Lord, Oh Lord. Tell me there's a solution.

[MissBax]

Really on the verge of a breakdown now. Yesterday I cried for 2 hours trying to get DD to nap. S he's 8 months now, and just refusing to nap pretty much. She will be exhausted, rubbing nose, pulling her hair etc but as soon as I put her down she just screams.
Can someone tell me how you gently sleep trained please? I really don't want to cry it out, I just can't listen to her cry.

When mine were that age they would only nap In a moving buggy or car, or in a vibrating chair.

They didn't nap in a cot until they were around 13mo - I gave up trying as it was too bloody stressful.

Do you have a baby carrier or buggy? Have you tried other ways of getting her to sleep other than putting her down?

Also there is a sleep regression 8-10 months where everything goes a bit upside down!

The morning nap pretty much went by this time for us. In the afternoon I would take her out in the pushchair or , on weekends, we'd take her in the car.
As she got older it worked less and less. Chill out time for baby (and you) that doesn't involve sleeping/napping might be the way forward. Being quietly busy with a book or watching the world go by. I remember sitting with my dd by the window waving to aeroplanes and birds or some other god awful thing (iyswim), making up stories or singing little songs.
I feel for you.

Talk us through your day (times of naps, meals, where you put DC to sleep etc etc) and we can see if it can be tweaked to make some improvements?

Ah thanks for responding! We are in the process of attempting to stop bed sharing so it's all very up in the air, but our day looks like this -

*6-7am- wake up and breastfeed
*7-8am - play + breakfast
*9am - nap
*10am - wake up + breastfeed
*play / go for walk / baby group etc
*12pm - lunch
*1pm - nap
*2pm - up and breastfeed

• play *sometimes another nap around 4pm *5pm - dinner and bath *7pm.- bed

That plan is highly optimistic though, and rarely happens. It can sometimes take me 2 hours to get her down for 1 hour.
Up until now she was sleeping in our bed, but as she's crawling and with my lack of sleep, I'm trying to get her to nap and sleeo in her cot.
Yesterday it took me nearly 3 hours for her pm nap, in and out the bedroom.

In the evening I breastfed her to sleep at 7pm and then put her in her cot asleep, she slept until 11pm then woke up with a bang. I then couldn't get her back into her cot so she came back into the bed with me. I then end up squashed between DH and DD and as always I've had almost no sleeo.

I jist want someone to say "do this..." and I'll stick to it, but at the moment I have no idea what I'm doing, if I'm doing it right, or if I'm making things 10x worse :(

Is her cot in your bedroom, or a separate one?

It's in our bedroom, she wakes so frequently during the night that I would be in and out of her room so often otherwise.

Also, I fprgot to say, she squirms and wakes so much in the night and I always just put her on my boob. But I'm sure 90% of the time she's not hungry, and I've just resorted to that to calm her. I know that this has caused a massive problem because she now struggles to sleep without my nipple. I have to try and stop this, but also not sure how.

Transition is really hard. We didn't co-sleep but had other challenges on different fronts. Others who co-slept should come on with advice for you. Let me tell you a big secret - everyone feels lost with this, particularly in the wee small hours.
If it's any use, we got our little one used to dozing in her cot when she napped in the day. She dropped morning nap first.

I think you are being led by your preferred routine, getting stressed. What if she doesn't nap, you just get on with the day. Go for a walk. Let her lead you for a while and then gently try to establish a routine.

Give yourself a break, in other words. If she is asleep, let her sleep. If awake, do something that is not trying to get her to sleep.

Disclaimer - mine are teenagers so this was a long time ago but we definitely didn't have such a structured day.

My thoughts are that because you breastfeed to sleep she hasn't learned to settle herself for sleeping so that when she wakes up she doesn't have the tools to get comfortable again and go back to sleep. This also means that if you don't feed to sleep for naps she won't be able to get to sleep herself.

My DD had a phase of fighting naps around 6/7 months and I eventually cottoned on to the fact that she was too tired to cope with the disappointment by the time I put her for nap. I started putting her back for her morning nap 2 hours after waking then her 2nd nap 3 hours after waking from that one. A lot of sleep schedules I've read posted by other parents have the first nap surprisingly soon after waking in the morning (1.5-2 hours) but it seems to work.

I got naps cracked probably at 7 months and was horrified when at 11 months it's all change again as naps are dropped