DS is nearly five months and on three naps a day: on a good day these are 1 hour in the morning, 2.5 lunchtime, 1 hour in the afternoon. More or less at the exact same time as I wake him/he wakes naturally around 7am and even if a night is horrendous and I resettle him at 6.45, I won’t let him go beyond 7.15am. (Also nor will DD?’c who marches into the bedroom around then and wakes us all.) On a bad day it’s generally a routine less shitshow but oh well – he always manages at least one nap of at least one hour even when DD does her devilish best. All pram, sling or boob, though, which isn’t sustainable: 2.5 hours in the sling when you’re 5’3” and your fat son is a hulk is no joke.
He won’t be fed to sleep and put down. He won’t be settled in the cot (yet – I am grimly determined). Our routine for this goes: into bedroom, dimmed lights, fresh nappy and sleeping bag, nap time story, into cot, pitch dark, completely fail to cot-rock or pat him to sleep, swear, take him out of the bag, put him in the sling. But at least he gets his hour!
I held DD for naps til she was c. 10 months or so, then tried the cot after feeding to sleep and it worked. I think she was knackered: early crawler and very mobile. But I’m old and haggard and DS is a fat hobbit and I’m not slinging or pramming him til 10 months. Not to mention the shitshow days: I can’t do that when DD is home and though we can go tp the park with the pram, he never does that lunch nap as well as he does in a dark room.
No dummy, not going to introduce one. No swaddle as he’s half rolling. Room is pitch dark. Persevere with the shush pat or something relentlessly for a week instead of playing the give up game? What would you do?