DD has really always slept well at night, which im grateful for. Started doing 5 hour stretches from 3 months, and now she regularly sleeps 9 or 10 hour stretches which is fantastic. The problem is her day naps.
She has really never slept longer than 40 minute naps even from a newborn. We used to get a rare unicorn 1.5 hour nap but those disappeared entirely bout 2 months ago. So she has about 4 40 minute naps a day which i never feel is enough but she just scrapes through.
Now she's just refusing to nap entirely. It's exhausting. Yesterday we tried for nearly 2 hours just to get her to nap before we just had to give up. She doesn't scream or cry, she just whinges a little while and then starts babbling happily inbetween frantically rubbing her eyes. It's so frustrating. I just feel like giving up entirely with day naps as my back and arms are just killing me. But i know that's not wise. Family think i'm obsessed with naps and i should just let her 'drop' but everything i read says that's a bad idea and her night sleep will suffer.
We rock her to sleep - or almost asleep if i can get away with it, then put her down and slightly jiggle her a little. But it just doesn't work now. As i'm rocking her she just gets frustrated almost as if she's annoyed it's not working and keeps whinging and moving her head against me and tries to suck my face. (she wont take a dummy) If i really jiggle her she then sometimes totally conks out but then jerks herself awake a minute later. I can be doing this for 30 minutes. If i just give up and lay her down she either whinges and cries, or goes hyper and babbles amongst eye rubbing. If i then ignore her and lie down next to her pretending to be asleep she just carries on!
It's weird as if she wakes up at night for a feed, I can just lie her straight down afterwards and get into bed next to her and she just goes to sleep by herself. I dont know why day naps are so hard. I hate seeing her frantically rubbing her eyes! I just want to help her sleep!