Lack of napping

[HollyC255552]

So..my DD is 18 weeks and basically she either naps for x2 20-30 mins a day. Once in a blue moon she will sleep for 1.5-2hrs in the afernoon. I try rocking, patting, shushing, stroking, walking in pram for some time. Is there anything else i can do? Or does she just not need sleep? I dont quite know how she doesnt need more than her night sleeps though. Any advice would be appreciated!

At 18 weeks she needs more sleep than that. Assuming you don't have a wonder baby who is sleeping 14 hours a night without waking, she needs quite a lot more.

More sleep promotes better sleep. I am afraid you are caught in the opposite - that poor sleep spirals and means sleep quality just worsens and worsens.

The key things babies like to help them get to sleep is sucking and movement. You can give these several ways:

Sucking:

• Bottle feed to sleep
• Breastfeed to sleep
• Comfort breast suckle to sleep
• Dummy

Movement:

• Bouncy chair
• Sling/carrier
• car seat
• Pushchair

I favour dummy and bouncy chair, foot bouncing from the comfort of my sofa, or while sitting next to chair holding dummy in mouth until asleep.

At 18 weeks 20/30 minute naps are not unusual (although 30/40 minute nap would be better), but they should be frequent. Don't look at time asleep, consider time awake.

I would not expect baby to have longer than 90 minutes awake at this age. If it takes a long time to get baby to sleep then this might be reduced to 60 minutes to give half an hour to work at settling to sleep. I have always liked EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You) on a 2-2.5 hourly structure:

Eat - Full Feed
Activity - 90 minutes from waking at most, or until tired signs are shown
Sleep - Aim for at least 30 minutes, or until wakes naturally
You time - then start again and repeat, repeat, repeat through to bedtime.

I have exactly the same problem with my 18 week old DS.

I can only get him to sleep in the pram or sling. Not great in this bad weather. He also isn't great at sleeping at night (this has been getting worse and worse since 12 weeks).

Thanks for the tips fate. I have started giving a dummy at night in order to try to stop him feeding to sleep. Do you have all naps at home? I love getting out and about and wonder whether this is hindering his naps.

Naps work in the pushchair or carseat when I am out or on the school run. But I do try and work any trips out to be during awake time where possible so that I am home for naps.

Thanks Fate some very useful tips there. I'm going to aim for naps every 1.5 hours tomorrow see how that pans out. I do find it difficult when i'm out & about though as my DD very rarely sleeps in the pram or car seat so she does get very grizzly. Majority babies i know or have known normally fall alseep this way. Hmmm...
Also should babies this age have a certain bedtime? We have a routine of an evening but her bedtime isnt always the same as it depends how her bottles fall.

Also should babies this age have a certain bedtime?

No, not really.

Having a bedtime routine is useful - as in a series of things you do before nighttime (like milk, bath, massage, PJs on, story, or whatever you do). But you can be entirely flexible with what time this routine happens according to daytime naps.

In my experience baby will develop his/her own natural bedtime. I would do bedtime routine anytime she is awake after 6pm ish. She would then have a 'nap' in the evening (say from 7pm or 8pm) downstairs and at the next wake up (say 10pm) I would take her up to bed with me as I fed her.

Quite naturally as she got older she started not waking for the late evening feed so I was having to wake her up to take her to bed when I went up. So at that point, instead of waking a sleeping baby I started putting her upstairs 'to bed' at her 7/8pm sleep and this became bedtime. This happened when she was about 5 months old.