Daytime Napping

[Newmum26]

My LO is 4 months old.
He sleeps well at night he goes down awake in his crib and self settles and dozes off to sleep without any fuss or moaning around 8.30pm and has been sleeping until 6.00am until recently we are back to one wake up for a feed around 2/3am. He then goes down after his feed nor problem again.
Daytime however is proving difficult.
He naps in his car seat no problem if we are out he naps well and on days where I don't go out I pop him into the car seat and he instantly drops off for his naps. Tea time naps I rock him and cuddle him In and he falls asleep for a power nap on me.
My problem is putting him down in his crib in the daytime for naps.
I tried it a few weeks ago and he hates it he gets himself in such a state and cries until I pick him up.
I'm so worried about the whole 'getting them into a habit routine' and 'making a rod for your own back' that I don't know if at this age I should be making him nap in his crib?
My health visitor said as long as he naps it doesn't matter do what works for us.
I also worry as he's so good at going down at night if I push the daytime crib napping then he might start playing up at nighttime too 😬
I use a dummy but when I put him down in the day in his crib he doesn't want to know and spits the dummy out he has never been one for really taking a dummy only now and again.
Any help much appreciated 😊

My daughter was exactly the same and I tried everything. She would almost fall asleep and then wake and shout for me after about ten minutes and then wouldn't go to sleep at all after a ten minute power nap. She would never nap longer than half hour.

She will almost always sleep in the buggy or the car. I wouldn't go out on purpose just to get her to sleep though. I just planned things so it would work out. It's never been an issue for us since we accepted she just isn't going to go to sleep in her cot in the day.

My friend, though, did controlled crying and her son sleeps for two hours for daytime nap in the cot. Goes down no problem.

Albeit my daughter has been good at bed time. Do whatever works for you and your lifestyle. We always go out at the weekend so the naps just naturally happened when we were an route to somewhere.

Needing the extra help of movement for daytime naps is really normal.

If you aim for independant sleep (ie baby not sleeping on/with you) ultimately then the thing you would benefit in doing now is establishing independant naps. So naps not in your arms. Doing that without tears means naps in something that moves.

You've found the car works. Try a bouncy chair and relentless rhythmic bouncing. It pushchair pushing back and forth in the kitchen.

Movement in itself is easy to wean off. Sleeping in your arms is much harder. With a dummy established independant naps should be easier to establish. Just make them happen in something that moves.

Thanks for the replies 😊
So are you saying that it's not a big issue if Baby is not being put down in crib in daytime at this age? And just carry on having him nap with movement for now?

If you can't put baby down in a stationary crib, then putting baby down in something that you can control the movement off is ok at this age.

You could ideally do with it being something you can wean off, and somethings are easier to wean off than other things.

I like the bouncy chair with mauslky controlled bouncing (with my foot) because I can control how much baby needs bouncing. So on over tired days that will be a lot and for longer. On good sleep days I might just do 30 secs of bouncing then just periodic single bounces every 30s for a few minutes. Or anything in between. The benefit, I found, is that the movement is controllable rather than on or off (like the movement of a car journey is just on or off with little variation).

Going to sleep in a stationary crib/cot would definitely be the aim. If you can do that now (many babies can quite easily, many can't) then great. If you can't then i wouod work-towards that rather than stressing that it isnt happening right now.