does your DC cry/scream at naptime?

[curlyLJ]

I can't seem to get DD (almost 5 months) to go down without a fight. This afternoon i gave up after 40 mins of her screaming/crying and generally fighting her nap. I ended up getting annoyed with her (which i am not proud of ) and in the end took her for a drive, which worked a treat.

Thing is i can't go for drives at every single nap time... She was going down OK recently (with lots of patting/shushing, but now this doesn't seem to be working) and she wont really feed to sleep either - she wakes as soon as i take her off my nipple and screams if i try to put her down or rock her. She can't self-settle yet and is too young to sleep-train. She is OK at bedtime, generally.

I am nearing the end of my tether.
DH thinks i spend far too much of my time trying to get her to sleep and that i should just go with the flow (he believes she will nap when she is tired enough and he doesn't understand about over-tiredness), but if she doesn't nap, she is miserable! Yesterday she missed her late nap (I gave up then too!) and she was so hard to put to bed last night - I was in and out countless times trying to re-settle her.

She is teething at the moment - could that be making a difference to her going down?
Do others have the same problems? Do your DCs go down without crying - if so, how?

Thanks in advance!

Mine always cries but settle quickly but from young ages I have been 95% consistent in their bedtime routine ie the sleep cues (the same times every day give or take 15 mins or so, the steps I go through to getting them into bed and asleep, comfort fromcotside (not a believer in cc myself) until sleep achieved)and depending on dc age this has taken 3 to 7 days plus to teach. Teething will undoubtably make a difference but dc1 didn't start teething until 1 year and by then sleep patterns were established.

I think yup sound v sensible. My dh never got the importance of skip and that you have to teach them. Or at least didn't but now admits actually he just could't be bothered with baby stuff

Ps ifollowedbaby whisperer if that helps. Iknow some people don't like her but really, she saved my sanity big style!

Curly, sorry to hear you're still having a rough time.

I've found that my DS does hit what I call nap-resistant spells, when it's much harder to get him to sleep. I think teething does have an effect, and developmental stuff does affect some babies' sleep a lot (DS's naps went to pot when he was learning to roll, sit etc).

Does she cry when you're feeding her? Do you think she might be a baby who needs to cry to release tension? (see here for more on this).

Are you following her tired signs, or going by the clock, or by how long it is after she last woke up? I've found that my DS's tired signs have become less & less reliable with time. Now (7 months though, so a bit older), I'm getting him to nap entirely by the clock whilst ignoring any tired signs (or lack of) and it is so much easier.

If she does miss a nap, particularly the late one, you may find that putting her to bed earlier than usual helps.

It's not much consolation now, but the problem of overtiredness at bedtime seems to have really improved here. DS can miss his last nap and be in bed really late and still go down really quickly, whereas before it would take forever to settle him at bedtime if he were overtired.

Her naps just seem to be as all over the place as her nighttime sleep at the moment tbh AngelDog.

Yesterday she was point-blank refusing to be fed to sleep and was a nightmare - I just about managed to get her to have 2 30 min naps. Today on the other had, she has had a 40 min nap this morning, and has just woken up from a nearly 2 hr nap where did that come from?? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she has napped for longer than an hour!!!

I sometimes go by tired signs (like today) other days I have gone by the clock. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when she fights it and when she goes down easily. In actual fact, it was 3 hours between wake up and nap 1 and another 3 hours between nap 1 and 2. She'll now be Ok 'til bedtime I expect. Maybe she just needs less sleep than most 5 month olds

We are off on holiday tomorrow, so can guarantee it's all going to go haywire anyway, so will work on naps again when I get back....

My DS is 11 months and for the first eight or nine he screamed before every nap. It was almost a point of honour with him not to go down without a fight. He grew out of that. Now he goes to sleep much more quickly and without needing to scream for ages.

Still a rubbish sleeper, though. :(

My DS is 5 months and while he's in a regular nap routine (45 mins at 9ish, 1.5-2 hours at midday, 30 mins around 4) we usually have to fight to get him to sleep. For the morning and afternoon naps I often just take him out for 5 minutes in the pushchair to get him to sleep as I can't be bothered with all the crying. But at lunchtime, he will cry for anything up to 45 minutes before finally dropping off! He's starting creche next week, and I'm really not holding out much hope for him napping there....

He does thankfully sleep well at night - down at 7.30, up at 6.30am, with one feed somewhere around 1-3, after which he usually goes back to sleep OK.