Sunday, March 27, 2011

Nap time

Sprout, napping the way he does best: in his stroller. I've tried putting him in his crib when he's tired, before he's tired & except for a few times, months ago, he's refused to sleep. I've tried nursing him to sleep & transferring him to the crib when he's soundly conked out in my lap. He wakes up immediately upon touching the mattress & pitches a fit. I often just let him sleep in my lap, but he doesn't sleep more than one 40-minute cycle that way.
So we go out for a walk once a day at least, around naptime, & he generally sleeps for an hour & a half or longer in his trusty Uppababy. I can't complain too much about the naps, though, because he sleeps well at night. He goes down easy & sleeps ten hours uninterrupted most nights.
Have any of you got a baby with a daytime crib nap aversion? What did you do to get your babe napping in their bed?

8 comments:

  1. I nursed J to sleep for years..yes, you read that right-years! Although at daycare, they could get him to sleep by sitting next to him and rubbing his back.
    Then when he was older, it was singing him songs until he fell asleep. Then eventually, leaving him alone and coming back every 5 min..now..finally, he just goes to sleep on his own. It was a long process!
    When I did nurse him down though-if I waited about 10 min after he unlatched, then he was deep enough into sleep that I could carefully put him into his bed and not wake him up. I remember watching the clock and counting minutes! 5 min was never long enough-he'd wake right up again, and I'd have to start over.

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  2. My son was like that but is now starting to grow out of it. What I had to do was nurse him to sleep in our bed and leave him there to sleep. I had the bed set up so that it was safe for him. He still sleeps beside me at night but I am starting to have success with napping him in his hammock and the pack and play. He has been a pretty light sleeper since a few weeks old but now at 5 months is able to soothe himself to sleep sometimes.

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  3. Taleigh, you reminded me of the one other thing that has been working lately: I take him to bed & nurse him to sleep side-lying, then leave him on the bed when he's out. I've just been putting pillows on either side of him, in case he decides to roll someday. He doesn't really roll when he's on the play mat & never seems to when asleep.

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  4. I am relieved to see that my 9 month old daughter isn't the only baby who doesn't like her crib. I am really struggling with her daytime naps as well. I have to lie down to nurse her and after several attemps at transfering her to the crib she will sleep about 30 minutes. Thank you for blogging about this issue.

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  5. morgadinhoj, Sprout's seven & a half months old now, I forgot to mention in my post. I hope he'll figure out how to go to sleep by himself in the next few months--it would really make my life a bit easier when I'm at home. Going out every day is not a bad thing, but when it's grey & rainy or I have stuff do do around here...

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  6. Nova (7 months now) just started sleeping in her crib at night about a month ago. Before that she was in bed with us, with the occasional stint in the co-sleeper. In terms of naps, she has also just started, in the past month, sleeping for longer than 30 minutes (for some of her naps anyways). We didn't really do anything in the way of sleep training, just waited for it to happen. We use an exercise ball to bounce her to sleep. When she was younger this could be a very long process, but it's getting less and less and she doesn't have to be soundly asleep anymore once we transfer her to the crib. She is still waking up 3-4 times a night and I nurse her back to sleep and then put her back in the crib. Sometimes she doesn't settle so I give up and bring her into bed with me.

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  7. I basically nurse my baby to sleep - she is 6 months old. Same as I did for her big sister, now three. Somewhere along the line they figure out how to fall asleep in the crib or bed. Or they just always sleep on the go. Emily (6 month old) napped only in the ergo or carseat for the first 5 months. Doesn't seem to have hurt her and was far less stressful for me than the months and months I spent trying to get her big sis to nap and sleep in the crib when she was a baby. If the stroller works, go with it! Emily can also pull a mean stroller nap, which I love, because I can bring her home sleeping and leave the stroller at our back door so she sleeps in fresh air.

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  8. Hey Lisa, I meant to comment aaaages ago - you know how it is!
    We have a very similar situation - Tilly will pretty much only nap in her stroller. If I nurse her down and manage to get her into the crib, it will only ever be a 45 minute nap.
    If I try to put Tilly in her crib, she plays and then cries as she's overtired, sigh. I wish I had some words of wisdom.
    I know you posted this some time ago, has anything changed??

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