Catnappers and 'bad sleepers' support thread

[AwesomeSuperTasty]

This is inspired by this napping thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/2123505-Any-advice-for-daytime-naps A user commented that they wanted to start a catnapping thread, but seeing as no one did, I thought I might start a 'support group' for all parents of catnapping babies and generally poor sleepers. (I hope the user who prompted this thought will come forward to claim the credit!)

Anyway, it's really just a place to vent and maybe share experiences.

So, I will start. My 7 month old son still catnaps 30 mins at a time, something he allegedly should have grown out of. He also wakes every 90 minutes at night, and wakes up at 5.30 in the mornings. He self settles to sleep and has an early bed time but can't resettle at night. Basically, since he was born, I've not slept longer than 2 hours at a stretch. I'm sure I'm pretty exhausted but stopped registering it.

I do have some questions for anyone who'd like to share.

• If you have an older catnapping baby, how long does she/he go between naps?

-Has anyone managed to sucessfully implement some kind of a napping schedule, for babies who sleep only 30 mins?

And please don't tell me to get a sling...or co-sleep

Congrats pickle! A PB here today too. In fact I think his overall day sleep total was the highest ever today = 60 + 35 + 120 = 3hrs 35 mins!!

Glad there are some good naps happening.

We've had a relatively good couple of days, too. Somehow she has - for two days, anyway - mastered the art of drifting back off after her usual 30 min wake up. So yesterday and today we had 90 min morning naps and 70-ish min afternoon naps. By this afternoon she barely roused at 30 mins and was settled off again in seconds. Not counting my chickens, yet. And these naps were, of course, in the buggy. But progress of sorts - total nap time today of 3hrs which is unheard of. (Though we've had two bloody awful nights so it's not all good.)

Mrs Mugoo, inspired by you I'm persevering with white noise. Not convinced it helps yet but an thinking more about it becoming a cue...ever hopeful she might do a day sleep in her cot one day!!

Ps. On the terrible nights we're having... It's frustrating because although days were awful, she's always been pretty good at night. But she's really unsettled at the moment. Could be heat or teeth but I'm wondering if it's the four month regression - she's 19 weeks. Those with older babies - how did it manifest itself for you?

Struggling even to feed her to sleep at the moment. Argh!

highlove no regression here as I don't think you can regress back any further from our starting point. Our sleep genesis has only ever ranged from shit to marginally less shit.

My money is on the heat. It's so uncomfortable that DS actually took a dream feed bottle without a fight. It's a day of firsts in the pickle household.

Inspired by mrs I tried white noise. Epic fail as DS spent 20m looking around frantically for where the noise was coming from. He then head butted me in the nose as he was completely convinced that it was coming from behind the chair and had to climb up/over me to get to it. Obviously.

I'm now lying sweltering in bed as DS has commandeered the fan, sore nose and back (DS is bloody heavy and apparently it was too hot to walk today) next to a snoring husband who-frustratingly-doesn't seem to feel the heat.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Hope everyone had a good night.

Fiddlesticks. Baaaaad night. All that rocking everyone has been doing now means lady wakes every hour. I feel like something scraped off the pavement and having been bowing to pressure to continue potty training when it clearly isn't working I am giving it up. Take that family!

Major low point today. Major.

Sorry to hear that Popalina. Any chance of someone watching DC for a few hours while you get a little sleep?

If it's any consolation at all, we had a difficult night too. For once it wasn't DS but DH being the pain in the bum. Instead of leaving DS to cry when he woke up multiple times (too hot last night), he kept going in as soon as he heard him start crying. Sends up backwards. Was nice of him to offer to help during the night but I now wish I'd just done it myself as I don't know how this is going to affect naps etc.

Highlove - 4 month regression slammed us from 14-17 weeks.

He went from 3 feeds a night to waking every 2 hours (so down at 8 waking at 10, 12, 2, 4, up for the day at 6. I would often not be able to get back to sleep at all between wakings and "survived" those 3 weeks on an average of 4 broken hours a night.

It nearly broke me, hence why we started sleep training after that!

Mrsmugoo, the regression waking pattern you describe is the one we still have - up at 10, 12, 2, 4, 6! Can I still hope that we are 'in a regression'?

I also have no idea how to tackle night wakings anymore. If I don't pick up DS from the cot he will become hysterical. I usually pick him up and hold him whilst he cries, then he falls back asleep that way. Probably need to change this....

Catnaps are driving me mad at the moment.

Oh love, that sounds hideous :(

I'm lucky my DS has never been a screamer - when he wakes he just thrashes around and after a while it's a grizzle.

Sorry pressed post too soon.

Was going to ask - is your DS in his own room?

No relief today. One 45 minute nap is all we have had. We are going home tonight so madly packing!

My day was going well until family picnic this afternoon and interfering (but well meaning) family stuck their oar in.

My lovely, lovely MIL who has helped me sooooo much since he's been born but who every time she picks him up she tries to rock him to sleep. I don't want to cause offence but a) we don't rock to sleep anymore. He hates bring "babied" now and b) I try to follow a loose schedule so that I can ration out his 3 measily catnaps to last him to bedtime. I think she still thinks he's a newborn who drops off to sleep every time he's cuddled.

The result was me him having a 15 minute micro nap way before I wanted him to sleep and now I'm going to have either an overtired mess come bedtime or I will have to schlep out in this heat to make him have a late 4th sleep.

Great!

I decided not to go out with the pushchair but took him in the bedroom to try to get him off as he was grizzly and grumpy.

He's asleep in the middle of my bed so I'm stuck in here in the dark with white noise on - lovely!

mrs does the white noise send you to sleep too? :)

Hope the picnic was great nevertheless!

It is pretty relaxing after a while. I had a great sleep last night with the fan whirring all night!

Hi catnappers - how's everyone's day been?

Today we've had 2 x 35 mins in the cot and then a third nap of an hour 45 on the double bed & white noise

I wish he'd do the longer naps in the cot so I don't have to sit in the dark with him to supervise! (Monitor is fixed to the cot)

Our day has been out of sync because of DS's heat induced projectile vomiting last night. Not just once, I might add. No, no...DS threw up all over himself, his bedding and his sleeping bag at 11pm. After cleaning up, replacing his bedding and calming the poor soul down, I lay him down where he proceeded to projectile AGAIN.

The whole horrificness meant he was up for over an hour and had a knock on effect on his naps. 1 x 2h (eh?) 1 x 45m and 1 x 20m.

He's currently having a sleepover at his nana's so I'm currently twiddling my thumbs-I should be stressing about dream feeding him!

I'm just going in to do dreamfeed now... I find it stressful too!

Dreamfeed done - phew!

I think it's the horror of maybe accidentally waking them up?

Night night!

Sorry to hear about that pickle. Was it nice to have a bit of a break? How does he settle when away from home?

We still have the usual 3x30 min catnaps but thankfully bedtime is now a more manageable 7pm and up for the day at 7.

Of course all that will go out of the window - we are flying out in a couple of days and will have a 7 hour time difference to contend with! Not to mention an 8 hour flight and a 4 am start from home.

Sorry to hear about your bad day Pickle - hope you enjoyed the break though.

So after randomly starting to do 90 minute morning buggy naps for three days, as of yesterday we are officially back to our more usual 30 mins. No idea what we did differently to cause the long naps or why they (so frustratingly) have stopped. Hmmm.

On the plus side, we are having a few naps of more than 30 mins still do I guess she is very, very slowly learning to go for a bit longer. Today's been 30, 30, 40, 50. That's very good for us. If only they weren't all in the buggy I might get something done! I did try to get her off in the buggy and snooze shade in the house last week. She was having none of it. I guess at least I know my girl knows her own mind

Omg. DS is crying pretty much every 20 mins since bedtime. It's only midnight and I'm already exhausted! He's overtired as he only had 2x30 min naps today (resisted the last nap by playing in the cot for almost an hour till 16.30 at which point I gave up and went with an early bedtime)but still, this is pretty bad.

And this is the second night in a row. Wake ups are every 30min-hour. Calpol hasn't made any difference so beginning to think its developmental.

Need to be up in 2 hours to catch our flight :/