How to get 10 week old to nap!

[Clumsasaurus]

I am spotting the signs that he is tired and needs a nap but he won't sleep! He will in the pram if we are out walking or in the car but this is not really a long term solution with winter on the way. If input him down for a nap he either cries or just lays there fighting it so I end up feeding him into a doze - usually 2-4 mins (he feeds to sleep to night) but he then won't be put down, he just wakes up again!

Any suggeions or just go with it for now?

Cuddle or feed or rock to sleep then put down when in a deep sleep. As they get older they get the hang of it!

My DD was exactly like this, I always fed to sleep, or drove her, or pushes her or carried her in a sling!

She grew out of it but not until she was about 10 months old! Now I can rock for a minute and pop her in her cot and age will turn over to sleep. She learnt on her own but it was tough. I was out with her in the pram every 2 hours last winter! It was exhausting!

I have number 2 on the way so am praying my next baby is one of these fab calm sleepers that I hear some people have!

I will sling the next baby from day one! Is that an option for you?

Same as the others have said. At 10 weeks, he is too tiny really to learn it for himself, so cuddle/ feed / sling / pram are all good options.

and when you think you have got it cracked he will change his habits again

Good luck and congratulations!

Might be a bit old to start swaddling if you don't already do so, but possibly worth a try.

With both of mine I put have put them down drowsy but awake and shhh/pat them to sleep (see the Baby Whisperer). The idea is that eventually they learn to settle themselves to sleep. Worked really well for DD, but with DS I don't have the time so quite often cuddle or feed to sleep and/or use a dummy for his naps.

Agree they get the hang of it as they get older.

I gave in when the baby was about 6w old and accepted that naps really weren't happening on her own. At about 2-3 months she finally started doing 30 min catnaps on her own, but that was once we had cracked her self-settling at night, so she kind of figured out how to self-settle in the day too. But she wouldn't stay asleep past the magic 30 mins, so for anything longer than that (and she desperately needed longer sleep) I just accepted that she was either sleeping on me or in the pushchair. This does have its benefits - loads of exercise every day, and I have honestly never read so much in my life as I'd just curl up with a book and let her sleep for an hour, hour and a half.

And like the others have said, they gradually grow in to it. My dreadful daytime napper now has two 1-1.5hr sleeps all on her own.

One thing that did work for us, if you really do need to get away from a sleeping baby to do something urgent, is to curl up, let them fall asleep mostly on you but partly on the sofa/bed, and then once they are deep asleep you can try extricating yourself from underneath them. That used to buy me twenty minutes of 'baby asleep on their own' time

I'm only just now getting somewhere with regular naps with 5 month old DS. I always check what time he woke up, then 1.5 hours later I start preparing him for another nap, regardless of how long his preceding sleep was - nappy change, draw curtains, low lights, feed, then straight into the pram once he's heavily asleep which he does quickly now with this emerging routine. Basically, I try and make sure he's not awake for longer than 2 hours, if possible, as this pushes him into the dreaded overtired zone from which there's no return. He usually only naps for 30-40 minutes (although sometimes he surprises me and goes for 60-70), but I've learned that it's watching the time between naps that's the most important. I think, since you're clever enough to notice sleep cues which I'm rubbish at, you may notice your DS has a consistent 'awake period' he can tolerate, wherein you can plan a small pre-nap routine so he learns what's expected of him and take advantage of his own sleep window.

Now night times for me...they're a whole other can of crazy...