OK so tell me, are all babies hard work to get to sleep in the day or is it just all mine?

[DomesticGoddess31]

Seriously, what's normal? DD was HARD. WORK. DS is no flipping better. I have worked like a dog twice this morning to produce 2 30 minute naps and still have a tired grumpy baby and now am having to do it again.

Does everyone have to do this?

How do people cope with looking after a toddler as well? How do you stay sane????

How old is dd?

Mine is 21 wks and also hard work but after about a month of perseverance its definitely getting better/easier than before

A proper sling was my friend with number two. Something like an ergo or connecta. Baby sleeps or just cuddles whilst entertaining the eldest.

I don't know, but I could have written your op!

I made the mistake of consulting a parenting book yesterday, it made me feel like the shit-est mum in the world so I threw it in the recycling. Apparently my 7 weeks old should be placed in her basket at the first signs of tiredness, and she will just drift off to sleep. Haha.

I do remember spending literally hours persuading ds to nap, but then I didn't have anyone else to look after at the same time.

Glad it's not just me though!

My 17 mo hates to go in his cot during the day. We just time all activities now so that we have a picnic lunch somewhere then either pram or drive home, transfer to cot, sleep for 2 hours. It is occasionally inconvenient but less traumatic than sleep training!

DD was an effing nightmare for this sort of thing, and she didn't sleep at night either. I never did manage to sort it out and one day at about 11 months she suddenly decided she was going to have a 2.5 hour nap every lunch time. It was most bizzare.

DS isn't so bad. He's five months and for the first two months he only woke up for feeds. Nowadays he does 3x1 hour naps and 20-25 mins late afternoon. He's self settled from birth. I've no idea why he's so easy and my daughter was so hard. I've not done anything different with him whatsoever. They were totally different right from the start. She would scream all night unless at attached to a boob, whereas his first night he fed at 11pm, 3am and then at 7am we were sitting up in bed with a cup of tea waiting for him to wake up!

P.s I read ALL the books when DD was little desperate for some previously unseen nugget of info that would help me get her to sleep, but all that happened was that I felt even more shit about my parenting abilities.

Swing was a life saver for us. dD would look at the lights, listen to music and fall asleep. We got one like this second hand

www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1457889.htm

I could have written this. I got super grumpy today after spending most of it trying to get my 11 week old to sleep for more than a twenty minute stretch. I don't remember my first child being so hard.

And I totally panic about the effects of sleep deprivation in children too which stresses me out even more.

Ditto here and I have a toddler. A baby carrier is the only way to get him to go. Then, once he's asleep I carefully transfer him to a baby swing so he stays asleep.

The toddler mostly amuses himself with lego or a ball. If not, I put in the night garden on the laptop.

The parenting books, oh my goodness, they made me so angry. The EASY routine (BW) is full of inconsistencies. When I realised that, I abandoned it. For example the book reckons swaddling calms a baby.

Uh huh, so why can I swaddle my relaxed baby, which makes him scream for 40 minutes, and when I take him out he is relaxed within 2 minutes?

And how come I'm 'accidental parenting' when I'm rocking him but not when I'm shush patting him? Never mind that sh pat does fuck all but piss off my tired baby.

One thing I do agree with though is, if you've been working on getting a nap for an hour, give up, play with your baby, and try again in half an hour. Otherwise you could be doing this all day.

I do remember one evening I spent FIVE HOURS with him in the book, trying to get ds1 to nap.

Also had one day of 16 hours in which he napped a total of 90 minutes. And at night slept in 50 minute chunks. I went a bit loony.

It's definitely not you, OP. some babies are just not that good at sleeping. They do come round to it eventually.

I should add that the baby swing sometimes works to keep him asleep but not always. Occasionally he can start also for more than an hour. 45mins is more common. Ten minutes is not unheard of.

Nutella, I have a toddler too and he is loud and paws at my shirt sleeve when I am spending ages rocking her, going 'mummy! Mummy! Mummy!' Over and over.....

Just a thought. Mine will sleep happy as a daisy in the bouncy chair and go off to sleep in her own but I have only been using it for one nap a day as I thought they had to be lying flat most of the time for spinal development reasons...Am I wrong?

Hi! I wrote this post about the sand thing a couple of days ago and got some really good advice!
I have a 13 week old who like your takes hours to go for naps and only sleeps for 20 minutes and I have a very patient 3.5 year old - pm me if you want to talk xx
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/2111167-Really-fed-up-13-week-old-wont-nap

Have you tried white noise? We found it really calmed non-sleeping DD down when she was really fractious and overtired.

Slings have been effing useless for both of mine. DD didn't mind the wrap style so much but I kept getting tangled up in it. Any other type they both just screamed.

I think some babies are just much harder to get to sleep - I must have been lucky - the only thing I did that a lot of people don't seem to like to do is to be very strict - ie: DS went into his cot (in his own room) for his naps and I let him self settle which he learned to do immediately (I left the room); I never got into the routine of soothing/cuddling a baby to sleep.

So was it just luck or did I follow the collect procedure? Who knows . Thank God I didn't have Mumsnet when I had my baby, I wasn't aware that there was any other method of getting your child to sleep

Dd is 10 months old.

Has napped in her cot approx 8 times during the day.

Only way I can get her to nap is by walking fecking miles in the pram.

It's a nightmare. No pun intended.

Ragwort
What do you mean by self-settle? Leave to cry?

If self-settle means a few minutes of protest, then falling asleep, then you had an easy baby.

I know of babies who have cried for so long at such intensity they vomit. Mine would get hysterical and be unable to fall asleep. He could go on for hours if I'd let him.

Friends of mine with 4dc did leave to cry. It worked on two, failed on two. I think failed CIO must be the worst thing poor babies.

Ds(10) was really easy to settle couple of hours driving around in car usually did it, then he would wake up when we trued to transfer from car to cot wracked up 1000s of miles in his first year!

Sympathies to you OP. I had a first baby that was a champion daytime napper. She had two text book naps per day and when she dropped the morning nap, would have a 2-3 hour afternoon nap until she was at least four years old. It was pretty blissful. Then along came baby number two and she didn't do naps. And none of my tried and tested methods worked on her. She couldn't even be rocked, walked or cuddled to sleep. If she did ever daytime nap it was a 45 minute cat nap at most. She was fine on that amount of sleep. I wasn't! It's exhausting to have a baby awake and requiring - or potentially requiring - your attention all day long. Around 8 months old I managed to get her to go into her cot and sleep during the day but the most I ever got was an hour and she dropped that nap at an early age.

How old is your DS?

If I put my 15 week old down in anything other than a fast asleep state he would cry more and more until he vomited. No way in a million years would be just drift off to sleep!

I can only get him into a drowsy state by breastfeeding. "winding down" in a quiet, darkened room just makes him grizzly as does sitting down to cuddle. He wants his toys and playmat and he can't understand why I've taken them away.

If he's already crying with tiredness that will continue until he's fed or rocked to sleep.

I've spent the last 3 months being told "he's tiny, just do what you've got to do to make him sleep" which is all well and good until he needs to learn for himself to send himself to sleep and all he's ever known is feeding and rocking.

How do you make the leap??

Oh I know the feeling! Can't get my 10 wk old ds to sleep more than 20 - 40 minutes at a time during the day and that's only once or twice a day if I'm lucky. Takes a while to get him to go down, he just doesn't seem to need as much sleep as I thought a wee baby would. It's exhausting. It's definitely hard work. I don't know how he's not knackered!

Going to try the sling technique....
X

What a relief to know I'm not the only one. My DD1 seems to live by the motto that sleep is for the weak. She is eight weeks old and she never takes a daytime nap and when she does I'm lucky to get about get 30 minutes. She is a pretty good sleeper overnight which is the only saving grace. But really unless you have a baby that never sleeps during the daytime I don't think you have any idea how exhausting it can be. I literally never get a minute to myself when I'm on my own with her all day every day. Love her more than life itself but sometimes I could just cry for a little break once in a while.

Dd is 9mo and hardly sleeps in the day. We generally have two 30-45 minute catnaps a day during the week. She might have a bit longer at the weekend as DH handles toddler DS and I can lay with her in bed and get her to stay asleep a bit.

During the week though I survive on car and sling naps. DS won't entertain himself long enough for me to get her in bed, and I get really worried about leaving him alone and then stressed when she won't sleep.

And we sold the cot last month. Fucking thing sitting there all judgmental in the corner making me feel guilty. (DS never slept in it either).

She seems happy enough and is a good sleeper at night, although bear in mind I have very low standards after DS ruined me with 2 years of sleep deprivation.