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Attachment Parenting
jaymiegerard
member
Please share - getting your crawling, bed-sharing LO down to nap
jaymiegerard
member
I posted the other day about bed-sharing and naps. Lately my son screams bloody murder when he thinks we are putting him in his crib (separation anxiety, I think), so we've moved the queen-sized mattress in the guest room to the floor and put up bed rails, and this is now our nap and bedtime bed (DH sleeps in our bedroom, I sleep with DS).
My reason for posting this time is, ever since my son started crawling, getting him down to nap has been really stressful for me and him. I used to nurse him, he'd unlatch, stare around the room for about 30 seconds and pass out. Now I nurse him and the second he unlatches he sits up. Then he crashes back down (usually head first into my head - ouch). Then he sits up again. Then he crawls to the bed rail to play with it. Then he crawls towards me again and pulls my hair or smacks me. Then nurses again. Then he sits up again. So on and so forth, until he starts crying. This usually goes on for almost an hour, and then at some point he nurses himself to sleep. By the time that happens I am so stressed and feel totally confused about how to help him go down.
I have tried leaving him in the bed to fuss it out but he ends up hysterical (again, due to separation anxiety, i think).
I think that he doesn't want to sit up after he nurses, that his body is almost taking over, and he gets tremendously frustrated, not to mention exhausted.
I assume this in normal and a phase, but I would love to hear others' experiences. How do you get your bed-sharing, crawling LO to nap? Any tricks? I don't want to sleep train (if I decide to) until the sep. anxiety has tapered a bit.
Thanks so much
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Re: Please share - getting your crawling, bed-sharing LO down to nap
Is it possible he is just not ready to nap when you're trying to put him to sleep? Maybe he's just not that tired until that hour is up. You could try shifting his naps to when he's REALLY tired and see if that helps.
My LO also does this at night (we bedshare also) sometimes and we just let her crawl/walk around until she's ready to go to sleep. When she's really ready, then she'll lay down and sleep.
It's possible, but every time I stretch the period between his naps longer it is even harder to get him down. I think that he is just chronically overtired. :-(
Once my LO figured out that he could crawl around (and avoid sleeping) I couldn't side-lay and nurse him to sleep. Now I hold him to nurse to sleep and there is occasionally a fight but Mommy/Mr.Sandman always wins. Typically I have better luck if I try to put him down as soon as he hints at being tired. If I wait until he's yawning and crabby he is overtired and harder to get to sleep.
I will sit with my back to the wall and prop my knees behind him to help hold him close to me. Sometimes it takes up to 30 mins of squirming/nursing before he goes to sleep but once he's out I can lay him down in bed.
HTH!
What about rocking him to sleep?
I used to sit DD on my lap, facing me and put a blanket over her back and just rock her to sleep everyday.
More Green For Less Green
My DD was doing this too and I agree that it seemed her brain was saying "go crawl now!!!" even though she didn't want to. It stopped once she mastered that skill. We also nurse to sleep and what I did was soft music and instead of swaddling what I used a stretchy fleece throw blanket (adult size so 5' by 3' maybe) as a deterrent.
I laid it out on the floor bed, put her in the middle with her head over the edge and free, folded it over her, pulled it tight but not too tight, then I laid on top of the rest of the blanket and nursed her. It basically gently trapped her so she couldn't roll or crawl easily, and when she fell asleep I could just leave it underneath her.
Im going through the same thing again now with walking so hopefully it passes quickly.
I started swaddling again when LO started crawling and then switched to a woombie. Same thing - she would unconsciously try to crawl instead of sleep.
Ah- I could have written almost this exact same thing. Naps started becoming a nightmare, because LO acted like she wanted to just crawl and play until she became overtired and a mess. We used the opportunity to see if she was ready for her own sleep space and she was not.
What I did, was end up nursing her in arms in our rocker, then either hanging out there for her nap or transferring her to our bed. If I put her in the crib, she got upset and woke up, but once in bed, she'd take really solid naps.
She also started napping less around that time, so I think she was just figuring a schedule out. I couldn't handle lying down while she was all over the place, though, and she gets much less distracted in the chair. Plus, in the chair, if she wants to crawl, I can put her on the floor and it is less stressful than her climbing on me in bed.