3 month old not napping

[Agut]

Hi, here for moral support really and maybe a bit of advise. My three month old DD is impossible to put down for a nap - it's always been hard with her and we've got the dark room and white noise going on already but recently it's even more difficult. Until recently she mainly napped on me and we started introducing a cot for one nap a day and had some success with it until last week when suddenly her naps everywhere (cot, me, pram) have become 30 minutes long and that is only when I actually manage to set her down for a nap as quite frequently it's not the case.- as soon as we enter the room she becomes alert (as it she had a shot of espresso!) and we're swaying for ages in arms or rocking in a cot. On those days she will not sleep in the pram or carrier either and the only thing that is working is breastfeeding but id like to change the whole feed to sleep association. She's so tired it's heartbreaking. Any idea of what else I could try. Just going to add that we're already really trying to stick to the wake windows.

Until about 4-5 months, you do whatever you can. Breastfeed to sleep and contact nap. Around the 4 -5 months sleep regression, you can start working on routine and gentle sleep training. But until then it's just survival. They do not have the ability to self settle until their sleep cycle matures around 4-5 months. So you are not creating "bad habits" if that's what you are afraid of as they change completely around that time.

Many babies at 3 months do exactly what yours is doing. I still vividly remember spending 45 minutes to put my baby for a nap, then he would sleep 30 minutes, and then I did that 4 times a day. I lost my mind at the 3 month mark to be honest.

We did a cosleep at lunch where he was basically latched on to my boob for 1.5 hours. I used to nap with him then too to save my sanity. If I couldn't fall asleep myself, I'd stick netflix on with subtitles. I actually have some fond memories of those lunch times 😅 i watched a lot of old films i had always wanted to watch.

We sleep trained at 5 months but I'm not allowed to write on MN about that too much as people will pounce on me for being the devil. Some crying was involved but not much. I still breastfed on demand but once he could self settle he only woke 2x per night to feed.__

Are you settling her for the first nap of the morning early enough? I would start settling for the first nap after about an hour of being awake.

What length are your wake windows?

Oh I obsessed over wake windows for a while at this age. I realized what the Internet was suggesting was just a bit too short for my son. He's always needed an extra 30 minutes over what Huckleberry for example suggested, even now at 11 months. He can't do a 12 hour sleep for example, 11 hour is his ideal sleep time. And he can't sleep more than 2-2.5 hours in the day or it totally fucks up night time sleep (they recommend 3 hours at this age). So take the wake windows stuff with a pinch of salt. They're a good guide but nothing more.

This is quite a normal developmental stage where they move out of the sleepy newborn three-hour-nap phase and start having much shorter naps. I’d stick with contact napping and breastfeeding to sleep if I were you. I’d also be reluctant about trying to push cot naps at this age unless you’re staying in the room with her for the whole time as it’s not considered safe sleep practice for them to be left alone asleep before 6 months. The hardest part is having to just accept that you’re not really going to get any time to yourself without a baby attached to you for a good while yet :/. By biggest learning curve sleep-wise has been that everything is a phase which passes so quickly and you’re onto another concern that it isn’t worth spending too much time and effort perfecting a routine that will need to change again in a few weeks anyway. Best of luck!!

Yes I know, but OP mentions they're trying to stick to them and I'm wondering if they are maybe not right for her baby.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, you just jogged a memory of me frantically putting nap times into the Huckleberry app, it was so much work 😂

@TeddyRocknRoll123 Thanks! Yeah, I know it's too early for training, the idea was to encourage good habits and maybe set foundations but obviously my girl has a plan of her own 😂with feeding to sleep my only worry is that she started waking more frequently at night and apparently that can happen with strong feed to sleep association. But generally im happy for her to sleep however and wherever. About self soothing - does that just happen eventually? She's trying to suck on her hands and thumb but it only helps her at night, in the day when Im trying to put her down and she's doing all those it only makes her more unsettled

As others have said at this age just do what works. I very rarely/never succeeded in getting either of my two "down for a nap" - fed to sleep, rocked to sleep, went out for a walk with them in the sling.

I found most phases don't last long enough to warrant the time and effort it takes to try to "solve" the problem, and just went with what works at the time.

@legoplaybookyeah, I think this might have been a problem today. We were only a bit late but sometimes it makes a difference. Finding it a real challenge to make it on time sometimes. But she did go down and I shortened her subsequent window but still by now she had only 1.5 hrs nap total,

@CocoPlumdepends on how I think she is or slept for her previous nap but anything from 45 mins to 90 mins

Some unicorn babies start sleeping and self-settling on their own but from my circle of mum friends, none of the breastfed babies did that.

Mine did sleep better when he found his thumb but also needed some "encouragement" i.e. sleep training. But you can't do that for a while and not all babies are suited to it. Mine cried for a total of 20 minutes. And we did it because he was randomly self settling here and there so I realized he was ready.

I've heard babies being left to cry for an hour and I personally could not do that and I think that means they are absolutely not ready to self settle. 30 minutes wamy going to be my hard cut off (with check-ins and patting, I couldn't do full on CIO) and that may be too much for you as well. We sleep trained for naps too but once we got the bedtime sleep training done, that was easy.

He did sleep beautifully, naps included, until 7 months when he started teething, with one or two feeds in the night. Once they start teething, crawling, walking, getting sick, sleep goes to shit again. I am glad I had almost two months of sleep before all that started. 🤣

Temperament plays a huge part, babies really have personalities of their own already.

Go out in the car. Mine always slept in the car. Didn’t wake up when lifted out. But yes, trying to solve a problem usually means you have got onto the next one before you’ve got very far. I’d just go with the flow but my DDs got to 1 nap a day by 3 months. Quite a long one though and we were ok with late bedtimes. Then they slept for at least 8 hours. From around 10 weeks.

45 minutes? So less than an hour from waking, you're trying to put her down again?

I found at about 4 months, my younger one could only 2 hours from waking, and usually I'm suggesting shortening the time they're awake but honestly I'd go 90 mins - 2 hours at 3 months.

@mintgreensoftlilac thanks, that is reassuring. She's changed so many times in those three months so in my head I do know it's temporary but I'm so worried that she is so tired. We've been very gentle about cot naps. It's only one a day and only if it works. The only thing that I'd really be keen to move on from is breasring to sleep. Thought it may be good to be able to put her down using other ways (which she used to respond to) and also, not sure how long I'm going to keep breastfeeding. It was always a bit tricky for us (she's got a small tongue tie which we've not released as she's only been assessed a week ago and by then she's already been combo fed and enjoying her bottle)

Haha ok! I became a wake window militant with DS (2nd child) but only because his napping at 4 months was non existent and when I figured out when he needed to sleep, it worked like a charm ... as long as it was exactly 2 hours from waking. And it was trial and error to work out - I didn't google wake windows!

@TeddyRocknRoll123 I did the same thing 😂😂😂

@Catingle ❤️❤️❤️

@CocoPlum 45 mins is usually first in the morning or if she's not slept well