4-month-old won't nap

[FortunateHamster]

What do you do when your baby just seriously won't nap?

I am desperate for some 'me' time. This must sound selfish but I just mean half an hour of nap so I can eat, tidy up, do some essential online stuff (job hunting, freelance, christmas bits), breathe and think.

I've tried putting him down just after his first feed, the first time I see a yawn, after he's been awake for two hours, after a feed, after some play, etc, and none of it makes a difference any more. I've stayed in the room, gone out the room, sung songs to him, given him a toy to play with, a muslin, put him in a gro-bag, out of one.

He has napped in the past but the 'routine' tended to get disrupted at weekends or by visitors or whatever. Now he won't at all :(.

Even a walk in the pram doesn't really work. Went out for two hours yesterday. He slept for about ten mins in the middle of it.

I have slings but it's 50/50 as to whether he will sleep and neither the pram or sling are brilliant solutions as he tends to wake the moment we get home and I don't want to go out for every nap.

He does fall asleep in the car but I don't drive and don't want to rely on it anyway.

He doesn't fall asleep on me unless it's during a feed (breastfed). This in itself is a big problem as I can't seem to master forcing him to stay awake without disrupting the feed altogether. But even when he doesn't sleep on the boob he won't nap later!

And yes I always make sure he's not hungry and has a clean nappy.

Sorry if I sound grumpy here, am just trying to get stuff across quickly before he starts crying again :(

Last night he refused to go to sleep at bedtime either (one of the few bits of routine we do have) and so only got eight hours sleep. Won't it be doing him damage to get so little sleep?

When he is not overtired he is a very happy little baby and I am confident that he's not ill. He is teething but can't see any teeth that are imminent and it terrifies me to think this could go on for months and months.

Any ideas? /desperate

I had one of those, exactly as you describe! Just would not nap apart from on the breast.

I found when she was small (ie about your son's age) that if we did something more stimulating then it would tire her out, and then she would nap in the car/ buggy on the way home. So things like a parent and baby group, story or rhyme sessions at the library, even sometimes shopping at the supermarket she would be tired afterwards. It would be on the way home she would nap though, it's true, and she would often wake up when we got home - however I could usually manage to sneak into a cafe or something and have a coffee and cake and some short time to myself before she woke up.

I sympathise, it is rubbish having a child who won't nap (don't want to scare you, but mine never really got the hang of it - although she is a v good sleeper at night now)

Sounds familiar. I have hardly ever been able to put 4 month old DS 'down' for a nap, but luckily he will sleep in either the pushchair, car or sling (as long as you don't stop), plus he will sleep on me at the end of a feed, so I just engineer at least two naps a day that way. I wasn't quite sure what you meant about him falling asleep on you when breastfeeding - does he do this? If so, maybe try getting everything you need around you - glass of water, cup of tea, laptop, lights switched on - and just let him sleep on you. Good excuse to put your feet up. I have been trying really hard in the last couple of weeks to get him to nap and it is helping his nighttime sleep, I think,

Do you have a bouncy/vibrating chair?
Ds had ALL his naps in this till he was about 6 months. It was a life saver!

Of course you are in the middle of the notorious 4 month sleep regression anyway so need to remember that this is probably quite normal!!
I have a baby the same age who has been a great sleeper until a couple of weeks ago so sympathies... I have not got the answers I'm afraid, except to second the advice about something stimulating often helping a nap.

The other thing is to try Calpol/ granules or something similar if you think he is in pain, this helped my baby when she was really grizzly in the day but could not get to sleep- think it just took the edge of the pain so she could relax a little.

Also some days are better than others so make the best of the good days and they will get more frequent... or so they tell me!

How about trying a dummy?- was the only way I could move mine away from breastfeeding to sleep.

Thanks everyone for their posts :)

He does sometimes fall asleep at the end of a walk etc but ideally (and I know a lot of people are in this situation and just put up) I would like to get him to nap without me having to be pushing a pram/wearing a sling/wearing him so that I can do something, anything, around the house.

Sometimes I think 'let him sleep on the breast at least he's getting some rest' and sometimes I think letting him sleep that way is teaching him bad habits.

He never sleeps in his bouncy chair, not sure why as I know plenty of other babies do!

I've tried Calpol occasionally as he is teething but it doesn't seem to do much.

He hates dummies and just spits them out with a disgusted look on his face! :o

All I can think is that it's the four month sleep regression as grumpypumpkin says. After not sleeping today at all he then wouldn't go to bed either, when in the past regardless of daytime napping he's always been a reasonable sleeper at night. But this past week he hasn't been good at either. I'm finding it hard to cope with because if I got a good night's sleep/some time in the evening then I was always better prepared to deal with the daytime, whereas now I feel a bit overstretched whether it's day or night.

Ah well. Must tell myself 'this too shall pass'.

I am currently sat MNing on the bed in my baby's room as I lisen to her grumbling away while I try not to pick her up!
She is looking me right in the eye even though I am trying to pretend I am not here!

This seems to be a way of me relaxing while promoting her settling herself, with a quick, quiet exit stage left as soon as she looks a bit settled.
Lets hope we get a bit of snooze time soon

Hope it got better @FortunateHamster.

This is my life atm- I am bloody exhausted. And so is baby- he's the only child I know with visible dark circles under his eyes :/ living in hope things will improve after the 4 month sleep regression stage.

massive sympathies @verytireddontknowwhattodo

Gosh this post was a long time ago, I've namechanged back to respond :)

It did get easier - I PROMISE you life does get easier. He definitely got better at sleeping at night though I seem to recall starting cosleeping at about a year and after that we'd just let him climb into bed when he woke up. It gets easier because they need fewer naps anyway which makes you stress less, and because it becomes easier to do stuff around them as they grow up month by month. Even if they are poor nappers, sleep throughout the night will eventually turn into longer periods, so you will get that me time, I PROMISE.

In my case, he never needed a lot of naps but he went to nursery at 8 months (argh feel sad about that but it was needs must and part time) and they could magically get him to sleep every day just by stroking his back as he lay on a mat! He ended up having about one big nap a day, with me usually after a walk, but when my husband had him one working day a week he would just nap on the couch.

Now my son is eight... he still has a lot of sleep problems. I won't go into it too much as I'm sure it won't happen to you. But I do believe some kids don't need a lot of sleep OR have issues from birth that aren't as simple as how the parent deals with them. The techniques my friends used (like 'just put them down when tired') never would've worked for me. a) I don't think my son needs a lot of sleep and b) he's still bad at getting to sleep in the first place but was born that way. If I left him to his own devices he would only sleep about 7 hours and yes, still wake up with very dark circles under his eyes. He gets about 10 hours these days on a good day.