Baby fighting naps

[HeatherOT]

Hi all,

I'm really struggling with my 16 week old LO's daytime naps. I'm hoping someone can offer some advice, or at least some reassurance that maybe it's normal and will pass(?) (FTM here, feeling pretty clueless and lacking support with lockdown). I'd say we're definitely in sleep regression territory but this doesn't match any of the issues normally talked about...

LO has never been a great daytime napper unless she's in the sling, where she can go for hours. We're currently trying to transition her to take most naps in her crib, and we have started a very short nap routine which involves a musical teddy, swaddle, rocking in my arms and white noise. However she fights it every time - she can be perfectly happy in the lead-up to this routine but then as soon as she realises it's nap-time she screams and writhes around like I'm torturing her. It is taking me longer to get her off to sleep than she is actually napping for! She's currently only managing one sleep cycle of about 30 minutes and then it's impossible to get her back off to sleep after this even though I can tell she is still tired.

I'm finding it really difficult because ultimately I would like to help her learn to drop off on her own (which seems a total impossibility at the moment!) but I would have thought rocking her in my arms should be the easy route to sleep but she just goes mad every time! I feel like a failure of a mum that my baby won't even sleep in my arms :(

Has anyone else experienced this or have any ideas? It's getting me down because I seem to be spending most of my day battling with nap-time and LO is still just getting more and more overtired.

Many thanks in advance x

Hi Heather,

Sorry you are having such a hard time but you are definitely not a failure, exact opposite you are doing everything you can for your LO.
This could be the 4 month sleep regression. It was terrible with my DS, he just lost the ability to fall asleep 😖 he’s 13 months now and the 4 month was the worst change in sleep. He also only slept on me in the sling at naps, and beside me at night but he became a brilliant sleeper in his cot so it will happen.
It can take up to 6 weeks to get through, it seems to get better gradually over that time though.
The advice is usually just do anything to get through each nap/nighttime, don’t stress about bad habits as these can be amended when you have the energy.
We did start putting our DS into the cot just to lie there while I got ready for bed at night. After a while he started to like it and would fall asleep there himself sometimes and that’s how it started to grow.

You are doing great and I hope you get more rest soon xx

Thank you so much for your kind reply :) I think perhaps I have misunderstood in the midst of late-night reading! I was under the impression that baby has to learn to link sleep cycles in order to get through the regression & I thought that would require some kind of sleep training to help them fall asleep unaided. She goes down better if I feed her to sleep, which I was trying to move away from for this reason (hence rocking) but if I just follow the path of least resistance for now, will she still get through the regression on her own? And then we can try some gentle sleep training afterwards. Sorry if I'm being really daft! x