Baby fighting sleep!

[lovingpickles]

My 12 week old DS really fights sleep when he is clearly tired (yawning, rubbing eyes, etc). He sometimes cries for over 30 mins and we only manage to get him to sleep by rocking him for ages or taking him for a walk. This happens at every sleep time but is particularly bad in the evenings when he is most tired (we have a good bedtime routine - bottle, bath, but then bed is always a fight!)

Is there anything we can do to get him to sleep without all the drama and stress??

Are you putting him down to sleep soon enough?

I found that if I missed a very small window to put my DS down, then all hell broke loose. As a general rule, he would only stay awake for about 2 hours at a time so from 1.5 hours, if he yawned and rubbed his eyes he was settled in his bed straight away.

I hope things start to improve.

Definitely sounds overtired - as if you're leaving it too late to put him down. We had exactly the same problem with DS (now 15 weeks).

When he shows those tired signs he may have already gone past the 'tired' window. After he's been awake 1 - 1.5 hours, start trying to soothe him to sleep (rocking, taking for a walk etc). Some babies need sucking (breast, bottle, dummy, your finger) in order to get properly drowsy.

He might also benefit from an earlier bedtime and more naps during the day. The more overtired babies get, the less easy they find it to go to sleep and to stay asleep, so the worse the problem gets.

You would probably find it useful to read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth which explains why babies get like this and how to help them. I'm not in favour of his preference for the 'cry it out' method of sleep training but I found the book really helpful in understanding babies' sleep and how to help them. (It's a bit of a mammoth read, and not very well organised, but definitely worth looking at IMO.)

HTH

I agree, DD1 is 14wks and started the same thing 3wks ago. I now start putting her to bed straight after her bottle BEFORE she even looks tired, if i miss this small window it takes 30-40 mins to settle her!

We got this advice when DS was tiny and I honestly wish I'd taken it a bit more seriously than I did - I eventually 'got' putting him down at the first or second yawn, and managed to get over the guilt of seeing and hearing my happy baby gurgle away for half an hour or so and me not paying him attention but then he'd go to sleep happily on his own.

I also gave him a dummy (pre-baby none of my children would have dummies)...we've been strict with it though and he only has it for bedtime now at 18mo and it has literally saved my life