Re: advice on baby's sleep
The problem is it's possible that he isn't tired too... it's just something to try. Like I said, sleep is tricky. I think if you try for 10-15 minutes, gently - mind you, to get him to sleep (with rocking, a soft naptime story or a lullaby) and he doesn't go to sleep, then he probably isn't sleepy. It was really hard to get my older son to sleep at night time (which is different, but just an example). We did a bedtime routine that was soft and soothing with gentle lighting, sleep stories, quiet lullabies, white noise, and a lullaby CD... however about 50% of the time he wouldn't sleep at all, or would wake up after 15 minutes. We just ended up letting him stay up instead of fighting with him (trying to make him sleep when he wouldn't close his eyes)... he would just stay up and visit with us until it was our bedtime and he'd come to bed with us. I even e-mailed Elizabeth Pantley about this and she agreed that this is what was working for us in that phase. Now he sleeps fine when we put him to bed, but for YEARS if he didn't go to sleep after the whole bedtime routine we'd just let him stay up.... Remember that the ultimate goal is to make sleep a positive and gentle state to enter into, and if we are trying to force them, then they will hate it, hence the *no cry* idea. If there is any fussing or frustration on the part of our baby we just lay off and we start again the next day... our young guy is REALLY hard to get to sleep and NEVER napped properly, so instead of fretting over it, we just let him sleep when he looked tired, and slowly worked towards developing a general time when he naps... of course he still has LOTS of days that he naps at weird times, or weird lengths of time... and we just try to take it in stride because he is his own little person with his own temperament which has to be taken into account. Hope this helps! In a weird way it doesn't solve making creating a nap schedule easier, but hopefully can help you see to not worry about having a set out plan... Even in the NCSS book she quotes a sleep expert who says it can take til they are over 10 months old before they even START to have anything resembling a general sleep/naptime. Our baby was over a year before he had anything resembling a sleep pattern, and every once in while - even with the pattern - he will surprise us. What we have learned is to just go with it. On a different note, generally 5 year olds aren't usually having a nap anymore, and yet our older son sometimes will fall asleep on his own in the afternoon for 3-4 hours.... we just go with it. Makes it a bit easier if we don't panic about trying to figure it out too much... just keep plugging away with a gentle nap routine, gentle sleep pattern....
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