My 8 week old sleeps beautifully at night, but we are having difficulty with the naps. He won't take one longer than 15 minutes. I know he is tired, because he gets so cranky by the end of the day. He doesn't respond at all to shush pat, not even for a minute. He cries the instant he is swaddled. At night swaddle and shush pat seem to work, but not for naps. I've been caving and letting him nap in the swing, so that he won't get so overtired that his nights get screwed up. I'm counting the days til the 3 month mark, when I can make a pot of coffee and do P.U./P.D. all day, but now he is too young. Am I right to do what it takes to get him his naps (ie. putting him in the swing), until I can do PU/PD, or should I take a harder line? Honestly I could shush/pat him for a solid 90 minutes into his next feed and he would cry and fight his swaddle straight through to the next feed. My mother's solution is to move him from one activity to the next to "hold him off". But I know from BW that this is working against my goal to stop the fussiness before it starts by establishing daytime sleep. So I guess my question is, what can you do when they are too young for PU/PD, but shush pat doesn't cut it? Oh and one other thing, he feeds in only about 15 minutes and yawns after about 10 minutes of activity so if I put him down right away, even with the 1 1/2 hour nap he would be up way before his next feed. What do I do between his wake up and next feed that won't confuse his routine or overstimulate him? Sorry for all the questions. He had terrible allergies and we are getting a late start with all this.
Oh, a little more info: he is touchy, won't take a pacifier (except as a 20 second prop, so we abandoned it), and gets anxious at the first sight of swaddle, no matter how relaxed he is (although at night we overcome it). Wind down is itsy bitsy spider, and sitting in dark room holding. Like I said, he is very easily overstimulated. Even holding him seems to annoy him, especially during feeds. He accepts the bottle more easily, sitting in his boppy (while I hold the bottle, of course).
