Hi all,

Just after some advice. LO is almost 5 months old now and I'm having real problems getting him to sleep in the day. Night time's aren't such an issue as I tend to BF him if he won't settle and this usually sorts him out. But during the day I don't like to do this as I have always had lots of problems with BF and soreness so the less I can feed the better - in any case I'm sure he's not hungry. We tend to have a 3hour routine during the day. This is his doing and not mine - we don't have any set times but generally after his feed he is awake for up to 2 hours and then needs a sleep and then he needs feeding again after 3 hours. So there are quite a few sleeps in the day where I'm finding it difficult. He gets very whingey after he's been awake for about 1.5 hours so I know he is tired. But just lately I am finding it more and more difficult to get him to sleep. When he finally does sleep it varies from 10mins to 1 hour but he is then in a better mood (after the feed which happens straight after waking). He is still in moses basket that is on a rocking stand and he has a screaming fit before every sleep. I then have to calm him down and constantly rock him in the basket or in my arms to get him to shut his eyes. I am worried because he will soon be growing out of the moses basket and will have to go in his cot - so no rocking then! I know he must be fighting the sleep but I don't know what to do to help him. I turn the lights out, sing to him, put music on, talk to him calmly, stroke his face etc. But the screaming fits seem to be getting worse.I've read about controlled crying but not sure if he's too young .... or if I can do it. Anyone have any good tips?

Hi lohman,

Happy New Year! I wrote a day time napping thread on here a couple of months ago... we do seem to worry over same things you and me!!!

Anyway my little girl in coming up for 7 months. when she was 5 and 1/2 months old I was struggling to get her to sleep in the day unless she fell asleep on me feeding, i was driving somewhere or walking her in the pram. Got to the point where i was walking 3x a day with pram to get her to nap or she would scream on me until she fell asleep in my arms.

Changing to a cot heleped as i think it was just a much thicker nicer mattress than the thin moses basket ones and she had more room (she is not a big baby but this still seemed to help).

One day I cried on my sisters shoulder as i hadn't slept that night as up again and again feeding and yet still had to do the 3 pram walks a day to get the naps in! I was a total wzlking zombie and very down. She basically said to me that at some point I was going to have to 'crack' the daytime napping and i was finally desperate enough to confront it. I started to note down her 'routine' for the day. it varied as she gets up at diff times/feeds more/less on diff days etc but i could see pattern that she needed to nap every 3 hours. I stayed at home a lot and just watched her carefully.

When she rubbed her eyes, yawned, whined I made sure she had a dry nappy on and put her in a grobag and put her in her cot in a darkish room with a little blanket she loves. I stayed with her and gently patted her but didn't pick her up out of the cot. She cried a lot and i felt like a *** but it was tired crying and I didn't leave her. After 30 mins she was sound asleep. I did this several times, the crying became less. i started to leave her for a few mins and pop back to check on her. Within a week she was napping in her cot.

No doubt plenty of people will think Im a dreadful parent for doing this but frankly you make the decision that seems right for the circumstance. I was a wreck and my baby was tired. Now I feel very different and she wakes up refreshed and beaming. Having proper naps has made her so much more cheerful and I feel sane again, like I came out of a dark fog.Letting your baby cry is not nice. I feel I have done the right thing though.

I know you have had lots of feeding worries and ongoing pain- I empathise. When I got over our feeding problems which totally dominated my life for 4 months the next thing I worried non stop about was lack of naps! It WILL improve Lohman xxx

i know you

Hi Ladymarm and Happy New Year!! Thanks for your reply - and upping your previous thread for me.

I have started to try him in the cot for the past few days without success - he just screams. He is just much worse than he used to be - I am having to jig him about in my arms which I never used to do. And as soon as I put him down he starts again and I have to rock him really quick to get him to close his eyes again. If I'm not quick enough with the rocking after putting him down then we have to repeat the whole jigging thing over again. I will have to keep trying the cot though as he will need to be in it soon. Yesterday I tried letting him cry a bit but then caved in. I don't think you're bad at all for doing this and I think I will have to do this at some point. It's just a case of bringing myself to do it!

I still have feeding problems - taking fluconazole again for thrush - have awful stabbing pains again. Did you get your feeding and thrush all sorted in the end - did you get the stabbing pains? I'm having to take painkillers all the time again. Can I ask how your LO sleeps in the night? Have you weaned now? I keep speaking to people with much younger ones than me and theirs are all sleeping through the night - a lot of them formula fed - but some BF. We had a spell ages ago now where he was only waking once but for the past 4/5 weeks it's been 3 times a night again. I'm very sad but thinking of stopping BF as I have so many problems with it. Wanted to get to 6 months so I could start weaning and BF less but that's still 1 month away and I believe that they still BF almost as much anyway.

Hope you had a nice Christmas x

Hello lohman,

I think you are right. You will 'confront' the napping when you feel ready.

Sorry you are having the feeding problems- so frustrating. Did you have any luck with the telephone numbers undiwear gave you? It is horrible to be in pain. I got a blister on the end of my nipple from being 'lazy' about latch about 6 weeks ago again and all the old dread of feeding and tearfulness came right back to me. Awful. It also got stabbing pains throughout the breast and this reminded me of things undiwear has said. i think for me the trauma to nipple caused the stabbing and think probably i never hasd thrush- althoughat the time it was worth pursuing that problem.

Is it worth trying to see someone about it again? Although you may move onto formula soon maybe you will want to bf again in the future and it would be so wonderful for you to find the cause of the pain once and for all, if that is possible? Hope so. Do you have trauma to your nipples? now you are out of the 'early days' do you feel able to get on the phone and try and organise visiting someone or getting someone to watch you feed at home?

I'm still bfeeding I'm very happy to say. LO has never slept therough the night! It changes and she has had growth spurts (one around 6 months Im afraid...) when she is more wakeful but mainly i feed her 2 times a night. 3 times a night is not that unusual for us either. The diffenrence nowadays is i can put her down and she go back to sleep herself now and i get straight back to sleep until the next feed.

I started weannig with a little bit of runny baby rice at 24 weeks, just once a day at first. Now at 7 months she is offered bits and bobs- some puree and some finger foods 3 times a day. it has been a very positive tihng for her dad who felt a bit excluded during the full on bfeeding times. Yes I still feed about the same. if you do switch to formula soon what an amazing job you have done getting this far when it has been so so hard. I am going to buy some formula to have in the house as I would like to go to a birthday party in a month (just until late evening)and leave Dad in charge for the evenig for the first time ever, but at the mo she wont take a bottle and I dont have the confidence to leave her not knowing if she would feed from a bottle if she woke whilst i was 1/2 hour drive away! The thought of her being hungry fillls me with horror.

Anyway look forward to hearing from you x

Ladymarm - I did call a couple of numbers back when I was having problems before and I go to a breastfeeding clinic at the hospital most weeks which is for problem cases eg. thrush etc. I never found anyone that would come to my home to watch feeding but when I have fed at the hospital I have been told that latch and positioning look good. HV also watched me feed once and said the same. There have been several people that have watched me feed. I doalways seem to have some kind of nipple trauma - have white bits on the tips that come and go - think they seem to be bits of dead skin that grow over the nipples. Sometimes get blisters but haven't had one for a while. I didn't know the stabbing pains could be caused by nipple trauma - it comes on up to 1hr after feeding and sometimes feels like the inside is burning. I think it is easing a bit so maybe the fluconazole is working - or latch has been getting better - who knows? I've seen my GP several times about it all and nobody seems to be able to tell me what it is.

Glad that your night time routine is better now. LO goes back to sleep without any problems during the night feeds - but then I can still not get to sleep for about 1hr - and then it doesn't leave long before we're awake and feeding again. Just lately he has been waking more often than every 3 hours in the night so he's obviously not getting enough - but he has a habit of falling asleep on the boob during the night and I try to wake him but don't always manage to get him to drink more. He tends to chew me a bit at this point so I have to take him off.

 I know what you mean about leaving LO. I haven't done it yet but others mums I speak to (with babies younger than mine) seem to leave them regularly and go out. To be honest I'm not bothered about doing that yet - would be nice once in a while but I wouldn't make a habit of it. Have you tried giving her the milk in a sippy cup? Or if she won't take it from that, from some other kind of beaker? You could start giving her a bit that way each day or two to try and get her used to it.

Hope it works out with the bottle/beaker. I'll let you know how I get on this week - finish the fluconazole on Friday!

Bradley - no, not what I wanted to hear but at least you're honest and I don't feel like I have THE most difficult baby in the world if others are also struggling with daytime naps. I keep thinking maybe he doesn't need to sleep as often as I'm trying to make him. But he gets very whingy so he must be tired. Am going to try and get him in a better routine this week - god knows how!!!