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June 2015 Moms
jenglish418
member
Help with naps
jenglish418
member
I'm literally sitting here in tears so I'm sorry if this has been posted before or as a similar thread.
My daughter is 5 1/2 months and won't nap anywhere but in my arms. I have tried for a month to put her down for naps and every time I end up frustrated because she wakes up,mostly really irritated because she was woken from her nap.
I can't even put her down for bedtime,I nurse her to sleep and my husband takes her and puts her down for bed,and I've even copied the exact way he does it and she still wakes up. I have honestly tried everything, waiting until she is SO asleep,drowsy and then placed in crib,napping in the swing,pacifier,toy and stuffed animal to soothe. I have zero time to do anything or even lay down during the day for 5 minutes because I'm either holding her to nap or were playing.
Another issue I have with this is she only gets about an hour nap on me because I have to pee and eat like a normal human so she's usually tired throughout the day because she's not getting her full nap.
I'm not sure what to do,my husband thinks I should just accept it and move on but sitting all day in pretty much the same position is really taking a toll on my mental health.
I'm so sorry this is so long,I honestly have NO one to talk to or ask about these things.
My daughter is 5 1/2 months and won't nap anywhere but in my arms. I have tried for a month to put her down for naps and every time I end up frustrated because she wakes up,mostly really irritated because she was woken from her nap.
I can't even put her down for bedtime,I nurse her to sleep and my husband takes her and puts her down for bed,and I've even copied the exact way he does it and she still wakes up. I have honestly tried everything, waiting until she is SO asleep,drowsy and then placed in crib,napping in the swing,pacifier,toy and stuffed animal to soothe. I have zero time to do anything or even lay down during the day for 5 minutes because I'm either holding her to nap or were playing.
Another issue I have with this is she only gets about an hour nap on me because I have to pee and eat like a normal human so she's usually tired throughout the day because she's not getting her full nap.
I'm not sure what to do,my husband thinks I should just accept it and move on but sitting all day in pretty much the same position is really taking a toll on my mental health.
I'm so sorry this is so long,I honestly have NO one to talk to or ask about these things.
Re: Help with naps
Have you tried baby wearing or letting her cry for a bit? I think baby wearing would help you immediately, and a bit of sleep training could help long term.
Eta you have a daughter not son, sorry
Also - I have a video monitor I can supervise him on, you probably don't want to do this if you can't see that he's safe.
Having said all that I have given up on naps. If I'm home then I let him nap in my arms and I get nothing done that I'd love to do (read a magazine and make a photo book on shutterfly right now). If I'm out and about he will usually fall asleep in the stroller or in the car seat and that's all I get. I know I need to put him in his crib for naps but it wears me out going into his room every 10-15 minutes patting him to go back to sleep.
This probably wasn't super helpful but just know I know how you feel. It's really hard.
But. Recently (and I mean really just the past few days) I've been able to have him next to me on the couch, and when he is tired he will fall asleep. I have to bear thru a cranky phase first - whining, lots of agitated movement, pulling out his paci, etc. He never goes totally nuclear, tho. But after this rough patch (which happens also when I hold him, too), he falls asleep on his own. I've begun tentatively experimenting with this. It does not work in his crib, he has to be able to see me.
So I guess what I'm asking is - does she just fuss and kinda cry? Cause if so, I would try just sitting next to her so you can talk to her and she can see you, and try to wait her out. However this will not work if she goes nuclear. At this point you know the difference between just crying and nuclear.
I know this isn't much help, but I wish you well, and hope you progress in the nap department soon. It really sucks when they won't nap.
First of all though, her crying... I remember reading that there is two types of cries when falling asleep, one that occurs because they're becoming increasingly upset and they're escalating (often if this cry occurs long enough eventually become exhausted and crash), and the other cry is a tension release cry (a method of self soothing/settling). I'm a softy and it hurt my heart to much to let my LO have the initial cry for more than a few minutes before I would come barrelling into the room and scoop him up, but I can now accept the latter of the two cries. Distinguishing the difference before coming to his 'rescue' has been required in order for me to give him an opportunity to learn to put himself to sleep. I won't be able to put him to sleep for the rest of his life either, so he's understandably going to have to learn to fall asleep on his own someday, it's something I can't do for him, and to learn requires giving him the opportunity to do so.
But because I'm that softy mum type, we're inching along very slowly, one small step at a time with the least amount of blowout cries. So, I might not be the best person to take advice from, I'm sure there are other more effective and faster techniques but I'm pretty happy with where we are considering where we started.
As others suggested, I would consider purchasing a baby sling and getting her use to sleeping in there. For my LO, he initially wouldn't fall asleep in his sling but I would actually slowly and carefully put him in there while he was still on my chest. Then you could get up and walk around, getting a few things done, she might occasionally slightly wake but once she's use to the sling she's likely to fall back asleep. Eventually I did this enough and could then put him in the sling and he would fall asleep on his own with enough walking/rocking. I started having more success with this once we implemented a downtime routine before he became overtired (which you can determine with taking notes on sleep times for a few days). Shutting all the blinds, listening to instrumental music, singing, whatever you choose, I suggest being consistent. Most babies are happy in their carriers, and if she's tired enough, eventually she'll fall asleep wherever she is! After doing this, I switched him to facing forward in the sling, same routine, but he got use to falling asleep without being on my chest! Yay! After that, try setting her down and out of the sling on the bed where she can still feel your presence if you suspect she'll wake if you set her down on her own, eventually being able to sneak away. And over time, start setting her down earlier and earlier.
Now, most days but not always, my LO falls asleep next to me after our routine. When I set him he's awake, when a few months ago he needed to be completely asleep for me to be able to set him down. He does let out his tension release cries as he puts himself to sleep, which is fine. Now we're working on creating more distance between myself and him as he falls asleep (as I said, we're working as this slowly). He certainly doesn't need me there to sleep anymore, so I feel optimistic that we'll get there soon enough. Best of luck mama! Hang in there!
@MurLindzz spoke about the 'escalating' call vs the 'tension release' cry, that's what I am talking about when I am referring to going nuclear vs in general fussing / crankiness, kinda crying that happens right before he falls asleep. And like I said, he does that whether I'm holding him, or not. Its worse when I'm not, but he's still not nuclear
I had trouble with this until recently, even though LO naps in her crib at daycare and DH is able to put her in there for a nap every morning. She will sleep in her crib at night, no problem, but likes to nap on me during the day if i'm home. Now, on weekends when i want to put her in the crib (sometimes i just accept her napping on top of me because i miss her during the week), I wait until she is JUST about to fall asleep nursing and then unlatch her and put her in the crib. She will typically roll over and put her thumb in her mouth and be asleep in a few minutes. Sometimes she will fuss for a few minutes before falling asleep. If she fully cries, i go in there and try to feed her more, but fussing i will ignore for 10 minutes before getting involved - typically she's out within 5 minutes.
The trick for me was that at night i wait until she's asleep on me usually and wait for her to unlatch herself before moving her (unless she's not hungry - in that case i put her in the crib awake and she puts herself to sleep in 5-10 minutes with minimal fuss). but if i do that during the day, she isn't sleeping deep enough and will wake up angry during the transfer. That's why i try to get her into the crib before she is actually asleep during the day. It's working really well.
Your other point about the length of the naps - an hour is actually a really long nap at this age. "Typically" a 5-6 month old will take 3-4 naps/day totalling 2-4 hours, and then sleep 10-12 hours at night. For us, LO prefers shorter naps and then 12 hours at night (which i can deal with). I'd hate to have her be napping for 4 hours a day and then sleep only 9-10 hours at night - especially because no matter what her naps were like all day, by 7pm she is RAGING and wants to be asleep. I like to sleep past 5 on the weekends, so 10 hours isn't going to cut it. She will generally take 3-4 naps/day now that are between 20-45 minutes, and then sleep for 11-12 hours at night. Occassionally she will drop a long nap on us, of 90 minutes or so, and when she does that she just skips a nap later in the day and sometimes will sleep a shorter night stretch. I think it's unreasonable to expect naps to be longer than an hour until you are down to 2 naps/day, at which point "typically" kids will do two 60-90 minute naps. You don't see kids taking LONG naps again until they cut it down to one mid-day nap after they're a year old. My 2 year old nephew takes a 2-3 hour nap every day now, but when he was on two naps/day they were only an hour or so.
@mellymar if my LO doesn't let out some fussing before crashing he hums or sings, hilarious. I'm pretty sure it's a settling thing too. This boy is a ball of endless ENSRGY, so I assume it's his temperament. Is your LO the same?
We have tried some version of the Ferber method for about two days,I know it would be longer for anything to actually work but she hysterically cries within 5-10 minutes and when I go in there and she sees me she cries harder and doesn't stop. She eventually did fall asleep for one nap but the whole 15 minutes she "gasped breathed" ( if that makes ANY sense,like the stutter breathing after a big cry?) and when she woke it was back to screaming. So I thought there HAD to be another way and stopped.
As far as the leaving her next to me,like I said above if she sees me she screams as hard as she can. So the swing and mama too are the same,we have a noise machine that has a projector on it so we use that for bed and it works,kind of because she's knocked out when we put her down for bed so the projector doesn't usually get watched.for nap time I use the noise but during the day you can't see the projection.
I also have an ergo and a wrap,the solly baby, I don't think those classify as a sling but it's what we have. She loves them both and she does sleep in them,as long as I'm moving,if I sit down for anything she wakes right up. I'm also really small so my arms aren't super long so I'm very limited as to what I can do while she's in the carrier,and again as soon as I sit she's awake. The same idea goes for the car seat or stroller,as soon as they stop moving her little eyes open.
I had no idea that a hour is an okay nap because she's still usually so sleepy. From the small amount of research I did online two 2 hour naps is usually the ideal and she gets like 4 1 hour or less naps. But I will say she is a great sleeper once she is down,so at night her bed time routine starts at 630 and she's down about 730-8 and she won't wake up until 7-8.
I'm going today to find some blackout curtains,hoping that's the issue from nap to bedtime.
@ashleymc09 do you not have a fitted sheet on your crib mattress? Mine is plastic too but I have a thin pad and a super soft sheet from pottery barn on top of it.