Yelling and whinging for every nap

[Loukifre]

Is this normal? My DD is 4 months now but she has ALWAYS done this with naps. She takes 4 naps a day, from 30 to 45 minutes each and sleeps quite well at night waking once or twice for milk. But every time we take her upstairs and start the nap routine the yelling starts.

It doesn't matter if I take her at the first whiff of a yawn or after several yawns, eye rubbing and grizzliness. As soon as we go upstairs and I start rocking her she yells and squirms. I just keep rocking and shushing and eventually she stops and starts falling asleep.

If I put her down without rocking she gets really upset. Even with rocking and shushing or patting whilst shes in the crib.

Holding and rocking works, on average in about 10 minutes, it's just that initial yelling that makes me feel I'm doing something wrong? As she's getting older she's squirming too and I'm worried this nap fight is just gonna get worse as she gets older and stronger.

Does anyone else's baby yell and grizzle at every nap time? Am I doing something wrong? She usually always wakes up happy after a nap.

A tricky one! My LO does this when he isn’t quite ready to nap - are you perhaps going in too early? At that age my LO could do around 2 hours between naps.

I also found that often I’m doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Like singing a song he doesn’t want or patting him when he wants to be rocked, etc. I just cycle through all the options until I get it ‘right’ and he stops 😂

Sometimes I’ll also ‘trick’ him into a nap by sitting him up in my lap like we’re playing and just singing softly, stroking his leg, etc until he drifts off.

I think sometimes if they know they’re going for a nap they get serious FOMO!

He’s almost 5 months now.