Shut your eyes and go to SLEEP!

[Jess&Frank]

Hi
I was just wondering if anyone has any top tips to get babies to go to sleep during the day for their little nap. We are very lucky in that Frank is actually very good at going to sleep in the evening after his bath. However, during the day, he gets tired and needs to go to sleep but doesn't seem to know how to do it without a fight. I'd like to teach him somehow that when he is tired, he needs to just shut his eyes and to to sleep rather than screaming the place down until he exhausts himself.
Can anyone suggest some way of getting through to him? He is only 16 weeks old.
Thanks
Jess

[Catherine&George]

Hi Jess

I have recently started to get a bit stricter with George (aged 18 weeks) and his daytime naps. If we are in the house I put him down in his cot rather that letting him nap in our arms, on the sofa etc etc. Like Frank, George has always been pretty good at recognising it is sleep time in the evening after his bath so to let him know that it is nap time, I try to have a shortened version of that routine. I take him up to his room, draw the curtains, put him in his sleeping bag and then sit him on my knee in the same chair that I feed him in at bedtime and read him a short story. The idea then is that I can just put him down in his cot and he will drift off to sleep - the reality is that it usually takes another 10 minutes once he is lying down of shushing, stroking and singing to finally help him to go to sleep - don't know if any of those ideas are of any help.

However, our big problem with George is that he will not sleep in the day for chunks of any longer than 30 minutes - you can time it with a stopwatch! This means that by the end of the day he is pretty exhausted and I'm convinced that a longer sleep in the middle part of the day would make him (and me!) so much happier - any tips anyone!

Thanks
Catherine

[Jess&Frank]

Can I just say, we have now resolved this by simply not sleeping during the day!! He just had a couple of half hour sleeps today, and that was just in the car.

Any other time, he does still cry himself to sleep. I wish he didn't. But that seems to be how he knows to go to sleep. I'm hoping he'll grow out of it soon.:o