Stopping contact naps

[gds05]

My baby is almost 11 months old and he has contact napped since day 1. I’ve decided I want to stop these now so I get some time to myself and can start getting stuff done around the house.

He still feeds to sleep. I tried putting him down this morning after 10 minutes of him falling asleep on me and he woke up instantly. I’ve replicated his room to bedtime so he has his white noise machine on and his light projector but he still won’t sleep. He doesn’t particularly like being rocked either. Any suggestions?

At that age, I'd keep room pitch dark. They don't have the self control needed to sleep well with lights in the room, it just distracts them. And they're not old enough to be scared of the dark.

The only realistic answer is sleep training. Your choice what you method you go for. But the advice is to do the same for bedtime and naps.

I’d take mine on a walk in the pushchair and then just roll it into the house or leave just outside where I could see it (we live very rurally on a farm down a private lane, so not like any randoms go wandering past).

I had zero desire for a baby that was used to napping in a cot at home. I didn’t want to be stuck home all day. I had friends who would literally put the fork down mid bite if we were having lunch and run home to the cot and blackout blinds as soon as their dc started getting tired. I didn’t want that life.

Mine moved from contact naps to pushchair, car or sling naps depending what we were doing at nap time.

He will nap in a car so I’m not concerned about that, but we do spend most our time at home due to the location of where we live and no family near us. He used to nap in the pram when he was younger but won’t anymore as there’s too many distractions.

my concern is that he starts childminders soon and won’t nap there.

My son started nursery aged 2 and I was so worried as he could not fall asleep independently at all. I was always able to transfer him to the cot and he did sleep through the night but he needed a boob+rocking, and a lot of support. Because he did sleep in the cot, I had never done sleep training.

Second day at nursery I went to pick him up at 12.30 (was doing half days to settle in) and they told me he saw the other children go for a nap so he wanted one too so just lied down and went to sleep😂 little bugger went on to have 2-2.5 hour naps DAILY for another 1.5 years. Still refused to fall asleep independently at home.

So I wouldn't worry about the childminder. If anything, send them sooner so you can get a break.

I wouldn’t worry about childminders; mine never napped on her own and she was fine at nursery. What about napping on your bed or a floor bed? You could feed to sleep lying down side by side then move away. That was a game changer for us, when we switched to a floor bed at 12 months. You absolutely do not have to sleep train unless you want to. Also make sure they’re really tired for the nap - at that age I assume it’s 2 naps, you might need to keep one nap short to make sure they’re tired enough for the 2nd one.