XP: fighting sleep

monkey_pants

My DS is 14 wks tomorrow and is giving me a crazy hard time going to sleep. He just spent over 4.5 hrs awake this morning (!) because I couldn't get him to nap. He still needs to be swaddled because he startles and also shoves his hands in his mouth, both of which wake him. But he screams when I swaddle in anything - and we have all kinds of swaddles. I wind up having to nurse him multiple times to get him to finally sleep. I can't take all the pre-nap screaming and have played with various awake times but nothing works. How long is this phase going to last?!? If this is 3 mos, I'm pretty scared of the 4-mo wakeful.

mana8503

I want to ditto @kaitlinr87‌. I started doing the eat play eat sleep routine. Once lo starts rubbing her eyes, yawning I feed her. She usually falls asleep on the boob and I move her to the swing. Life changing.

bf43005

By the time DS is yawning and rubbing his eyes he's already hysterical. He then cries for hours until I can get him down. FTM so maybe I'm missing other sleep signs but I don't think so. Naps are very on demand with no schedule and he will do the same crying fit but it's usually shorter than the nighttime fit. Very frustrating!

monkey_pants

I actually had him on a great and easy eat-play-sleep routine for a few weeks in November but now even a 45 minute or 1 hr awake time still seems to wind up with a huge fight to get to nap. I would be much happier if we could get back into the cycle and have fewer tears! My DD was not like this so I don't know how to fix I assume it's a phase and things will change soon - at this age they always do.

Everyusernameistaken

Totally agree to make sure you start trying to put him down before he gets too tired. I think the standard awake time at this age is 2 hours but I need to start putting him down around 1.5 hours or it's difficult. He's definitely fighting me though and we had a 5 hour stretch the other day so I feel your pain!
Have you tried white noise?

HorseLover11

Just wondering about your comment where he puts his fists in his mouth - is he trying to self soothe? If so maybe try swaddling with one arm out.

monkey_pants

@HorseLover11‌ He may be trying to self-soothe but it's been waking him up. Regardless, however, I did decide to try swaddling with arms out tonight just to make sure we've exhausted all options. He had a better day today in general, but did stay up a super long time after his last nap of the day, despite my trying to put him to bed on time, and then had a massive meltdown (followed, oddly, by a very good mood and his first laughs).

RedBaramid

My baby does eat-play-sleep, but her play can sort of be broken down into "I'm interested and I want to interact!" play and "I sort of want to lay on my play mat and watch the Christmas lights, please leave me alone" play.  We actually get fits if we DON'T let her have quiet awake time. There is a magical moment we have to watch for.. she still moves wiggles and kicks a lot during her quiet play.. but the first time her feet don't move for a whole minute, it's time to swaddle. She fusses about the swaddle and sometimes cries, but usually she's done by the time we get the paci in her mouth and make a full lap around the apartment.  If we miss the magical moment, we sometimes fight sleep until after our next feeding.. and usually that sets us up for a rough day.

HorseLover11

How amazing you got your first laugh!!!!