How bad would this be?

[PeepersMom]

By now people are probably tired of hearing me talk about short naps.

But as we were crying today after his 30 min nap and difficult back to sleep session I was thinking I could get him to sleep longer if I just held him.

Do you think that would teach him to stay asleep past the 30 min point? 

That is a major step backwards, right?

I am desperate here.

Meg

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

I should be finishing off an essay for college and just dropped by while microsoft is cranking up but I felt so bad for you I just wanted to do a quick reply.

Does DS take a dummy Meg?  To be honest I really don;t know how I would settle Mia without one.  Forget shh/pat, forget a swaddle, forget blocking out visual stimulation.  It's the dummy everytime.  At least, that is during naps in the day.  Funnily enough she doesn;t need it anymore at night.  The difference is she has sleep on her mind I think come 7pm but during the day she is highly resistant to naps and only her dummy will make her drowsy.

The time I cracked winding her down for naps was when I stopped reading through the books and focused on my baby.  She is very 'sucky' so it stood to reason that a dummy would help. 

I remember feeling like I couldn't bear it somedays and didn't know how to get through the minutes let alone the hours or days!  But you will get there with DS.

Keep your chin up.............right that essay :cry:

[PeepersMom]

Thanks, but I weaned him off it 3 weeks ago.  I used it to lengthen his naps and get him back to sleep at night for a month and I was still in the same boat.  Only I would be standing over his crib shush/pat and holding the pacifier in his mouth for naps and for an hour about 4 hours after he fell asleep and again at 5 in the morning.  And he would wake up somewhere in the middle to eat.  So it was really much worse with the pacifier. 

It would put him right to sleep, but as soon as he spit it out he would wake up.  And too young to put it in himself.  So when he started to pull it out while fussing and wanted it back in, I decided enough was enough.

Thanks for the thoughts.

As you can hear from my post we're having a very bad nap day.

M

[Mom2katiebug]

I'm probably going to break rank with the troops here, but I resort to AP when I have to if Katie desperately needs sleep.  I try not to make a habit of it - limit it to one nap per day and try to use a different method of AP - so that she won't become used to it.  But, we had a bad, bad day yesterday.  DH had to come home early and I was in tears and having a couple of glasses of wine.  (Neither helped, BTW, that's how bad it was.)  Today, cuz of errands she had a very nice long morning nap and the afternoon was pleasant.  Afternoon nap was terrible and now the evening is falling apart...but at least we made it this far. 

Your sanity is important too.  If you get a good day (or even a few good hours), it can change your whole outlook.  So, if a little AP helps, do it.  But, know that if a habit develops, you'll have to break that later.

One thing that I try to do before resorting to AP, is get Katie into her crib - at least for a few minutes, so that part of the routine isn't lost.

[PeepersMom]

Thanks everyone for your support. 

I always make sure PJ's naps start in the crib, I decided we are good there so not mess with it. The second 'session' as I call it is when he wakes up and just makes sounds, some cooing, some just breathing heavy so I know he is moving around this lasts about 10 min.  Then we go on to the crying - pat/shush which in the distant past took about 10-20  min and now it can go on for much longer.  So after about 30  min of intense crying ( I have lasted longer - up to an hour!) I am picking up and getting back to sleep and holding for a good while - like 20-30 min more, then putting back down.    Works most of the time.  so then he will sleep for the 'third session' of the nap. 

The part that I am inconsistent with is the second session.   Sometimes I just can't bare it and I pick him up right away.

I am well aware that this is part of the problem, but honestly this has been going on since he was 3 months old - so over 2 months and I just can't do it anymore.  And he needs the sleep. 

So every nap I try and pray that he will just catch the sleep bug one of these days, but until then I am a slave to the nap.  And I will probably continue to have crying sessions and dread every single nap.  And wonder why I am doing this, and happy that I did it afterwards.

[FreddieEden]

Hi there Meg,

Just to say I would always resort to accidental parenting if I needed it to break an overtired cycle because I really feel for my poor DS when he is so tired and because I don't think you can do much in terms of teaching sleep when they are really tired.  The problem I have is that as DS gets older and more and more alert then the only bit of accidental parenting that works any more is nurse to sleep (and he has to be completely exhausted and have been shouting his head off for a while for that to work)!

But only you know your baby and know whether it is going to cause problems or not.  I have been lucky in that DS does not seem to be habit forming so the odd lapse here and there doesn't affect him (the downside of that is it takes him an age to learn good habits as well and he would never naturally fall into a routine).  I know there is a view that so long as the baby goes to sleep independently then he will eventually learn how to put himself back to sleep independently and it doesn't matter how you deal with night wakings and early wakings from naps.  That did work for DS who couldn't do it for ages but has eventually learned to put himself back to sleep at night most of the time and for naps quite a lot of the time.  But I know other people have different experiences.

Hang on in there
Freddie

[Mia & Scarlett's Mummy]

Stacy - I've replied to you about dummies (pacis) under your own post

Louise

[mrs_kat]

Meg,

How does PJ sleep - swaddled or unswaddled, back or tummy?

Kenzie and I were getting by with the 45 minutes naps, but now that they've dropped to 1/2 hour, and she's not my smiley baby as much as she used to be, I'm debating teaching her to tummy sleep to see if that helps anything. 

I was never able to extend her naps aside from holding her or napping with her - nothing I tried with her in the crib worked.  So I've been trying to come up with something that might work with her staying in the crib but without my intervention since that only gets her worked up, and tummy sleeping's the only thing I can think of.  It might take a while before she gets used to it (I tried it once and she just thought it was tummy time) but if you're interested, I can let you know how it goes.

I always read your posts in the hopes that you've broken through the short naps and I hope to read that someday soon!

Kat

[PeepersMom]

Kat, thanks so much for that.  We've still gotten nowhere - another day with 30 min followed by the whole soothing routine followed by pick up then finally put down.........sigh

He sleeps on his side/tummy.  But mostly on his tummy.  I put him on his side but he wiggles onto his tummy.  I use one of the sleep positioners to try to hold him snug.

This is exhausting, isn't it?

I hope to post someday soon that he has kicked this demons @zz!!!

M