Feeling down on myself

boilerup227

I always said I'd never let my babe CIO and here I am, crying myself, as I have just let him cry himself to sleep.  What a horrible way to fall asleep....  I just don't know what to do anymore.  He falls asleep on his own at night without issue.  He does still wake up frequently and is unable to fall back to sleep on his own but that is a moot point right now.  For naps, 50% of the time he will go down with 1-2 minutes of fussing and then be right out.  The other 50% of the time he straight up screams.... no matter what.  He screams if I hold him, he screams if I sit near his crib and soothe him, etc.  It doesn't matter if I am there or not, he screams.  In fact, if I am there it seems to make it worse because it's like he's thinking "why don't you pick me up already!?"  However, when I do pick him up, he continues to cry and fuss/fight me to go to sleep.  I really am at my wits end because I hate hearing my baby cry and I don't know what to do to stop it.  Not napping is not an option... I can see that he is clearly tired as he is falling asleep in my arms while still fussing and fighting the whole time.  I have tried white noise, read NCSS, a lovey, etc.  I just don't know what to do.  He cried for 30 minutes until he fell asleep for his nap and I feel so very guilty about it.  I knew being a mommy was going to be hard but I had no idea the guilt that could be involved!

 ETA:  I should mention that he only naps for 30 minutes at a time too.  So, all this fussing and fighting only gets us 30 minutes of a nap.   

boogerbearoriginal

How many naps are you doing? And what time frame between awake/sleep? Perhaps he's getting overtired? Or on the flipside, perhaps he's not tired enough? Is he acting sleepy before his naps?

My LO fights naps with a vengeance if he's overtired and/or overstimulated, and then sleeps like crap. So I wonder if yours is the same? Honestly sometimes we just rock/nurse while he fusses and tries to escape my arms. I just shush and say go to sleep. It's incredibly frustrating and so hard sometimes, but I know he's just overtired.

FWIW around 6m is when my LO went from taking lots of 30-45min short naps to a 3 nap schedule with longer sleep/awake periods. 

ETA - don't be too hard on yourself. Letting your 6m CIO one time isn't the end of the world.  You are both trying to figure out what works best so everyone is happy and rested.

LadyAph

Booger+Bear:

FWIW around 6m is when my LO went from taking lots of 30-45min short naps to a 3 nap schedule with longer sleep/awake periods.

 This.  DS was pretty much what you described.  I thought he'd never grow out of 20-30 minute naps and then, one day, he took a 2 hour nap.  Since then (about 6 months) he's been pretty decent taking about hour long naps 2-3 times a day.  Sometimes even 2 hours.  It will happen.  And don't feel bad.  You do the best you can as a parent, we're not superheros.