Nap nightmare...

[MeadowHay]

Ugh, so I'm bracing myself for everyone to tell me this is normal, developmental, there's nowt I can do and it will sort itself with time but just in case there are some miracle suggestions...

DD is 5.5 months. She's always been a good (relatively) night-time sleeper for her age. She is in a vague routine of sleeping roughly 7.30pm-9.30pm then we get her up for a final bottle (or more like half of one), then she sleeps roughly 10.30pm-6.30am - this is when DH gets up to get ready for work which wakes her up, she has a bottle, change etc then sleeps roughly 8.30am-10.30am. She wakes a few times in the night briefly for her dummy, and in the long naps she usually wakes at least once briefly for the dummy, up to every 30 mins.

The rest of the day naps are A BATTLE. She's always been a bad napper but it seems to be getting worse. She does sleep cues so I can tell she's tired (yawning, looking away, rubbing her eyes, then whinging, progresses to crying, progresses to hysterical screaming...). She used to mostly only want to fall asleep on someone, which was a pain especially when she would wake up about 50% of the time when you put her down somewhere. But now she won't fall asleep on you contendelty either (apart from usually after her last feed before bed, for some reason ). She wriggles and whinges and takes her dummy out of her mouth and tries to put it back in over and over and cries and eventually gets hysterical. I usually end up trying loads of different things to get her to sleep and often give up and distract her with something for a bit then try again later but obviously this means she is still awake for even longer and then is more overtired etc. A few weeks ago she started having one long nap most days, of around 2hrs and it was BLISS because before that she would only nap for between 20 mins and 1hr tops (and the latter is rare, mostly 20-30 mins). Then she got bronchiolitis, and she's better now, but still sticking back with the catnaps. The way I get the odd nap is by pushing her in the pram in the hallway, or sometimes by having children's TV on and rocking her in my arms whilst she semi-watches that (both with dummy), and DH bounces her on the exercise ball or walks around the house with her in the Baby Bjorn (but I can't do either of those things due to physical limitations).

Is there an answer to this? Is it possible to teach your baby how to link sleep cycles? Why is she suddenly fighting naps and is there anything I can do or is it just a case of riding it out and thanking God for the pram??

Also, how do you go to baby groups with a catnapper? There are lots of things going on in easy walking distance to me or short bus rides away, but the journey isn't long enough for her to have a nap, and she's overtired like 75% of the day, so I can't take her as she'd just cry and scream with tiredness, and she won't just lay down on me and go asleep like she would have when she was smaller because of everything going on around her that she disturbs her. So unless I get really lucky and she has a nap right before something, I can't go .

Some of it is developmental and some of it is things you can help with.

I would suggest first of all looking at age appropriate wake times. Tired cues are sometimes a sign of overtiredness, so by then you’ve ‘missed the boat’ and she will be very difficult to settle, and to keep asleep. At this age my DD was on 2 naps, and we followed a 2,3,4 pattern - so she’d wake up, first nap after 2 hours awake. She’d nap for maybe 1.5 hours. Second nap 3 hours after that, she’d nap for another 1.5. Bedtime about 4 hours after that.

How does she normally get to sleep for nighttime and naps? Ie, does she go to sleep with the bottle / being rocked etc?

She won't feed to sleep. She does most of her naps being pushed in the pram now, the rest of the time is being rocked in someone's arms, or being held and bounced on the exercise ball, or being carried in the Baby Bjorn. Apart from on a night for her last bottle before we put her to bed, she is happy just being cuddled with her dummy in and goes to sleep herself without needing to be rocked. She used to mostly be happy to go to sleep herself if being held but the last few weeks she needs to be rocked too apart from last thing at night, I dunno why but I assume it's something to do with the fact that we wake her up before then so maybe she stays in a sleepy/calm state.

I am losing the will to live this morning!! Up at 6.45am, downstairs at 7.15, normally she is then asleep by 8/8.30am in her Bednest but I decided that I wouldn't go back to bed with her this morning so I can get myself sorted and do some housework in her usual 2hr nap. She won't sleep, does a huge poo, I finally get her to sleep about 8.50am rocking her in my arms, put her into her rocking cradle at 8.55am asleep and by 9.15am I have turned the shower off and can hear her crying, already awake! I ran downstairs and rock the cradle vigorously and finally manage to creep away with her asleep at 9.35am. I go upstairs and at 9.41am she is already semi-awake and crying for her dummy. Run back downstairs and rock her again the cradle...think she's asleep now so will try to creep away to actually finish getting changed...I seem to spend 90% of her awake time just trying to get her to sleep, it's so frustrating.

...Nope, stopped rocking the cradle for about 3 mins and she's wriggling about semi-awake again . I really don't know what I'm supposed to do?!

It is really hard! I think a big factor here is that she needs to go to sleep where you want her to stay asleep. If she falls asleep in your arms, but when she stirs after a sleep cycle she’s laying in her cradle, she will wonder what on earth is going on, and fully wake up. Same for if she falls asleep being rocked, but it is then still.

I have this issue with DD if I ever try and get her to nap in the car. If we get stuck in traffic, Boom! She’s awake.

Things I would try -

• can the cradle just continuously rock? Like one of the battery powered ones?
• Maybe extend your morning wake time, babies need more awake time as they get older and it is just as hard to get and keep an under tired baby to sleep as an overtired one
• if you want to get out to some groups etc but journey isn’t long enough for a decent nap, I would just extend it (I used to walk for miles when DD was very small!)

Ultimately, I would try getting her to sleep where she is going to stay asleep. When I was doing this with DD, this was her cot. I would have almost a mini bedtime routine - dark room, white noise, wind down period with a quiet book.

I would then cuddle her standing up for a while with her dummy, rhythmically patting her back, until she was drowsy. Then I would put her in her cot, but sit next to her still patting her chest in the same rhythm. No talking just patting. Then she would fall asleep. (Sometimes crying but I would just ignore it and keep patting!)

What I would then do is watch the monitor like a hawk, and at the first sign of stirring / dummy coming out, I would put it back in and pat if needed.

Gradually weaned off patting. Then I got a sleepytot bunny, which dummies can attach to, and she puts them back in herself.

The problem is I can't get her to fall asleep anywhere other than on someone, apart from the pram, and maybe a third of attempts in her Bednest. If she semi-wakes from a nap in the rocking cradle I can get her back off but if I try to put her down in there from the start she cries. I understand you saying about patting her and letting her cry a bit etc and I do try that - which sometimes works in the Bednest, but more often that not it doesn't and after 10/15 minute she is hysterically screaming so much that she's coughing and gagging etc. I often have to go to the kitchen in the back of the house for 5/10/15 minutes if she's been particularly screamy to cool down as it really gets under my skin (she's a very screamy baby and has always been), when I open the kitchen door she is still going at it full throttle, it's not like she will quieten down on her own (not directly related to trying to put her to bed but her screaming record is 2 and a half hours, screaming even between sips of a bottle). I can't leave her to scream for hours alone. She hurts her throat and has had a funny voice from screaming on many occasions in the past, I can't leave her and make it worse. So what am I supposed to do if patting her and getting her to fall asleep somewhere else doesn't work? Because honestly DH and I have tried regularly since she was born, and we still do, but no real success .

Our cradle is an old-style one that you push to rock, can't afford anything fancy like self-rocking ones, it was second-hand from a relative, but to be honest she won't fit in it much longer anyway as she's so tall. Also don't have a fancy monitor, only audio monitor, again second-hand from a relative. Our lives would be much easier if we could afford all the fancy gadgets but we really can't .

Have heard good things about the Sleepytot bunny and keep meaning to buy one of them though, although she's nowhere near to putting the dummy back in herself yet, especially not at night as she doesn't even open her eyes, just cries and roots her head around for it. If we leave it long enough for eyes to open she is usually too awake and then it's a big job to resettle her, so I'm not sure how it will work in letting her do it herself because presumably she'd need to be fully awake to do it, and then she might not go back to sleep herself?!

The morning wake time - I agree it seems like a really short time, but I only put her to bed because she is asking for it - she whinges and cries, yawns, and rubs her eyes literally as soon as she's had her morning bottle, and generally she sleeps for a good 2hrs once she's back in bed, so she's clearly tired. I think this is because she'd naturally sleep in later if left but DH getting up for work disturbs her and wakes her up and once she's awake she's like "hmm, I'm quite hungry actually" and wakes for the bottle, which is understandable.

You're right about just going earlier and walking about, I will try to do that in future, but it's difficult to even get ready to go out because if I leave her for like 60 seconds she cries and then soon starts hysterically screaming and I find it stressful and feel awful leaving her to scream for like 20 minutes to get ready to go out .

Ah it sounds really tough. Something a lot of people mention on here in the sleep boards is an old mumsnet thread about a baby who was bf to sleep and the parents did some really, really gentle sleep training to get him to sleep in his cot. It took quite a while but he was never left to cry. If you google ‘what worked for us’ you might be able to find it, it may give some pointers for you.

The other thing you could try is a bouncy chair for naps - we just had one of the wire ones you rock with your foot. Was about £10 from mothercare I think, but could probably find cheaper or even free on Facebook.

I would put her in it with her dummy on the floor and rock it vigorously with my foot whilst I drank some tea and caught up on Eastenders! I’d have to rock the whole time, but it soon became second nature.

The sleepytot took a while for DD to master - I kept practicing it with her when awake. When she’s asleep she just sort of stirs and grabs it in her sleep.

I know it seems really hard now, but whatever you try and whatever does / doesn’t work, it will get better at some point.

Sorry completely forgot to ask - any signs she could be teething?

Have you tried putting her to bed earlier and then leaving her there until she wakes for a feed? Just wondering if she might be waking up knackered as I know my DD would after that much disruption. Even if you wanted to do a feed at 9.30 you could just rouse her enough to feed and then straight back down. She might not even wake up.

I say earlier bed because you say she gets woken at 6.30. So does my 6mo DD and she goes down at 5.30/6.

Thanks sipper I will look that up. We have one of those bouncy chairs, again second-hand from a relative - it used to work a treat when she was smaller, eventually she started to enjoy watching the TV in it too much so we couldn't get her to sleep in it anymore, but at least it would give us some time without holding her where she wasn't crying, but now she is permanently overtired and grumpy so won't sit and happily watch TV anymore either...yesterday was bad and today is even worse, she seems to be getting worse by the day and it seems like we can't do anything about it and she is so unhappy and we are so stressed! Sleepytot are completely out of stock of absolutely everything on their website too . And possibly teething, but she'd had the teething signs since she was 12 weeks old and no teeth (chewing on hands, increasingly-bumpy gums, drooling, putting everything in her mouth etc). We have tried Anbesol and Dentinox but neither seem to make any difference. Sometimes we give Calpol in desperation but that also often seems to make no difference. She has just recovered from bronchiolitis and now appears to have another, milder cold (bit of a runny/snuffly nose and sneezing a lot and looking generally poorly), so I'm really hoping her worsening state is due to her feeling poorly. Not that she is normally an angel .

Tiny We keep thinking about doing this, however she drinks less milk than the formula packet suggests she should be having, so I am inclined to think that with only 4 bottles in the day she would wake for a feed in the night sometime, which obviously isn't what we want . The other thing I'm concerned about is that if she doesn't wake, surely she won't be eating enough? Today and yesterday she's massively dropped her milk intake too, she normally has 4 bottles of between 6 and 8oz and then a smaller bottle of around 4oz around 9.30pm (although occasionally has a full bottle then too). Yesterday and today so far she has 2 bottles of between 6-8oz then only 3oz and then only 4oz, and obviously we will offer again tonight but doubt she'll drink much again. The only-just-about-waking her thing we are sometimes successful at, but probably about 70% of the time she wakes fully and then won't go straight back to sleep but usually within an hour tops. However DH is a HCP and says that the GPs he worked with told him that they would only look into doing something if a baby dropped their feeding by more than half which she hasn't. How much milk does your little one drink and at what times roughly, for them to go all night from the early evening without a feed? Altho presume they are on solids now? We are starting DD on solids in a week altho I know that they hardly eat anything to start with.

A further complicating factor is that obviously we are starting solids in about a week, and also within the next couple of weeks she will need to go in the big cot at the end of our bed, instead of the Bednest on DH's side of the bed, because she has nearly outgrown it. So that's more upheaval as well, worried it's going to get even worse. I feel like we need to tackle this now but I really don't know where to start still . Today she has not had a single nap that was longer than 20minutes long, and every nap bar one was falling asleep on DH and as soon as he tried to put her down anywhere she would wake up, or he just kept her on him and she still woke after 20 min. The only nap we could get her to fall asleep anywhere else was rocking her in the carseat, but she still woke fully after 20mins even tho dummy was still in her mouth.

Oh my GOD she has been awake since her 20min carseat nap, so that's since about 6.30pm and crying/screaming/rubbing her eyes/yawning on and off since then, and we just cannot get her back to sleep! I really can't cope with the constant battling and the crying .

Have you tried giving any calpol today? Especially as she might be coming down with another cold / bug. I always get sore throats and headaches with those sorts of things, so tend to assume DD might too if she’s grumpy, so I always give calpol. If she’s still very unsettled after a couple of hours I try ibuprofen too. If neither make any difference, I know it’s not that! However, if she is more settled after these things, I carry on.

DD had teething symptoms for AGES before cutting her teeth, from about 15 weeks old, and I saw her first tooth just before 6 months. Again, I used calpol +/- ibuprofen and monitored for effects.

Whilst she is so unsettled with possibly another bug coming, I wouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself to get her napping for long stretches - if she is only catnapping just try and get them to be as frequent as possible - even if this means you end up tied to the sofa for most of the day cuddling her! I’d just keep on with this until this bug has passed. Hopefully then she will be feeling better, and maybe not as overtired as she will have had lots of naps (albeit short, and on you!). Then maybe you can work on longer naps etc.

Don’t worry ahead about solids etc. DD actually slept better when we introduced a little bit of baby rice with formula before bed.

Keep posting here if it helps to vent. Whatever happens though this will pass, and one day you’ll be waking her up as she’s napped too long!

DD was a shocking cat-napper. I just ignored 'standard' awake times and got her to sleep as often as possible in order to fit in enough cat naps to equal enough day sleep. We were still on 90 minute awake times at four months and one day she had six naps!! I did a lot of walking because she'd sleep in the pram pretty well and she'd generally sleep on the way to a group and on the way back too. It was exhausting - you have my heartfelt sympathy. I thought I'd throttle the next person who told me to sleep when she did. At least you have some decent night sleep going on - she was terrible at that too and I was on my knees.

I finally got her to sleep for longer in her Sleepyhead by putting it in the middle of our bed, giving her a dummy (as you do), playing a little lullaby light show and lying right next to her with one hand on her tummy, shhhing if necessary. It would take a while but she'd sleep and I could creep out (if I hadn't nodded off next to her already!). Good luck. It feels like it will never end but it will, they change so fast. Sending cake and hugs.

Oh, I soon found that I had to turn the light and lullaby thing off once she'd nodded off. If it went off after she'd been asleep for a bit (think it was on a timer) then she'd wake because of the change. If I switched it off within a couple of minutes, it didn't seem to disturb her.