Hi there,
I'd really welcome any advice on getting my baby to nap during the day - and stay asleep when I do manage to get her to sleep! She's just over 7 weeks old and the last couple of weeks will not sleep during the day - she is then obviously really tired (probably now overtired most of the time) and cries a lot - by the end of the day it is then really hard to stop her crying at all.
We're very roughly following EASY - up to the end of last week I was putting her down for day time naps in the pram and pushing it until she fell asleep. Then again when she woke up, which she's brilliant at doing after about 20 mins on the dot! I have stopped doing this as it's becoming really difficult to keep up -sometimes it take forever, sometimes I think she's becoming immune to it as it doesn't work (esp later in the day), and often I feel like I have to stand over it as she wakes up loads (and not happy waking, crying usually). So the issue is not only getting her to sleep, it's staying asleep.
This weekend we started a different approach and tried to put her in her moses basket when we thought she was ready - we developed a little nap routine (which by the way, does this need to be similar to bedtime routine or not?), gave her 20 mins to settle herself (sometimes involved crying) and then went in at intervals to try and calm her. We had varying degrees of success - she did manage one nap after crying for only a few mins then falling asleep - the other times she cried for ages and nothing seemed to work to either soothe her or help her go to sleep.
I wonder if I'm missing her tired signs - but she does yawn and get fussy which I think means it's the right time - but she is never 'drowsy but awake' to put down for a nap - she is just fussy so she ends up being put down fussy, I can't figure out a way of getting her drowsy...? Today I thought I'd pinpointed the right time so prepared to put her down and she acted very hungry - which I didn't think she was but genuinely looked it - so I fed her - then she fell asleep so she obviously wasn't hungry and just tired - I then put her down and she stayed asleep - but probably wouldn't have if I hadn't fed her as she wouldn't have been sleepy!
Also, there's so much conflicting advice about how much they should be napping - what do you think? Does she need 3 times1.5 hours per day or a nap each cycle, which would make more than 3?!
Any advice anyone has on any of the above would be much appreciated - I wouldn't mind if she didn't nap much and was happy and content all day, but she clearly does need to sleep as she gets really upset as the day goes on otherwise - which at the moment is most days - so she's pretty miserable most of the time, and obviously as each day goes on that gets worse...
Thanks