She's overtired....now what?????

[Joanna VP]

Sundays are difficult days for both our lo and for us! With attending church, and often visiting family, her routine gets messed up. Today was the worst - as she refused to sleep, then of course got overtired, and now has been crying for an hour - despite our efforts of pu/pd, nursing, nothing works!

There is going to be more times like this when she is going to get overtired. Our life can't stop for our naps every single day. My questions is has anyone found anything to help calm their lo down once overtired? Is pu/pd the only solution? It's heart breaking for us to do this technique for over an hour?

thanks for any wisdom from all you wise mommies out there!

[Deb_in_oz]

when Olivia gets overtired (less often now that she is older and on a more establlished routine...) i find that taking her into her room which is dark and holding her and swaying for a little while to let her burrow her eyes into my chest... (like she is blocking everything out) helps to start a windown.  then instead of PU/PD have you tried pat/shhh.  i think rather than further stimulating her with the up and down... keeping her in the cot but staying with her to get her through this overtired state is best.  do the "shhh"ing really loud and close to her ears and just keep your hand on her at all times until you can tell she is getting past the wound up state. 

now olivia settles herself even if overtired - she just needs to mantra cry for a few seconds to blow off the steam in those special cases and then she goes straight to sleep. but i do keep going back to using pat/shh if we get a rare time when she really just can't let go because she is so far gone.

[kim&savannah]

We've also found that our dd needs a little cry time to relax if she gets overtired.  Even now (she's 15 months) if she's having a rought time, I will jsut hold her and rock her for awhile until she relaxes and I can put her down.

Is there any way that you can get her to nap while you are out on Sundays?  At her age, that is pretty rough to not get a nap.  We go to church also and it has been very difficult at various ages but we started taking her into an unused room (usally the janitors closet because it was dark :oops: ) and going through a mini-winddown (singing, swaying) and getting her to sleep that way so she could get a nap in.  She would usually only sleep for 30-45 min, but it was better than nothing.

~Kim