think some babies just need a quiet setting else they feel like they're missing out on life!
Theres also sooo much going on developmentally with them , my baby was teething for months and got about 6 teeth from 4 months to 7 months. It can all have an effect.

Oh hey I completely forgot I posted this!
yeah so I spent the first 6 months of her life either walking or driving to get her to nap. Her overnight sleep was also terrible so we sleep trained and moved her to the cot at the same time. It worked. Naps like a dream most of the time and I now have to actively wake her up. I’ll never know what did it exactly but the cot seemed to be a big winner.

shes now way too alert to ever sleep in the pram but still loves a car nap.