The nap battle rageth...any experienced campaigners?

[funnylittlekaty]

Hello all, just looking for some advice or a place to share stories. My ds is a gorgeous, happy boy who sleeps generally well at night but we have massive nap problems. He can only fall asleep on the boob, but this doesn't always work. He is 6 months old on Friday and apparently should be having 2-2 1/2 hours a day. I'm lucky if we get 45 minutes some days. By tea time grumpy is not the word! I'm a bit worried for the little chap as he gets so frantic and wired when he hasn't slept well. Anyone else fighting the nap battle? Any advice, short of a shot in the leg?
Tia

Nap By Any Means Necessary. Use a sling, dark room with white noise, pushchair, car drive - whatever works. Just to get him used to naps. Aim for first one about 60-90 mins after he first wakes in the morning. Morning ones are almost always the easiest ones to tackle.

Next nap - about 90 mins of awake time after a feed and solids. Again doesn't matter how - just get him sleeping.

After a week or so, maybe longer, see if you can work out a rough pattern (or nap at the same times every day) then you can work on nap location.

If a nap fails, don't beat yourself up. You can try again later.

Thanks iggly. Am doing some of your suggestions. This morning though he's been up since 6.30am and I've tried feeding, walking, rocking, jiggling, leaving (for 10 minutes-he whinged for about 4 minutes at the end), feeding in my bed, feeding lying down, feeding in the rocking chair. Have run out of ideas!! He's too excited!!

Asleep now... In my bed after being fed to sleep. At least he's off but really...what a lovely little weirdo he is..

I too have napping problems, my almost 6 month old naps quite regularly but only for 30 mins at a time. It had got to the stage where she would go off in cot with thumb and some shushing but a week of her being ill means she has got used to being fed to sleep and then sleeping in my lap. Lovely but means you get nothing done.
Best napping tip is catching the right window, when they start rubbing their eyes and persistence, it took a good few weeks to get the cot napping happening but it was worth it.
If anyone knows how to extend her naps let me know.....

My 6mo DS is a power napier. Never more than 30-40 minutes at a time.

I am baffled by these babies who 'nap' for two hours

@ weirdo

DS didn't extend naps til he got into solids really.

*napper.

Fucking autocorrect.

My no cry nap solution by Elizabeth pantley has just arrived. So far it's just making me feel terrible about the amount of naps he's not having! Apparently he'll grow up to be a knife wielding psychopath because he doesn't sleep enough.

funnylittlekaty I've been flapping about how little DS naps during the day. I'm worried he's going to be developmentally stunted

I got round his screaming at nap time by introducing a nap routine which worked wonders. However he still won't go for >40 mins.

Sigh.

Ah red, there's a chapter in my new book about extending nap time! When I get to that bit, I'll post about what she says. I'm lying here next to ds so I can shove a boob in his face if he stirs. I also worry ds'll be developmentally stunted...but he's pretty happy at times during the day and is rolling, sitting, eating ok. I was thinking about asking HV was she reckons about it. She's been so helpful in the past.

Helpful HVs

I phoned mine for 'advice' last month when at the end of my tether with nap strike. He suggestion was to leave him to cry. 'nuff said.

Would you recommend the book so far? Have been considering buying it.

Well so far it's just freaking me out but I think it'll be good if I can get ds to read it too. He seems unaware he's supposed to be drowsy after 2-3 hours so I can put him into his cot so he can fall asleep on his own. I ordered it off amazon, it arrived in 2 days and he has actually been asleep since it landed on the mat. Maybe it has magic properties!

DD1 napped beautifully, but irritatingly straight through lunch, so afternoon activitys were impossible before 3pm (she was a horror to feed solids and took forever)
DD2 simply didn't nap. Big sister needed picking up from nursery at 11.30 so she'd just dropped off as I stuck her in the car.
Didn't seem to worry her she just learnt to cope with less sleep than she might have wanted.

I have got the book and it's OK. Advice on extending naps is as you'd expect - shhh pat when they stir, keep on rocking/pushing them in chair/car/etc.

None of them worked for my 40 min napper. He just does the odd 1 hour kip when I actually want him to wake up after 40 mins so we can go out when he feels like it. It does my fecking head in and I have been thinking about posting about it all day.

My 6 mo DS has a cold and so he's ben boobed to sleep for both cot naps today. He was in the pushchair for the other one.

I have been worrying more about our lack of 'routine' for the day. Every day looks roughly the same - about 2 hours between sleeps, about four hours between milk and then food when he's not asleep/having milk or about to have milk. But depending upon what time he gets up...that dictates the whole day.

Do you all have fixed times for everything? Or do you tend to wing it depending upon wake up time, what you're doing and how they've slept the night before????

Hello, can I join in? DS is 5 months old and only ever naps for 40 minutes at a time, max. Although yesterday he weirdly napped from 9:30am til midday. But that was because he was up half the night - we cocked up his bedtime routine by making him stay up late to watch fireworks which scared the crap out of him.

He can't self-settle, needs boobie or buggy/car to snooze. Routine-wise, we totally wing it from whenever he wakes up. He needs likes a nap every 2 hours but, my god, sometimes it's a battle. And I keep him awake after 4pm or he doesn't go down at 7. So if he wakes from a power-nap at 3pm, he is delightful by 6, as you can imagine! What is the latest you'll let yours sleep before bedtime?

Just marking my place as am In phone but having similar issues with 4.5 month old who self settled til recently. Interested in any tips re: establishing naps.

Hello littlemilla, I think I remember you from our mums to be may 2011 antenatal thread. Hmm as regards routine....I try to do the following
Milk at 7.30-8ish
Breakfast at 9 ish
Napbattle 1 begins with varied success at 9.30 ish
Milk at 11-11.30 ish
Lunch at 12.30-1
Nap battle 2 rages.
Milk at 3.30 ish
Bath between 5.30-6.00
Milk at 6.15
Bed at 7pm
Wake up to dream feed at 10.30
Sleep till 5.30 ish.
In our bed feeding/sleeping til 7.30.
However this is all on a good day. We rarely stick to this. I'd really love it if he napped 9.30-10.30, 1-3 then maybe 4.30-5. Fat chance! Like you say, it all depends on when mister decides to wake up. Some days he's up for the day at 5.30, and then everything's out of time. Sigh. Dh is just trying to get him down for the night, but I may have effed up slightly as he had muchos carrots at 5 and is not v interested in bedtime milk. Oh dear.

My day has been:

Up for the day at 7:30am (after faffing from about 3:30am - he's got a stinky cold!)
Milk at 7:30am
Cereal 8:30am
Bed again from 9:30am - 10:30am (this was a battle which resulted in me boobing him to sleep)
Milk at 10:30am
Lunch at midday
Sleep again in buggy from 1-2 (note: it's normally UNHEARD of for him to sleep for more than 30 mins in buggy)
Milk at 2:45pm
Sleep again from 4:30-5 (again a battle so I boobed him)
Tea at 5:30pm
Bath at 6:30pm, more milk at 7pm and he's now grizzling in bed.

Boobed him more than usual today, but I am putting this down to cold.

Also, and this is the interesting bit. I've been reading in the wonder weeks books about them having a pretty big developmental leap about now. All to do with relationships. So basically, they're understanding that they're being 'left' and they don't like it. Which means that babies that have before been OK about self settling, now begin to freak out that you're not there and kick up a stink about it. Which will explain why he's grumbling more and more (right now infact) and so I ought to go and shhh pat. Determied not to boob him asleep AGAIN today!!

YAAAAAAAARGH!

Hurrah, gone down without boob - just a cuddle. Fingers crossed he'll stay asleep until dreamfeed-o'clock!

Ughhhhhh.

DS has such crap daytime maps that he's bloody knackered in the evening.

He went to bed at 5.30pm tonight

We put him down for a nap at 4.50pm the other day and he didn't wake up until the next morning.

I can't offer much help for now as my DD was a terrible napper and until recently she very rarely napped except in the car on on my lap. However we have recently dropped to one nap straight after lunch and she sleeps for 2 hours at a time (she's 15 months old now).

At some point it will end. Both my HV and Doctor said that having a non-napping baby is very common and that mostly they do better as they get older and go to one nap a day.

Sorry it's not much help but I do know how you feel, having been there.

Poor darling woke up coughing and spluttering. He's seriously bunged up.

So he's had some calpol, milk and still woke up 2 secs after I put him down. I am so sad for him, but also worried that we're going to regress with this second cold in as many weeks.

I'd like to join non-naps anonymous too! DH and I keep saying we're going to sleep train him so we don't have to spend half our days chasing his naps, but when we tried last week to put him down in his cot at tired-o-clock (the reliable morning nap he always wants 1.5 hrs after getting up) he just grumbled then eventually cried. dh gave up and cuddled him to sleep. we haven't tried since and i think we need to make a plan then stick to it consistently which neither of us is good at. praps some support and idea-sharing here will help...

ds, 6 months old, will go to sleep cuddling dh or boobed by me. he'll also drift off in the sling, car seat and pushchair but rarely lasts long in these and all it takes is a passing lorry to startle him awake.

today i just sat on the sofa, fed him to sleep and let him keep sucking in order to stay asleep while watching old episodes of spooks! he can nap for 2 hours on my lap but i feel really daft still doing this at his age.

incidentally it takes ages to settle him at night too + i almost always feed him to sleep then. (doing that now!) are everyone's bedtimes tough too?

Bedtime is actually Ok here, although last night he woke up twice between bedtime and dream feed which is most unusual. He generally falls asleep on the boob halfway through strictly it takes two and then dh semi dream feeds him some formula but he falls asleep on the bottle too. Talk about your tricksy sleep associations! I think what pisses me off the most is how erratic the little blighter is. Some days hes up at 5.00 to start the day, somedays it's 8am. Today he slept for nearly 2 hours in one go then a further 30 mins; yesterday he slept for 40 minutes. He must be so tired poor poor rabbit.... Sigh. Anyway it's very good to know I'm not the only one with a nap refuser. Keep the stories coming, you're keeping me sane!

Hi LoubyLou. Yep, bedtime is crazy here too. There is no way DS will fall asleep on his own. I have to boob him to sleep every night. I then have to slowly put him down (in our bed as we co-sleep) and extract myself from his embrace, so I can have a couple of hours in the evening. He invariably wakes during the process and we have to start the whole rigmarole again. Then I'm up and down the stairs settling him several times while my dinner goes cold, til it's my bedtime (which I bring forward to 8:30/9 because I can't be arsed trotting up and down the stairs constantly). Hope that makes you feel better!