daytime naps - any suggestions

[dandycandyjellybean]

My ds at 9wks is sleeping through from his dream feed at 10 often until 5 or 6 in the morning, hence no complaints there. However, it is a massive battle to get him to have any sleep in the day at all. When he starts to grizzle after anything from an hour to two hours contented wake time after a feed, he begins to grizzle and so I swaddle him and attempt to get him to sleep (shushing, rocking etc) however, this just makes him absolutely howl, red in the face screaming! (he has always fought sleep, and I have resorted to feeding him to sleep at night, which works a treat). Yesterday, in desperation, I put him in his moses basket and left him to it. He did calm down a bit after about 10 minutes, and I went in and picked him up and he dropped off almost immediately. He had a couple more naps yesterday, and slept better than ever because of it and was much more settled and content during his waking times. However, he's been up there nearly 15 minutes now with no sign of it calming down, and it's absolutely killing me. It is so obvious that he needs the naps, but he seems to hate going off to sleep so much - what can i do?

forgot to mention that any naps he did have yesterday were in my arms. If I put him down he just immediately wakes up.

Have you tried taking him out in a pram. Maybe he will drop off to sleep and you can wheel him and the pram back into house to continue his nap.

my dd is abit similar to that, not to that extent but is a struggle to get her to sleep in the day. shes crying because she is tired but the crying is keeping her awake. when it got too much i used to leave her in the moses basket, go outside and shut the door and stay there for at least 10 minutes. i think i did the pick up, put down method.

We had this with DD at this age - there are old threads to testify to this. Will he sleep in his buggy if you rock it? Or in a swing or bouncer. I found that for a while I used to have to actively force DD to sleep at nap times, but at about 12 weeks I started to put her down for her morning nap in her cot. I did need to leave her to cry for a bit, and if it was too long, or she was too upset, I would give up and rock her to sleep. Once she was settling for one nap, I went for the lunchtime one too. Try not to stress too much about it (hard I know). I also found that she wouldn't settle for long naps, half hour to 45 mins max, so we ended up with 2 morning naps, a late lunchtime nap and a mid afternoon one for a while.

Its also worth trying to settle them before they get to the grizzling stage. With DD, the minute I saw a yawn or eye rub, I used to try and get her in her cot asap afterwards, which seemed to help.

Good luck!

Just wanted to let you know how things were going - after your kind messages here, and then searching the archives, i realised that ds is just at an age where he is very easily overstimlated, hence overtired, and given that the first thing that everyone says about him is 'oh isn't he alert' I guess it applies in spades to ds. There was an old thread that I found, where everyone seemed to have the same problem, particularly that rocking and shushing all of a sudden stopped working and seemed to make them worse - just like my ds!!! My husband has this tactic, when i'm frazzled and can't do anymore he takes ds off to the front room and puts some very loud reggae on, but then just supports ds's bottom and his head and holding him totally away from his body, just gently moves him up and down. (Dh is disabled and uses crutches, hence his arms and shoulders are strong I can't do this for very long it totally knackers my back / shoulders). As soon as I took over, and snuggled him close, he started to scream again, it's as if he can't stand any contact at all - all seeming to point to the over stimulation thing. Anyway, i've also got him booked into an osteopaths who specialise in babies, so i'll let you know how we get on. Anyway, as long as dh gets him to sleep, and I hold him for the duration of his nap, we are now getting him to have some good naps in the day. Hopefully, as things progress, I can move to getting him to have long naps independantly (although atm, I'm quite grateful for the long sitdown !!!).

Glad to hear you have found something that works for you. Make the most of the cuddly naps - I really miss them now that ds generally naps better when left to settle himself in his cot.

We found dd loved Reggae too - she is particularly partial to a bit of Dub. We have a great Trojan records CD 'Young, Gifted and Black' which she loves - she even has a little Trojan T-Shirt which a friend printed up for us.

Do you think it is the bass?

Glad to hear you have found something that works at the moment. Things change so quickly and I hope they get easier for you very soon!

Agree with it being the bass. Whilst I was pg I had some dance remix cds in the car (I do a lot of business mileage so bump got to hear them a lot). When ds was small and upset playing any of the tracks from those particular cds with a good strong bass line calmed him down.