If you found a sleep solution....

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What was it and at what age did you start doing it?

Also do you wish you had tried it earlier?

DD not a good sleeper and is fast approaching 5 months, am hoping some of your good experiences will help me find a good plan to try with her.

TIA!

My DS is not what I would call a natually easy sleeper either, but the following workedwell for us;

• radio static on in the background
• swaddle till around 3 months, when he woke himself up fighing out of it! If he is very excited I will s till swaddle for naps.
• we started bedtime routine of bath, feed cuddle at around 3 weeks, and that worked well for us
• quiet talking and shush patting (explained in Baby whisperer) if unsettled

• loads of milk at the last feed and DF

My DS is now four months and I would love if anyone has advice on napping for more than 45 minutes - often a battle!

My DS was a chronic early waker & from 6-12 months he was up between 4-5am ready to start the day. I wish I had known earlier that to sort the early waking I needed to push his nap later. I had been babyled for naps & was putting him down at 7.30-8am because he was tired from the early waking, & I didn't realise that in doing so it was actually reinforcing the early waking & making it worse.

We've had 2 more phases of EW since that first one & again, both times the answer has been a later nap. So my lesson to you would be if your DD starts to wake early & its not hunger/teething related, look at your routine & consider if her nap is too early. If its before 9am its likely it is.

Another few things that helped us:
swaddle when DS was tiny
sssh/pat to help DS settle in his own cot by himself (I am soooo glad we did this as he rarely wakes at night & if he does he rolls over & goes right back to sleep without needing our help)
a consistent wind down routine for naps and bed eg nappy change, into sleeping bag, story, cuddle, into bed, music lightshow on - helps them know what is coming
consistency with naptime routine - putting ds down for naps at roughly the same time every day really helped regulate his routine
knowing that 30min naps meant DS was overtired

p.s. Alice - 45min nap monster is in part developmental - very very common between 3-6 months & he should grow out of it, but can sometimes be caused by not being tired enough at naptime

Controlled crying mixed with pu/pd. we tried this at 6.5 months and although it's worked amazingly with very minimal crying (8mins max with me going in every 1 min) I wouldn't have liked to try it early as at 6.5 months I feel confident that baby does not need milk at night and was waking out of habit not hunger.

"My DS is now four months and I would love if anyone has advice on napping for more than 45 minutes - often a battle!"

I went through this, but as a PP says its developmental. DS is still a bad night sleeper but suddenly his naps went from being 35mins to anything from 1 - 2.5 hours! Just as he got older he started sleeping longer during the day. I would never have believed it when I was struggling with him only ever sleeping 35 mins max.

He is now nearly 9 months and often one of his naps is 35mins and the other one is 2 hours-odd (although it can vary as to which one is which!)

Co-sleeping, and reduced expectations.

My ds was awful night sleeper and only napped for 45 mins at a time between 3-6 months.

At 6 months we put him in his own room and put him down (asleep) on his tummy. He now only wakes once a night. I don't think I would have done this earlier due to the risk of SIDS but it definatly improved his nightime sleep no end.

His naps are starting to get better now, he will sleep anywhere between 45 mins and 2 hours. I think he has just grown out of the short naps himself, although I have noticed he is more likely to sleep for longer at his morning nap if he's slept really well the night before so possibly my ds was struggling with overtiredness.

IME (altho ds is pfb so I don't have much!), you have to muddle through the first 6 months as best you can and then it should start getting easier.