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She just doesn't want to nap (very long)

Posted 12/03/2012
My ten month old fights naps and always has. We have recently made progress with bedtime but that has been a long road as well. I'm kind of scared to post here because part of me is afraid the responses will make me feel guilty. I am one of the more AP minded people on my birth board but I'm definitely moderate relative to some people on this board. That's one of the reasons I love this board. I lurk often and it makes me a better parent. I learned about UP which has really helped frame my parenting style. I'm very respectful and attentive to my DD, I babywear, EBF but we don't cosleep. It just doesn't work for us but I know that's a common AP response to this type of problem. Anyway, she just hates going to sleep. I try to avoid conflict as much as possible. She naps roughly at 11am and 3pm (give or take an hour - I follow her cues) and I try to arrange errands around her nap times so she can nap in the car or we go for walks and she naps in the stroller. Sometimes I nurse her in our bed lying down but just as often she doesn't want to nurse long enough to fall asleep. If I try to get her to nap in her crib it's a battle. Today she shrieked hysterically (and I'm not exaggerating) for an hour. I was rocking, swaying, humming, stroking, etc... I left her room and walked around the other rooms in our house. She kept shrieking even when I sat her down on my bed to try and calm her down. I am sure nothing else was wrong. She was perfectly happy all day before and after this. I'm almost positive the only way I could have calmed her down would have been to bring her downstairs and let her play and give up on the nap. But I can't give up every time. She needs naps or she gets very fussy and this wasn't an isolated incident. I did have to put her in the crib and walk away for 2-3 minutes and it didn't change the intensity of her screaming. When I'm holding her she is pushing away from me, elbowing me, trying to throw herself out if my arms, etc... It's so frustrating and it's been like this forever and I keep thinking she will outgrow it. I really thought since we had made so much progress at bedtime it would spillover. I eventually got her to sleep because she was completely exhausted from her hour long tantrum and I had the bathroom fan on and I bounced her in the bathroom. Then I got her in the crib and she only slept for a half hour :( I'm frustrated for myself because I really could use a break during the day. But I'm also sad that I can't seem to figure this out and I feel like its the one thing her and I are disconnected on. She is one of the happiest well adjusted babies I've ever see except when it comes to naps. Full disclosure, we did do CIO (modified) with her for two weeks several months ago. I'm absolutely not a CIO advocate but we felt its what she needed because she was fighting sleep but didn't want to cuddle or cosleep or even be held and she needed sleep. It worked temporarily and we had a peaceful week or two but then it wore off and it's not something I'd be willing to do again but I'm not sure what else to do. Maybe I'm just looking at this all wrong and had a bad day. I've also considered trying to stretch out her awake time to transition her to one nap a day. I'm sorry this is so long. I think I needed to just get some of this off my chest but I would really appreciate any advice.

Comments (13)

1 2
Posted 12/03/2012
With my 7mo old, I have to wait until he is absolutely exhausted before he'll go down for a nap. His naps are around the same times as your LOs. If he seems distracted or like he doesn't want to nurse and sleep, I put him on the floor or in his jumper to play for 20 minutes and try again.

He honestly will not sleep until he is way overtired and fussy. It's frustrating, but if they aren't ready to sleep, they won't.

I hope you got Captain Douchebag a box of Summer's Eve so he could spend Christmas with his own people. --Diana of Themyscira

Catrina+Josh=Baby Boy!

Kaitlin214 · Original Poster
Posted 12/03/2012
I nursed her today but she didn't fall asleep. I am thinking maybe I just try offering to nurse her every 30-45 mins until she's sleepy enough to fall asleep.

Like I said, we've made a lot of progress at bedtime which I never thought was going to happen. She goes down in her crib peacefully and awake now. I thought that would make putting her down for a nap a little easier but obviously not.

Thank you for your input. It helps to know there are other babies out there that fight sleep like she does.
Posted 12/03/2012
It helps me stay calm to remember that you can't make anyone sleep, you just have to set the stage and let sleep overtake them. So if it's taking a while and stressing you out, that stress might even make sleep harder.
My lo was fighting naps around 10-11months, dropping to one helped a whole lot. We still do a second catnap occasionally, if he's really tired and fussy before daddy gets home from work.
We also have a fairly consistent morning routine. We make and eat breakfast, clean the house together (takes forever, but he lives helping mommy!), then take about an hour walk with the digs with him on my back (sometimes we stop and play at a park). Once the walk is done, he's so mellow, I nurse him and he's out.
Don't stress too much, your baby WILL sleep! Maybe not exactly when or how you'd planned, but you could do absolutely nothing and she would eventually sleep, right?
Kaitlin214 · Original Poster
Posted 12/03/2012
Sometimes I don't know if she would sleep. I mean, I guess she's human so I want to say yes :) But she has never just randomly fallen asleep. She is so interested in anything and everything that she just forces herself to stay awake. I am actually able to stay more calm now since this has been going on for ten months but I just wish I knew how to make it better. It's just hard when I know she's tired but she just won't give in and she shrieks like she's in pain but I've learned that she isn't. She's just really really pissed. It surprises me how pissed she is capable of getting when I feel like I'm being pretty gentle with her (nursing, humming, rocking, etc...). I do remind myself that I can't force her to eat or sleep fairly often but some days are harder than others. Today I cried for most of the 30 minutes she slept after her screaming for an hour.
Posted 12/03/2012
We went through a similar phase when my son was around that age. I think we just got into a pattern of him fighting naps & me getting frustrated. For us, what worked was having my husband take over nap duty when he was home. I think it started on a 3 day weekend and he did all naps during that time. He napped sooo much better for my husband and my son definitely resisted less for me too after 3 days of their routine. We still have my husband do all naps on days he's home. I'm sure it's not the cure all for everyone, but maybe worth a shot if someone else could take over nap duty for a couple days.

E - born 5/29/11

Group Owner
Posted 12/04/2012

I made a rule for myself early on that I wouldn't spend more than 15-20 minutes trying to get DS down for a nap without any progress. Then we'd get up for 20-30mins and try again. After 20 mins of trying I would start losing my patience and so would DS and it just wasnt worth the struggle. 

If nothing else it might be helpful to take a week or so to help break the power struggle thats going on and start a new routine for naptime. Can you try laying with her for the whole nap so that when she wakes up she has the security that you're there? There might be some residual fears from sleep training that are coming up during naps so taking some time to ease them might be helpful to teach her that sleep is pleasureable. 

If she fell asleep in the bathroom that may be a sign that she has negative associations with her room so it may be helpful to move her room around to help change things up and start fresh. Or maybe introduce a floor bed for naps. None of these things are quick fixes that will make her sleep, but more of a change of direction to help her learn to like going to sleep. 




Posted 12/04/2012

I feel for you. I've had a baby that would not sleep daytime naps easy and definitely didn't want to be held when she was tired. I know how it feels to have a shrieking, trembling, arching and kicking baby in my arms and feel like a total failure.

However if you do CIO you must be willing to enforce it in every developmental jump that does not cease itself, after an illness and other sleep disrupting things like holiday's sleepovers etc etc. So if you are not willing to CIO for 5-10 minutes on a kind of regular basis, It's not a solution. Of course there are baby's that will sleep perfectly after one round of CIO but a lot of them won't. This is not compatable with the AP view of course.

Can you make a safe and quiet environment for her somewhere else? Like a playpen? Or a sleepover bed? Set it up somewhere else. Give some toys that do not make loud sounds and gradually remove yourself from the scene? She may be hit by sleep if she's not expecting it.

Around this age our DD would lay in bed happy for a couple of minutes before starting to cry. Going back a couple of times for a kiss and a hug before the crying started was great for us.

I like the advice on taking a limited amount of time for trying to get her to nap. You could try to put her down and tell her you will be back to pick her up in two minutes and do so over and over again. If she starts trusting you, you can expand the timeframe to three, four, five etc minutes. If she's OK with five minutes teel her you will be back in five for a kiss or cuddle in bed. etc etc. Do this for a fixed period of time everyday so she will get more positive associations with her crib.

Kaitlin214 · Original Poster
Posted 12/04/2012
I have been laying with her for her whole nap fairly often lately. I forgot to mention that DH works from home. He can do in five minutes what takes me an hour. So whenever feasible he gets her down but it's not always possible. Most of the time lately I have been lying with her in our bed for her whole nap. This does work sometimes but it's also making me a bit batty because I don't want to do this for every nap. And I know she is smart enough to associate her room with me trying to get her to go to sleep and that does upset her but I honestly believe that it's the fact that I want he to sleep that is her issue and not the room itself. When it's not nap time she is perfectly happy in her room. She'll sit happily in her crib while I go to the bathroom or tidy up her room as long as the light is on and her music is off. She is fine with being left alone in there and she sleeps in there every night with much less drama than we have at nap time. Today she screamed exactly the same whether I was in her room or my room or the hallway. The only reason the bathroom eventually worked was because I distracted her with the mirror and because she was just completely exhausted. And I do think the idea of trying for 20-30 minutes and giving up makes a lot of sense but I've tried that before and all that happened was she screamed for 20-30 minutes and then was really happy for five minutes when I gave up and then got really fussy because she was exhausted so I'd try again and we would repeat that cycle a few times and she wouldn't end up napping and then it would be so late I wouldn't want her to nap because it was close to bedtime and if just move bedtime earlier but she would be fussy all night. And I don't have these big battles with her often but I have them every time I try to put her down for a nap in her crib. I have managed to avoid that most of the time by napping with her, having DH put her down, nursing her to sleep, taking her for a walk, etc... But it's frustrating that it happens anytime I just try to put her down in her crib no matter how much I try to make it peaceful. I think yesterday was just a bad day for both of us. I am probably also frustrated because our anniversary was last week and DH really wanted to go out and we weren't able to make it happen. Because she is so difficult at nap time and doesn't stay asleep consistently at bedtime we can't really leave her with anyone and I just thought we would be in better shape by 10 months. She's not a high needs baby in any other way. She doesn't even like to be held most of the time. She's very independent but just gets really upset about sleeping because she doesn't want to miss anything.
Kaitlin214 · Original Poster
Posted 12/04/2012
I wrote that last post in the middle of the night so I'm sorry if it doesn't make much sense.

I'm feeling better this morning. I'm going to try one nap today and see how it goes. I'm a little worried that she will still only sleep for a half hour and I'm scared about what she'll be like if she doesn't get more sleep than that. But I want to try it.

Thank you for all your suggestions.
Posted 12/05/2012

Have you read "The No Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley?  That really helped me out.  Also, babies pick up on our emotions, whether it be stress, sadness, anger, or whatever.  It will affect their sleep.  So be careful not to let your DD pick up on your stress, anxiety, etc.


Piano/voice teacher, beauty consultant, wife, and SAHM to a wonderful toddler (rainbow baby!) & newborn baby boy!

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