Hell before naps!

[EgonSpengler]

Hi there,

Our DD is 4 and a half months old and during the past week or so she has been going mental before naps. She stays awake for 2 hours before going down for an hour - this is generally the pattern for the day. Her bedtime is 9pm and she sleeps until 8am or thereabouts.

She used to go down for naps relatively easily, but recently it takes an hour of screaming before having an hour long nap. I've tried putting her down earlier, but it doesn't seem to help. Consequently I spend the day being shouted at, which makes me have a very short fuse by the end of the day.

Any advice kindly accepted!

Ex

I have this. DD loses it when tired. I would put her down before 2 hours, as soon as you see her getting grisly. If I don't do this she becomes a 'sleep fighter' and works herself up terribly. Also can you try getting her into bed earlier in the eve? This has helped us avoid very grumpy early eve's if you have this? (7pm is what we aim for we used to be 10-11pm until she was 12 weeks and napping after every 2 hours awake as you say)

Also I wonder if naps start to change at this age (my dd is 17 wks) because I've done 3, 2 hour naps until recently and I can see we are transitioning, to different lengths, longer morning and lunch, short afternoon not too long before going down for the night.

Hi there,

Many thanks for that! We've just started putting her down after 1 and a half hours now and whilst there's still a bit of a fight (she should have gone down at 11.30am, so we put her down at 11am but she's just fallen asleep at 12pm) it's working. Taking an hour to get to sleep is still exhausting for us though!

Definitely going to try and out her down earlier tonight as currently we baby wrangle between 7pm and 10pm which is stressful and leaves my DH and I with no time together apart from when we're asleep - definitely not quality time!

Yes, I think you might be right - as of about a week ago everything seems to be up in the air again.

We're starting a new 'regime' as of tomorrow which will involve us getting her up at 7am in the hope that she will go to bed earlier.

Fingers crossed! xx

my 3mo dd has always had a good hard cry before every sleep, regardless of whether in the cot/buggy/car/sling/rocked in arms.

we have mostly got this down to a manageable 5-10mins with a rock-solid nap routine.I don't mean times (we are all over the place) but we go upstairs, sit in the same car, wrapped in the same blanket, look at the same book, sing the same songs until she drifts. there is often a 5 or 10 minute protest but that's nothing compared to the 20-30 minute screams we endured before.

That's really good to know Charlotte. Yes, she goes seems to need to go mental before going to sleep regardless.

I shall try a more solid routine - that may well help. It generally involves anything from me reading a story to playing the guitar at the moment (not that I can play - it's just me twanging, but it seems to stop her screaming!).

Thanks! xx