5 month old daughter refuses to nap!

[Roisinsmummy]

Hi everyone,

My 5 month old daughter has had some sleep issues (I take the blame for the bf to sleep) which we are currently trying to solve for her. We've used the pat/shush to get her settled at night and from wanting to be fed to sleep she is now settling herself at 8.30pm as long as someone is with her for that settling time and she sleeps through to about 7-7.30am with a 10.30pm dreamfeed which is great. The problem is her naps though; she likes to nap on my lap after a feed which obviously isn't the ideal situation and recently those naps have become very short and light - if I move my arm just a bit she wakes and won't settle. She needs so much more sleep in the day and I know that I have a responsibility to make sure that she gets her rest. In the last week I've been trying to put her in her cot at the times I know that she gets tired; 9am, 12.30pm and 3.30pm but she is fighting it. We sat there today and eventually I thought she was going to nod off but she fought it and started crying - we were in there an hour too with no success. I'm not even sure I'm doing the right thing either!! Please can anyone who has successfully solved this suggest anything to help?

Thanks,

[flutterby0914]

I have no advice as we are currently going through the same thing. Bigs hugs though as it is a long road

[Fiver]

Same here.  Although she's not even sleeping for long doing AP

[flutterby0914]

Oh Fiver I hear you. mone is so OT now that I am lucky to get 30 min in my arms Our night is going to suck tonight

[Fiver]

Yup, it was 30 mins max naps all day today along with OT wailing in between.  Not fun!

[flutterby0914]

why do they make it so difficult

[Mama_Mia]

Roisinsmummy, you said you try to put her to bed at 9am, 12.30pm and 3.30pm ? How much does she sleep after you put her down at those times? At 5 months my LO could only handle 2 hour A times. So if she is only sleeping for 30 minutes then I would put her back to bed 1.5 hours later. The crying when she nods off tells me she is definitely OT, I went through the same with my DGS and it still happens at 6 months. I do feel your pain as I just now got DGS down for an OT nap and am hoping for longer than 30-45 minutes rest. Anyway, the most important thing to look at his her awake time. Maybe if you posted your day in EAS format, we could get some more input