16 week old sleep help

[TiredMumma94]

Sleep help
My little one is 16 weeks old and has never been the best at napping without intervention. We did eventually manage to get him to do crib naps, but not consistently. His saving grace was always that he slept really well at night.
However, the last 4 or 5 weeks have been awful. He has meltdowns in the day, fights naps and won’t be put down for them, so I am constantly nap trapped.
Night times are now full of false starts and constant wake-ups, even though he isn’t hungry. The first long stretch of sleep was only 2 hours last night, and then it was 30-minute wake-ups.
I’ve tried putting him in his crib for him to fall asleep without me, but this has failed (he used to be able to do this at night time, but not anymore). The dummy used to really help with self settling but even that doesn’t work as well now, if he wakes the only way to settle him is by picking him up.

any advice, welcome 🫩

It’s pretty classic at this age. 4 month sleep regression / when babies actually come out the newborn stage and properly wake up. Everyone is very different but I just think you are making your life sooo difficult. 16 weeks is tiny tot! None of mine like to nap in their cot until they were over 1/on only 1 nap and honestly in the scale of things they nap for so little time honestly don’t stress where. I didn’t do many contact naps because I have the inability to stay at home and also have more than one child but all their naps were done in the pram, car or carrier for their first year of life. If they sleep well in the pram and you don’t want to go out you can just rock them to sleep in the house. Otherwise baby wearing is great, especially at that age when they don’t weigh much and you can just potter around and get stuff done while they sleep.
Again for nighttime sleep I wouldn’t worry about independent sleep at this age or worry about them not being hungry. Feed to/back to sleep if it’s the easiest way to do it. Make your life easy!! I also coslept part of the night with mine until they were about 10 months ish and sleeping better otherwise I would be a zombie then they were starting to do more reliable stretches until they started sleeping through around 16-18 months.

Is this your first baby? If so, ride it out in whatever way possible is my advice.

My first was a god awful sleeper from the get go, and I tortured myself looking for a reason and solution. I just wish I had relaxed more, and gone with the flow that baby dictates.

It honestly won't be like this forever. Baby is still very tiny. Make sure your partner is helping as much as possible, and take turns at getting rest. In the blink of an eye this phase will be over.

All I can say is that I went through the exact same and it really is awful but I promise it does pass you just have to survive it for now and keep trying like you are. Ask for help, ask friends family etc to come round and watch baby or take them for a walk so you can nap!

Sadly he doesn’t drift off in the car or the pram! He just gets more cranky and over tired until he has a meltdown. The carrier is a godsend and I do use that a lot and will continue to do so. I had to co sleep last night for my own sanity so maybe I’ll just keep doing that when needs be, going forward. Just hope this phase is over soon 😩

You've hit that sleep regression, good luck! Lower your expectations. Much of the stress I felt was I thought they "should" be sleeping more. They're fine, they get plenty of opportunity to sleep, you don't.
All I could do was making them as tired as possible during the day, be out and about, lots of sunshine and exercise. It works for adults too!

Classic sleep regression. Just use the carrier or whatever works. I’d also not put baby to bed until you go to bed, so their longest stretch aligns with you. If cosleeping works and you can do it safely as possible; do that: got me hours and hours more sleep. Mine didn’t nap independently til over 12 months.