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

Ordinarily I'd go out for a walk in the pushchair but I've got to pack for going to my parents tomorrow, plus it's raining!

I've had to just leave him grizzling in the cot for a time out while I grabbed some good and had a drink.

We're back in the bedroom, he is fed back down to sleep in my bed but this time I'm not moving him!

I honestly can't wait to be back at my parents tomorrow - they are so good with him and totally "get it" with regards to him needing regular naps - my dad is totally happy to take him out on pushchair walks so the pressure is off me.

Plus I need a cuddle from my Mum!

Still asleep an hour later..,

Argh, stupid phone! Awesome, it was okay in the end. I went up and sat on the floor but after about twenty minutes she went down and slept until just before 6am! And now she's been asleep for 90mins! I don't know what to do with myself. Of course this is the morning I decided not to have a nap with her but you can't have everything...

Just praying this doesn't put her out for the rest of the day (I'm never happy, apparently!).

...I was just about to post and somehow my message from this morning appeared again! Odd.

Mrs, I'm sorry you're having a horrible day. It always seems like one step forwards, two steps back with these catnappers. I hope that tomorrow is better for you. And lucky you for having parents who understand! My Mum just about does, now. It took her a long while of actually SEEING DD when she's not had a nap to do so, though.

And highlove, I used to try to resettle her after naps. She MIGHT go down again, but inevitably she'd wake up after five minutes/being put down, so I gave up with that endeavor. Hence being stuck in a 45min nap loop hell!

Saying that, today ended up as a fail. First nap was an unheard of 2hrs, then a perfect 45mins, then 35mins and finally 35mins in the buggy. This is why longer naps do not work for this child. Now she's grumpy with me and having a bottle with Daddy. I'm hiding in the corner until I have to take her up to bed (it's my 'turn').

Mrsmugoo, so sorry to hear you had such a bad day. Did it improve? Hope you are feeling better. Enjoy the time with your folks!

Frankel, great to hear your DH will be home soon! :)

Last night was the first night in months that DS slept for three hours without crying! Three hours, yay! This is my longest stretch of sleep in a long time. Tonight - it's only 21.30 here and he's cried lots since going to sleep so I will be up at all hours again.

Yes, agree with what you all said earlier . The most difficult thing is that there is no rhyme or reason to this. I do the same thing every day with DS (he's even managed to fall into a schedule and has a nap around the same time every day) but nope. No improvement on the sleep whatsoever.

Sigh. Well for the moment I am surviving on huge American coffees (decaf. Meh) and tons of sweets :) I'm also using tiredness as an excuse to buy new makeup!

My precious 45min naps have turned into 35min naps. Currently screaming her head off whilst DH tries to get her down. Camping on the floor again.

When will it end?

My 45 minute naps turned to 30 minute naps and recently into 15-20 minutes in the pushchair only. I'm despairing!

Oh no! I hope it resolves soon, mrs and coddle.

Crap here too. DS has started refusing the last nap so now we are down to two 30 min naps. Now he wakes 4 times a night and won't resettle without the boob. And I'm starting to hate bf! :( right now it's 3.30 here and I've had to do four feeds already (he will be up twice more before 6am). Otherwise he screams the place down! I am Desperate to night wean but it's not working!

He is refusing his morning nap and making it so hard to fit 3 sleeps in, but he can't last the day on 2 of his 20-30 minute "naps"

I'm at my parents and my Mum is pretty old school and she thinks I should just let him cry which at this point I'm open to doing. He's just cried for 15 minutes and dropped off but it was after 3 hour wake time! It's never a full on cry though - just tired/frustrated.

And now he's been asleep an hour...I just can't predict what he's going to do!

That's the worst thing about it IMO, mrs. If there was actually some sort of bloody pattern you could probably cope with it! Mine HAD a sort of pattern but has now decided it's not working for her anymore.

Today we've had 40mins in bed with me, 45ish mins in the buggy/car (didn't even wake up during the transition), 35mins in bed and 20mins in the buggy. That last one took her ages to actually get in to, and now she's veering between miserable and completely silent. AKA tired, AKA her.

Think it's going to be bottle (which she doesn't want) and then bed (which she certainly doesn't want). And I have to settle her. Again. It's just easier.

Not sure how much longer we can go on like this, but I don't know what to do to solve the problem. I don't even know how it got started!

I'm at my parents and I think I've had a bit of a revelation when it comes to his sleep - he was continually rolling over and I'd be continually rolling him back but my Mum persuaded me to just leave him and lo and behold he seems to love sleeping on his tummy!

We are an hour an a half into a nap and last night he slept 8-5:30am!

How is everyone? I hope things are improving somewhat.

I'm going mad with sleep deprivation. Night weaning = since I went to sleep at 9.30pm have only had 1 hour of sleep as DS keeps waking up. It's 2am now.

Mrs, when you stopped feeding your DS at night, how did you know when he was/wasn't genuinely hungry?

Argh! Too wet to go out in the buggy so having to have her last nap in the cot. Trouble is she won't go down, despite having been awake for 2.5hrs after a 30min nap. Tired but refusing! And she can't sleep past about 5:45 or she'll never go to bed. Looks like an early bedtime and a shit day tomorrow as she'll be up all night/very early.

Gave up after over 30mins of pacing/rocking/bouncing (she was alternating between sucking her fingers, rubbing hrr eyes and laughing at me as I shushed).

Now in her Jumperoo, knackered but determined not to give in until she drops. Bedtime will be fun!

Christ, if someone told me I could go and have a quick nap, I'd be asleep in seconds - and we're having relatively good nights right now. Extreme sympathies to those who aren't!

Just catching up; the last week has been an education.

DS started nursery full time. Loves it. Adores it so much in fact that he won't bloody sleep for them. I've told them the myriad of tricks required to get him to actually sleep but he "apparently" seems quite happy to be awake. Not so great for me when I pick him up and he's so exhausted he can't even eat before he collapses.

He caught a nasty cold from another child so hasn't slept for more than 2-4 hours at night, or eaten more than fruit and yogurt for the best part of 5 days. We're back to the hell of 3-10 wake ups a night, all because he's hungry and struggling to breathe with the dummy in his mouth and he doesn't appreciate having to choose between the two. Sodding dummy.

Beyond exhausted. Back at work full time and I'm running on 2-5 hours of broken sleep a night. I've taken to going to bed at 8pm so that I can get a few hours in while DH is still up (as he's beyond useless when it comes to getting up in the night)

A colleague told me that DS really should be sleeping through by now. Her DS is 6 months older and started sleeping through at 3 months. Apparently I'm clearly lacking a strict routine. Tried to suppress my smile as I mentally punched her in her smug face.

One day I will sleep and I will appreciate it all the more because I've not experienced it for so long. I genuinely can't remember the last time I had a solid 8 hours without interruptions.

Moan fest is over. I now need to go and do my prep for tomorrow.

Hello all, we're going through a rough patch with night time sleep at the moment. DD is now 24.5 weeks so I think it's probably a "leap", or teeth, or a sleep regression

Two nights ago she had me out of bed at least 10 times and last night she alternated between crying for 10 minutes then sleeping for 5 minutes between 10pm and midnight. I tried Calpol, teething gel and Vicks on her feet (she sounded a bit snuffly so I thought it might be a cold) but nothing helped to settle her. In the end I brought her into bed with me so that I could at least attempt to resettle her without getting out of bed.

I'm so tired at the moment, the short day time naps (20 mins, 40 mins and 30 mins today) mean I barely have a chance to close my eyes before she's awake again. My parents don't get here until Sunday night so I just need to push on through the next few days until I get some help

Hi ladies, first moment to myself after a week at my parents which is just what I needed!

I got my Mum on board with trying to re-establish some sort of regular pattern (I try to avoid the "r" word) to his naps which were horrendous / non-existent!

My Mum said leave him to cry a bit which we did - the longest he cried for was 15 minutes and as usual, not a proper distressed cry but a tired/frustrated grumble. In 3 days he was back napping in his cot for up to 2 hours! I was completely amazed.

He's not replicated it every single day but he seems to be doing a weird transition thing where one day he will be fine for 3 hours wake time and I'll think ok - 2 naps today and then the next day he'll be tired after 2 hours and it'll be back to 3 naps. Or, a mixture of the two which makes it really hard! The worst scenario though is we do 2 naps and he still only naps for 30 minutes a piece. I just wish after 3 hours awake, he'd be tired enough to reliably stay asleep for at least an hour!

Awesome - re: your question about night weaning...I never withold feeds if he's grizzly - but I will always give him time to resettle himself which he is pretty good at doing now. If he wakes around 3am I know that if I leave him, it will escalate into a grizzle then cry as he is genuinely hungry after going down at 8pm.

When he is fully established on solids (including fats and protein) then I will consider proper night weaning where he has to go without BFing in the night regardless. We're not there yet.

Mrsm glad things seem to be settling for you a bit. Do you think he could be going through a leap? He's about the same age as my DD isn't he? She's 25 weeks on Monday. She started rolling from her tummy to her back on Sunday so it all fits - new emerging skill = sleep goes out the window

Yes they're exactly the same age, DS born on March 12th.

I do hope he starts rolling back from his tummy back to his back - he's done it before but as soon as he started going back to tummy he stopped doing it!

I've stopped turning him back over in the cot now and he actually seems to love sleeping on his tummy! He seems to be able to resettle himself after the first sleep cycle when he's in his tummy.

I have the wonder weeks book - I'll check now to see if his behaviour matches.

These naps are driving me insane.

A 30 minute morning nap. FFS.

And just slept 12-12:30.

Gaaaaaah!

I've got the same problem today! Woke up from second nap at 12.30 - where do we go from here!!?
Stretch out awake time or cram 2 naps in or pray for a long 3rd nap!

I just tried to put him down again as he woke up sooooo grumpy but he was having none of it.

He's going to have to stay awake until least 3 now as I'll never get 4 naps in.

FFS!!