Please help! Grandparents do not understand our 'obsession' with DD's sleep

[Dreemagurl]

Our DD (7.5 months) has never been a great sleeper. One of those hyper alert, easily stimulated babies :) She's very active - crawling already - and as a result tires quite easily and can only do 2 hours awake time max (often less). My mum and MIL do not understand why we appear to be constantly putting her to sleep! We use White noise and a snooze shade in the buggy to help her sleep as she does not sleep without them and are having massive arguments with said grandparents about the necessity of these 'props'. MIL has even gone so far as to say we are damaging DD's hearing with the White noise! I am desperately looking for some solid fact based information I can throw in their faces about babies' nap requirements and how things like the snooze shade and white noise will help. Please help! It sounds silly but it's starting to seriously damage the relationship with our parents as they just don't understand! TIA

I haven't read through the responses beyond the first page, but I just wanted to let you know I have some understanding of what you are going through.

It is insulting when people say things like 'if they are tired, they will sleep'. If only it were that simple. My baby was a nightmare napper and even still will not nap unless she is pushed in that direction with a dark room etc. It is just the way she is.

My daughter is 9 months and she has 2 naps a day. Given that your baby only sleeps for 30 mins during a nap, I think you are quite right that she will need to sleep every 2 hours as she is probably never getting a deep sleep during the day.

We used a snooze shade too as otherwise my daughter, no matter how tired (red, rubbing eyes) would not fall asleep as there was just toooooooo much to look at.

So, I probably am not adding anything helpful, but just wanted to let you know you are not alone and you are being a good mum by ensuring your baby gets the sleep she needs. My guess is that people who don't have a baby that gets overtired easily have no fecking idea what it can be like dealing with a screaming tired mess and so it is very easy to become (what seems like to other people) 'obsessed' with sleeps.

And other thing, my 9 month old needs to be settled for a nap within 2 hours of getting up in the morning and she naps then for an hour to 2 hours. SO, I see nothing wrong with trying to get your baby settled an hour and a half after getting up....

Ds2 was another one who woldn't nap for more than 30 mins at a time till he was about 9 mths and needed to sleep every 2 hrs. You are doing nothing wrong. There are loads of good ideas on this thread worth a go. Things WILL improve regardless over time.

I totally sympathise though as ds2 is a poor sleeper and it does make you become obsessed.

My MIL is very opinionated about my child-rearing methods and it can get to you. Just smile and nod and do your own thing. You get better help here than anywhere anyway.

Thank you so much for your responses, it means so much to know that I'm not the only one and I'm not going mad thinking my DD needs to sleep! It is really annoying when people say 'she'll sleep when she's tired' as she just won't! Having found an article that explained about baby's sleep and why they need naps so often during the day, and about the classic signs of overtiredness (which my DD constantly exhibits!) both sets of GPs completely missed the point and started arguing that the person who wrote the article didn't have any medical credentials and therefore couldn't be trusted. Having to bite my lip to remind them that none of them have medical credentials either!

But thank you all again :)

trust your instincts. I am glad I did and went with the amount of naps etc I thought my baby needed, despite the grandparents thinking otherwise. They would comment on what a content baby she was, so I would make a point of frequently responding with 'yes, that is because she gets enough sleep'. Eventually it sunk in and they shut up.

as everyone else has said:

get rid of white noise
give her to gp's for a while to 'fix' her. hahahah. they'll soon be asking you what that routine was again.

follow your instincts. you know your dd best.

Hi Dreema, I have only skimmed the thread so apologies if someone else has posted this link, but DS used to do short naps and I REALLY obsessed about it, and I got really pissed of about people/family nipping at me about it!

I liked this site as it reassured me about how much sleep they often do need.

(FWIW, DS is 19mo now and the Best Sleeper ever. Seriously. 2hr nap in the day, sleeps 7-7.30am, sometimes more. Self-settles if he wakes and cheeps in the night. Bliss . I give myself full credit for this because I worked so blardy hard to protect his sleep when he was tiny )

Hi Dreema, we spoke a bit on my nightweaning thread a couple of months ago but I may have name changed since then. It sounds like your night time sleep is better than it was then? DD is the same age and still has 3 40 min naps in the day at 9ish, 12 ish and 3 ish. If I try to keep her up longer than 2 hours she ends up napping for 20 mins! Actually lately she has napped for ages nearly 2 hours or 20 mins some days even when out down after 2 hours looking exhausted so I wonder if she wants drop a nap. Maybe I need to keep her up for a few days and she would start taking 2 longer naps. She sleeps 12/13 hours at night (when not teething) so I am reluctant to rock the boat really. We also use a music box which I think maybe I need to wean her off in case she is waking after one sleep cycle because she needs the music to transistion to the next. Gah, I don't know but will be watching with interest.

Thanks mistressploppy that definitely gives me hope. Well done you!

I guess the only thing that worries me about leaving her with GPs is that they'll not let her nap during the day and hand me back an overtired screaming mess which will then take a couple of days to sort. But then maybe that's what they need to see...

Thanks all of you again!

Dialsmavis our DDs sound very similar! Yesterday we buckled under the pressure from GPs and kept her up longer and as a consequence she only slept for 20 mins (after taking 40 to settle!!) Definitely at your night sleep though....

Think it's one of those things that we've got to ride out as best we can - someone posted above to say that some babies just aren't developmentally ready to take longer naps which makes me feel a bit better!

If she's only sleeping 30 minutes at a time then of course she will need to nap frequently! It's how to make the naps longer that is the problem

My ds was similar, he was a 45 minute napper and had 3 naps a day at 7 months. I initially tried something from the No Cry Sleep Solution book where you go in after 40 minutes and pat/shush them back to sleep as soon as they stir so they go into a second sleep cycle - the idea is eventually they learn to get into that second cycle themselves. Did this for months - didn't work.

But, ds did need at least one long nap a day. I would let him sleep 45 minutes for his first nap (say, 9.45-10.30) and then for his second nap I would either go to bed with him and feed him to sleep, and then stick a nipple in his mouth everytime he stirred, or put him to bed in his cot but feed him back to sleep after 45 minutes, or take him out in the sling/pram for two hours. So then ideally we'd get another nap 1.30-3.30ish. If the long nap didn't work he'd need another catnap later.

One day at 7 months he suddenly started sleeping for 2+ hours on his own. It was nothing I did - partly I think it was that he found he could sleep on his tummy and was more comfy. Now at 10 months I often have to wake him from his nap

Rita, of course, how could I forget - with both of mine tummy sleeping made the difference. Try it, OP, if you are comfortable with it. They sleep much better.

Yes tummy sleeping here made the difference for us, especially at night time. DS rolled into his front one night just before 6 months and slept until I woke him at 3am one night (had to feed as boobs were in agony). At 20 months he's always slept on his front since then.

This may be a good time to have her napping in a cot, so she can find her own position, instead of the buggy.

If she is only napping ofr 30 mins at a time then she is never getting into deep sleep (which happens after about 40 mins) and so the naps are not doing her very much good. The naps need to be longer and fewer of them, so work at entending hte length of the nap.

The GP efforts with not letting her nap at all are equally wrong. At this age DD had a 1.5 hr nap in the morning and a 2 hour in the afternoon, they do need a couple of nice long naps.

Often babies wake up at 30-40 mins after they went to sleep and fret a bit, this is the point where they need help to get into deep sleep rather than be woken up again, so concentrate the efforts on getting her to drop into deep sleep rather than picking her up at 30 mins after she fell asleep

She is already a tummy sleeper.... Once she started rolling at 4 months she found her own sleeping position - usually face down horizontally across the cot with her bum in the air :o Her second gave is curled on her side cuddling her bunny. Have to say I haven't noticed much difference in her sleep depending on position though :( She does now nap in her cot most of the time now - have become a bit of a hermit as her short awake times are very restrictive and she now just doesn't sleep as well in her buggy as in her cot. Today we're trying 2.5 hours awake to see if it makes her sleep longer. She had 25 mins at 9 so going to see if she can have a longer lunchtime nap. The problem with the resettling at 40 min mark is that she tends to go from being asleep to wide awake, and if I go in there she gets incredibly excited and wants to play. No chance of getting her back down. Even long walks in buggy she won't sleep longer - even with the props! Not trying to negate all your suggestions - good ones! - but we have tried quite a lot of things. Have turned the White noise down lower and will do this in increments until it's gone... But worried this too will have an adverse effect on her sleep. (we keep it going the whole time she's asleep). I'm not sure how to 'teach' her to sleep through noise (we live in a very noisy neighbourhood) - I'm 28 years old and I haven't learned how to!

Anyway will see how the lunchtime nap goes today. :)

Have you tried pick-up/put-down at all? I found it useful as a gentler alternative to CC.

Good luck Dreema girl. Yesterday due to having a few errands to do after school run DD didn't get her nap until she had been awake nearlt 2.5 hours and she slept for 1.5 hours. She had a lay in this morning so I kept her up again and I am hoping to do two longer naps. But that all depends on whether she has other ideas! It is so lovely out today I am not waiting in all day so we shall see. She has currently been alseep almost 40 mins. Yesterday after the long 1st nap she had 40 mins after lunch then didn't drop off while I was out late afternoon and went to bed exhausted at 6.30pm so I think with her she will only have a certain amount of sleep per day. Selfishly I would get much more done if I could get it to two longer naps

Dreemagurl, I really feel for you and wanted to offer a few words of support. It will probably turn into a bit of a rant so apologies in advance.

I have one of these super-alert, wakeful, active babies and it is utterly exhausting. He is 8.5 months old now and it's only now that we've been able to relax slightly on the whole sleep thing.

People who say "Just let them fall asleep when they're tired" have not experienced looking after a baby like this. They have not had to pace up and down in a darkened room with a screaming, writhing baby because they 'missed the window' to get them down for a nap. They haven't had to push a pram round rainy streets for hours at a time, dog-tired themselves because they've been woken every couple of hours at night, looking down at a bug-eyed, wired baby that won't fall asleep. They haven't sat in a traffic jam hearing their baby scream and scream because they couldn't fall asleep in the car. They haven't had to deal with a screaming overtired mess, as you describe it, at friends' houses or our shopping or whatever, and felt utterly powerless because the baby just won't switch off. It sounds a bit over-dramatic but I have been through all these things and it is so wearing.

Very few babies are like this. Not sure if you've read the Marc Weissbluth book but he describes them as having 'extreme fussiness' and the percentage of babies with this temperament is really small. This is another reason why it is hard for people to understand. We've had all the comments about being 'obsessed', 'over-protective', "Oh, this must be your first baby", "Gosh, you've got such a strict routine, why don't you relax a little?" No, we were not routine-obsessed. We weren't spending hours every day trying to get DS to sleep for shits and giggles. We just wanted to have a happy baby that didn't scream the place down.

At about 10 weeks my DS stopped feeding to sleep (except in the middle of the night). He didn't sleep reliably in the pram until he was 5 or 6 months old; same with the car. He would sleep in a sling but only outdoors and only with traffic noise - so I couldn't go for a nice walk in the park with him, I had to walk along our (rather unattractive) local high street so that the roar of the traffic would lull him to sleep. At 15 weeks he started waking every 1-2 hours at night. We tried everything. We even enlisted a sleep consultant who basically threw in the towel after a month of trying to figure out why he wouldn't sleep.

At 7 months he needed to nap every couple of hours too. I would ignore any comments along the lines of "babies this age need this or that". I have found with DS that the conventional wisdom just does not apply to him. He has always been slightly behind in terms of sleep routines etc. For months he could only be awake for an hour and a half at a time. He couldn't be awake for two hours at a time until he was at least 6 months - it was only then that he could cope with the sleep routines that friends' babies had been on since they were newborns. We swaddled him until he was six and a half months old because his flailing arms would keep him awake.

I totally identify with what you say about becoming a hermit. For several months I had to organise everything around DS's naps. I couldn't just go out when I wanted, or spend the day at friends' houses. I was constantly fretting about how I was going to get him to sleep. For a while I pretty much stopped going out, and withdrew from my NCT group etc. I ended up with PND from the isolation and the exhaustion (his night time sleep is rubbish too) and am only really coming out of that now after a course of counselling.

At 8.5 months he is still usually having 3 naps a day. He has his first nap 2 hours after waking - latest. If not, he's overtired and hard to settle. But he can sometimes manage 3 hours' awake time after that. He also still sleeps with white noise on in the background. It drowns out any noise from the house - he is a very light sleeper.

But things have suddenly got better on their own. He will now sometimes have a long nap in the morning - up to an hour and 45 mins. Not every day, but a few times a week. He never sleeps for longer than 50-60 minutes after midday, but the longer morning nap is great when it happens. He is much better at falling asleep in the car and pram - he fell asleep on a bus yesterday Around 8 months he suddenly started sleeping longer stretches at night with very little intervention from us. His daytime naps seem to have very little influence on his night time sleep - he only catnapped in the pram yesterday because I was out, but slept from 8pm until 3am, then 3.30 until 6 - an amazing night for us.

Sorry for the essay - I just wanted to let you know you are not alone. I think for some babies, sleep is developmental and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it except wait it out. I wouldn't worry about the white noise - why is it a problem? We went on holiday last week and took an ipod dock so we could play it at bedtime - it's just another sleep cue, a way of saying, "it's sleepy time now". What's wrong with that? Some people use nursery rhymes, for DS it's wave sounds. Don't worry about it.

I've heard on here, and from friends with similar babies, that they can sometimes behave very differently with other carers - nannies, CMs etc. So you may find that with your DD. Which will probably make you very because the GPs will be all smug about it but as long as she sleeps and is happy, who cares? I'd let them get on with it, and just say, "Well, see what works for you, but I'll leave you with this white noise machine/snooze shade just in case". They'll soon see what you mean when the pressure's on them!

All the best and sorry again for going on so much ...

Oh CountBapula I think I love you. You have just described my life! She just had 45 mins for her lunchtime nap which is good for her. Tried to resettle but no joy. She was grumpy and could have done with longer but don't know how I could have got her back to sleep!

What a great post Count, My best friends husband (1st DC due in a couple of weeks) always says they will sleep when they are tired Dials, chill out. We won't let our one rule our lives etc. Whenever he said it, I wish on them (just for a second) that they get a non sleeper . It doesn't help that best friend now thinks that "childbirth doesn't have to hurt, it is all about your attitude" mwah hahahahahah! DDs morning nap was 50 mins ths morning and I am taking her out for a walk so not sure when she wil fall asleep this afternoon.

Ha ha Dials, that's hilarious!

It is so hard to imagine if you haven't been through it, though. Now that DS is so much easier to settle and falling asleep in the pram/car/bus etc, I'm enjoying being able to go with the flow a bit more. He's started falling asleep at the boob again just in the last couple of weeks, so sometimes when I can't face the whole cot nap routine (we still rock him to sleep, though thankfully it only takes 5 minutes and he rarely cries) I give him a feed when he's tired and let him snooze on my lap while I watch 60 Minute Makeover gaze at him adoringly I said to DH last week, "Imagine if he'd been like this all along!" and then I realised that's how most babies are and that's probably why people thought we were quite mad spending all that time and effort getting him to sleep.

I should also add that when he is well rested, which is most of the time now because he's so much easier to settle, DS is an utter joy - smiley, gurgly, rarely cries, curious about everything and clambering all over the place. He still has that slightly hectic thing going on, but it's endearing and cute as hell. People often remark on what a lovely, sunny temperament he has, which makes me laugh, because for the first few months he was really very grumpy and screamy indeed. It won't be forever, so hang in there.

well said!

Dreemagurl, was going to post in support but seems count has pretty much written what I would say (except more eloquently!). My DS is 8 months and I am obsessed with his daytime naps and keeping his bedtime even though it doesn't make much difference. I'm sure everyone has meant well in offering advice and maybe some it will help but it's so hard when you have a baby that is never sleeping. A friend recently told me that she was worried about her DS not being put down for naps at the right time in nursery and how it meant he just fell asleep while playing later and it made me realise that there is another world out there when it comes to babies sleeping.
I also recently heard of a someone with twins and one sleeps like a dream and the other is a sleep nightmare so please don't feel bad and like you are doing it all wrong - I'm sure you know your DD better than anyone now and what is right for her.
I'm not sure if I've come across any material that can help you convince the grandparents but I think the NCSS and some other sleep training people advocate getting your baby to nap however you can as this helps the nighttime sleep. I've just started with a sleep consultant and she said we'd probably be able to settle DS more easily at night than at naps to begin with as that is the way around they tend to resolve themselves. Hope it all goes ok.

Don't worry- you're doing a grand job. DS only dropped his 3rd nap of the day recently at 9 months!! He also is an extremely active baby who literally doesn't stop from the minute he wakes- he needed a nap every 2 hours until recently too, and we have the same problem with him getting overtired very quickly and if this happens he won't settle. Ignore anyone else, you know your baby best.