10 month old won't nap - have I left it too late to sort this? Help please...

[jinglesticks]

Hi - my dd is 10mo and I have always bf to sleep/pushed in pushchair for naps. I know this is rubbish and I feel like a failure because she is so bad at self-settling and I should have taught her and I haven't! (At night I bf and then wake her a bit by winding her and she does settle herself eventually, but often has a bit more bf and lots of stroking and singing, and generally I have to really help her get to sleep.)

The problem is that now I am having to cut down bf at day because I am returning to work soon the only way to get her to nap is to go for a walk with pushchair and it is wearing me out! I have to spend a couple of hours every day, whatever the weather, pushing that chair around!

Is there anything I can do to help? I really want her to have a good nap in the middle of the day because she is so knackered by bedtime. I have tried following nap routines, but you can't implement a nap routine with a baby who won't go to sleep in the first place!

Will she just learn to fall asleep herself eventually? Am I a rubbish mum to have left it so long??

Who will be looking after her when you go back to work? if its a nursery this may resolve as the kids tend to all snuggle down at the same time and get patted and sung to sleep; could start a whole new routine for you.
Or if relative or CM they will have their own ideas how to do this and it may work as you will not be there to offer the usual...
No you are not a rubbish mum, you have just coped and found a way to make it work. Its not too late.
Have you tried anyone else settling her and has that worked?

Thanks nonanny that's reassuring actually. we are hopefully using a very experienced cm so she should have some tricks up her sleeve.

No one else has ever settled her to sleep really.

I think I'm really worried about going back to work and leaving her and I'm projecting all my worries onto naps!

I had the same trouble with my ds and i solved it by using a dummy, he wouldn't take one until he was 6 months but now i put the dummy in his mouth sit next to his bed and he nods off. It took him about a week to get the hang of it though.

I totally understand. I have struggled with naps for months- dd also 10 months. She has always had short naps- sometimes ridiculously so!- and goes through stages of refusing to nap in cot, or refusing to nap altogether.

When she was about 5 months I spent a few days making her helping her to nap in her cot. But the technique I used (shush/pat basically) wouldn't work now, would just get her over-stimulated, so poss not a good suggestion for you.

However in recent weeks, more often than not she won't settle and I have to take the pram out (and I always thought all those mums with prams were just going for a nice walk!). It's a pain, esp in the cold weather.

Like you I'm worried about my dd going to the childminders in Jan. But honestly, everyone I know who has had nap issues has become much less preoccupied with it once their baby started daycare. Either the cm/nursery had a magic touch, or the mum just stopped worrying about it because they weren't bogged down in it day in, day out.

Also, I think it's a big transition time around 8-12 months in terms of naps. Lots of babies are going from 2 naps to 1 naps, or like my dd, 3 naps to 2 naps. FWIW I know loads of people whose babies don't take the mythical 2-hour-naps-in-cot. In fact I only know one baby who does!

You're certainly not a failure- I was feeling that way too but have decided not to beat myself up. My dd is happy and well looked after, that's much more important. I am also telling myself that by 2-3 years old she won't need any naps at all most likely- it's such a short time in their lives. My anguish over naps sometimes casts a shadow over my happy days with my baby, so I've resolved to lighten up!

Hi, not sure I can help but I was still bf my little girl to sleep around the same age and wanted to cut out the morning daytime feed - and replace the afternoon with a beaker.

What I did was to initially stop the morning feed - so I took her out in the car for a week where she easily slept - and then, after a disastrous day of trying to transfer her from car to cot - the next day I just waited till she was getting really tired, changed her, read her a story then hummed to her until she fell to sleep/really drowsy - then put her down and stayed with her till she was asleep. I made sure everything was calm (including me) and it was surprisingly ok. In the afternoon, I then just replaced me for a beaker of expressed milk during the story.

I think the issues were more in my head than hers, as I was also anxious. But I did just stop all bf during the day (just kept am and evening).

I am still working on the independent sleep - and still have to bf to sleep at night so I certainly don't know the answer - but don't feel like a failure, you've done nothing wrong. All babies are different and some take more time than others.