10 month old napping difficulties during day

Ours just didn't sleep in the day... we'd be meeting parents who'd kids did 3-5 hours sleeping from say 6am-7pm, mostly in 2-3 hour stints... if we stuck him in the car he'd sleep, but very very rarely did he sleep other than that in daytime.

You’ve had a good napper, you’re due a bad one. Sorry that’s just how the world works 😂

Ok, have you tried the usual tricks? Blackout blinds. White noise app on your phone.

Next, my advise would be persevere with helping baby get to sleep in your arms but put ‘em down pretty quick after. If they wake lather rinse repeat. I’d hope that within a couple of days gritting your teeth through this baby will give in. You kinda just gotta put in the big fight for a few days before it becomes a permenant problem.

Thank your lucky stars he sleeps at night then, my son was a nightmare, still is at 23 !  He probably doesn't need the day naps if sleeping at night.

I’m also with the others suggesting a nap might not be needed. Try it.

10 months seems a bit young not to nap, but it’s definitely worth a go. Both mine refused to nap at about 14 mths onwards. For the next few months they’d typically nap every other day depending on whether they needed it or not.

I'll ask my wife because my memory of those difficult times (all three of ours were challenging babies) is hazy - I think it's some kind of post-traumatic stress response... But I do remember it taking serious work to get any of them to nap - they were all just too alert and too sensitive to switch off without a very focused approach on making them calm and giving them an environment which kept them asleep. There was a lot of swaddling when they were smaller and the sling was a key thing for napping when nothing else worked.

he might not need a nap, but I suspect he needs at least one per day - how many are you trying?

Sleep training is the way forwards to make him learn he can go to sleep by himself

Ours just didn’t sleep in the day… we’d be meeting parents who’d kids did 3-5 hours sleeping from say 6am-7pm, mostly in 2-3 hour stints… if we stuck him in the car he’d sleep, but very very rarely did he sleep other than that in daytime.

Both of mine were like that. The only option was to wear a sling and carry them around while they slept.
At weekends we’d go for long drives and hope they’d sleep while we sat outside cafes in view of the car.

And yes, be thankful they sleep well at night. It gives you some adult time.

Forget the cot and put him down in the buggy/pushchair/pram/whateveryoucallit instead?

This way you can lie it flat and rock him easily and he might sleep better. It's worked for all ours. Our youngest (9 months) is terrible at sleeping in the cot at the moment and does best on her front in the pram.

He's probably too big at 10 months but when small, carrying him around in a sling is another option if all else fails.

my 7 month old sleeps in the day but not at night and is a grumpy bugger if he doesnt have his day sleeps - so thank your lucky stars

Get him to sit in one post lunch work meetings. Guaranteed to make anyone want to sleep. 

sling naps got us through with our two.  number 1 was terrible and had some sort of allergic reaction to being horizontal.  Something switched at 5 years old and he sleeps well at night since but it was a slog of a few years at night.  number 2 was a little bit better, but not much!

we ended up embracing it and having plenty of sleepy sling time and down time for mum and dad.  you've just got to work with what works for you rather than trying to fit to what dr google says you/they should be doing in terms of naps and sleep (and everything else really).

I'd expect at 10 months he should be on 2 naps a day.  My lad is 17 months and only just dropped to a single nap a day.  Look at wake windows, etc.. Ours has never been a great sleeper day or night and would suggest white noise and a buggy walk if all else fails, even if it's just to get him off initially.  We also use a snoozeshade on the buggy to help as otherwise he's too stimulated by what's going on outside.  Baby sleep cycles tend to be 40-50 mins as well, so might find he stirs after that.  I think as long as they get the recommended sleep within a 24 hr period you'll be fine.  If my lad didn't have any sleep during the day he'd be overtired at bedtime and have an awful night, but every kid is different - as you've experienced!

Father of two, one a good napper, one not.

If he doesn't settle and go to sleep, why are you putting him down for a nap? Please not because a clock or a book says you should be, or because that's what your daughter did. Bringing up kids is hard work (and warning - doesn't get easier, just different) - and if he doesn't need a sleep don't force it on him. Bed should be a place of safety, in time (maybe 15 years time!!) he'll want to be in there so don't make it a place he doesn't want to be and create problems for later.

In due course you'll need dynamite to get them out, IME

My memory with our first one (now 9 years old) was that we did some sort of 40 minute (and multiples of) sleep pattern. Will see if I can Google it and include a link. 

The problem was that it restricted our say a bit as you have to be quite rigid but it did seem to work

Our 10 month old son doesn’t nap very well during the day

Not everyone wants to sleep during the day.  You can't force anyone to sleep when they don't actually need to.  Imagine if you were sitting around having fun wide awake and someone picked you up, put you in a bed and tried to force you to sleep - I think you'd be pretty annoyed. I would be.

Ours stopped napping entirely around that age.

We found that our kid wouldn't nap during the day unless there was motion; sling, pushchair or car. We spent hours walking (3-4x day for 2+ hours a go). The cot was a no go for well over a year during the day. We kept trying now and again to settle her in the cot until one day it clicked.
Really miss all the walking now!

“If he doesn’t settle and go to sleep, why are you putting him down for a nap?”

None of our three wanted to settle and go to sleep during the day - but if we didn’t find ways to get them to sleep during the day they became more and more overtired, very grumpy and upset, and slept even worse at night. They just didn’t want to switch off even though they needed to.

To be honest, that’s why I’m like as a adult - left to my own devices I just keep going! But that doesn’t work long-term…

I'm not saying they don't particularly need a nap, just that trying to do it by the clock or schedule isn't the right approach IMHO.

I agree that they can get over-tired and that can make them fractious and harder to get off to sleep, the trick is finding the sweet spot where you see they're actually getting tired before they are too tired. Which might be a bit of trial and error (which is basically the manual for child rearing, try it, if it doesn't work, try something different!)

Some nap, some don't, some sleep all night, some don't

When does he go Nursery? Nursery got our 11 month old into a good routine for napping. Before that it was sporadic and mainly on us, which looking back I do miss now my childs a nightmare...

Any routine change at that ages takes at least 3 or 4 days to bed in.  You can try alternate day naps if dropping it completely is too much. Make sure you have a cast iron routine, my experience (4 girls including twins) is that falling asleep on you is making a rod for your own back.  If he's quiet playing in his cot (one soft toy only) I'd put him down and leave him for an hour, with the same time and routine each day for a week, dark as possible, one quiet story on your knee. Don't go in unless he properly screams the house down, and then it's pick up, cuddle and back down after 5 minutes (time it).  If he screams for 10 minutes straight abandon it and drop the nap.  If by the end of the week he's not napping, drop the nap.

I feel your pain, though my young ones are now 3 and 5. A routine/order of doing things is good, going in the order of food, awake/play, then bed, looking out for those tell-tale clues of tiredness. I'd expect a 10 month old to be napping still, but when ours refused we still put them in a cot when tired for a time...and there's also the dreaded developmental leaps that play havoc with sleep. As others have said, it's no fun having to give in and get them sleeping on you, but sometimes it has to happen, but it's not sustainable as a routine longer term. Good luck and I hope things improve, I always found that changes came about at times when we as parents were most tired and least able to deal with it - but you do end up finding a way and things do change quickly over the first 0-2 years.

My oracle says she would check the recommended wake time intervals for the age of the child and if they weren’t used to regular naps do what is needed to get them down for a nap at that point, be it walk them to sleep in the buggy, cuddle them to sleep, lie them in a dark room with white noise, etc, and by doing that they’ll come to accept the routine and it’ll be easier to get them down for a nap. At 10 months she’d expect them to be needing two naps a day.

She added, it doesn’t need to be a Gina Ford routine (I have to admit I tried reading her book and it made me very angry, it was so inflexible and not suited to all children but it’s written like “you have failed as a parent if this doesn’t work”) but trying to force a flexible routine should help them cope and make it easier going forward.

Obviously as soon as things are going well for a while, something will change and you’ll have to adapt again!

Our children are 10, 8 and 4 so the memories of this stuff aren’t totally fresh but they’re not that long ago!

Persevere with your crying tolerance testing. Ours didn’t sleep during the day either. But leave them long enough and they’ll drop off. 

Even the nursery staff looked stressed when we used to collect him. The second was trivial 🤣

, it doesn’t need to be a Gina Ford routine 

We used the Alison Scott wright one for our first and it worked really well. The premi twins obviously hadn't read it

Like others above both of our daughters dropped day time naps at 9-10 months and slept well at night. Rigid night time routine helped with this.

If their sleeping at night and not getting overly grumpy through the day then there is no problem.

Thank you very much indeed for all of the replies and sharing your own experience, there’s a ton of valuable stuff in here for us. My wife says thank you to “your little bike friends” as she calls you lot..

He definitely needs the sleep during the day because if he doesn’t get it he’s mega grumpy so don’t think he’s ready to ditch em altogether, he also falls asleep relatively easily/quickly on us but agree on creating a rod for our own back with this. He is on a very loose 2 naps/day routine at the moment.

We’ll try some of the tips and tricks on this thread, I think the pram/walk one has legs. He doesn’t ever fall asleep in the car, just poos in there seems to be his thing.

Also just realised I posted this in the bike forum.. think I could do with a nap mesel!

Thanks again

My 3 year old is/was awful at sleeping in the day or night. We used a wrap/sling and just carried him around and he'd sleep a bit. He also never had the amount of naps we were told he should. He had 1 a day max and stopped napping at all before 18 months. I think so kids don't need the normal amount of sleep.

It's the fault of capitalism, obviously. Embrace anarchism and you'll see that it's a non-problem.

https://twitter.com/moonlit_misfit/status/1743350718944121067

“He definitely needs the sleep during the day because if he doesn’t get it he’s mega grumpy so don’t think he’s ready to ditch em altogether, he also falls asleep relatively easily/quickly on us but agree on creating a rod for our own back with this.”

I wouldn’t look at it as “creating a rod for your own backs”. Expecting babies to sleep on their own is pretty much just a modern western affectation. For millennia babies have done their sleeping whilst with their adults, using slings during the day. They go through sleep cycles (which IIRC are shorter than adult sleep cycles) and you can try transferring him to his cot when he’s in the deepest part of his cycle. Even if he wakes he’ll be less tired than if you’d tried to transfer him earlier and only had a v short nap. You may have more luck transferring him if you preheat his cot with a hot water bottle (but don’t leave it in there with him!)

Reading this back to my wife she has reminded me that we would often do this weird transfer thing where you try to put them very softly into a warm cot, and bend yourself over into the cot so you’re sort of lying across them and then gradually release your pressure and warmth so they don’t have the sudden shock of being detached from their adult.

Bear in mind that you can put them in a sling on the front or back, so you can get on with doing work or life whilst they’re sleeping, if there’s no other way to get him to sleep. It’s not ideal but if you’re doing work on a laptop you can put it on the kitchen worktop and type with him in a front or back sling asleep.

If it continues to be a problem, rest assured that something will change soon. And if you get it all sorted, rest assured that something will change soon!

some kids just don't nap

we found this was great, bounce themselves tp sleep in it, whack a blanket over them and put it in almost lying down mode

baby Bjorn bouncer, not cheap but hold value better than an islabike!

We just gave our one of them away. At 7 months jnr (the final jnr) when sat in it.... Was sat on the floor. No bouncing was occuring.

I think a big part of this challenge is trying to pick up on all the cues, like becoming a “baby whisperer”, as they’re all different and they constantly change.

I remember I was often too impatient to get anything to happen and had to slow down and and accept that getting them to drop off, or move into a cot, (or indeed get them out to school when they’re big enough to walk there on their own!) usually takes longer than I feel it should.

But the “I’m not tired, I don’t need to sleep!” thing is a common false claim they do from being babies to pre-teens in my experience (I presume it carries on in the teens too but I’m not there yet with ours!)

We had twins. The only way I could get them to nap was taking them out in the pram. Suffice to say I did a lot of walking which had the joint benefits of getting me 2-4 hours exercise and fresh air a day and gave my wife several hours of peace.