Napping has become increasing difficult with Doodle. As a newbie he used to peacefully fall asleep while nursing and then I could usually gently move him somewhere to complete his sleep. Now, however, even if he does fall asleep nursing (which usually only happens at night now) he doesn’t sleep long and if I try to move him he wakes up instantly and nap time is done.
He has also always easily fallen asleep in the car and buggy. While he will stay asleep when I take him out of the car in his car seat he wakes up within about 15 minutes if he isn’t in the buggy where movement continues. Especially at home, no matter where I put him in his seat or how quiet we are, he is up shortly after coming in.
We had about a week where Doodle did not take a proper nap at all. He took lots of cat naps, little half hour sleeps throughout the day but no good, long stretches and the end of last week I started getting really frustrated with him. From the time he was tiny he has taken a longer afternoon nap around the same time the girls do but he stopped going down easily. He was getting over tired and then the only way I could get him to fall asleep was to swaddle and nurse him.
I’m trying to break the nurse to sleep habit since he is still waking at least once a night and wants to be nursed back to sleep. During one of these night feeds, I had a flash back to Sugarplum. When she was a bit older than Doodle is now she went through a similar phase but she wouldn’t nurse to sleep during the day time at all. We ended up having to wedge her on her side between funky monkey and Hooey in her Moses basket with music or the TV on and vigorously rock her where she couldn’t see us until she cried herself to sleep. And then we had to beg and plea with Honeybun to not make a noise that might wake her up. Luckily we are nowhere near that level yet with Doodle(only because the boob still works!)
So what I’ve started doing which has had success in 3 out of 3 tries is: When he starts to act tired I go for the nap, I don’t wait for him to become hysterical as I was before. I turn on his lights and sounds machine and swaddle him tight. I lay him in his crib and gently rock him side to side. If he tries to engage me, I’ll smile back at him but I try not to talk and I don’t stop the rocking. If he starts flailing, kicking or fussing I just keep going with the rocking. Eventually he peacefully falls asleep and I do a little victory dance as I leave the room. My hope is that by doing this routine regularly during the day he will eventually need less and less time rocking (it’s been less than 10 minutes each time anyways) and that eventually we’ll be able to use the same technique at night so hubby can help soothe him back to sleep some nights. And eventually I’m hoping just putting him down wrapped up and with the familiar sounds will be enough for him to put himself to sleep.
