[Burgundy]

My 3 month old DS has never been a good day napper but has always slept well at night until now. He is suddenly fighting naps even more during the day and by night time is thoroughly exhausted but will not sleep! He crashes out eventually between 11pm and midnight and sleeps pretty well but can't be getting more than about 9hours sleep over a 24 hour period. Our usual settling methods (shushing, rocking) seem to rile him up rather than soothe him now. Has this happened to anyone else? Did it get better?! How long did it last?

What worked for you?

[erindiv]

I'll get in trouble for this, but, CIO worked for me with both of mine.. plus a dummy for DS. He would cry for maybe 10-20 minutes (with regular checks) before going to sleep.

[KRT]

DS started needing to be left alone to fall asleep quite early. Being in there trying to settle him worked him up further rather than calming him down. We found that settling techniques where we didn't touch him worked best.

Some ideas:
- patting the cot mattress
- patting the side of the cot
- scratching the cot mattress

Basically, anything rythmic, especially if he could watch us do it, seemed to distract him enough that he would calm down, and be okay if we left the room.

[Mum2TwoDSs]

Mine also 3 months has been fighting sleep last two days, going beyond 3 hours of wake time. He is very distracted when I put him into his cot and sshh and pat. He wants to look everywhere instead and when I turn his body to face away he would fight to turn his head to look at me. But eventually he managed to get few naps. Could yours be distracted too? My bub is very curious at the moment.

[sedawson]

I have a 4 month old boy and for the last week I've been using the Sleep Right, Sleep Tight method. It's worked really well. Unfortunately on day 4 we had to spend the day in another city for a funeral, so that kind of screwed up the program, but it's coming good again now.

It involves Controlled Comforting (controlled crying under a nicer name) but with babies under 6 months you sit next to them as they cry, as they don't have object permanence yet. My son has always fought sleep too, but this method is starting to work really well. I had him sleeping for an hour every two hours during the day, and for five hours in a row at night, by the third day.

At this age babies should be sleeping between 15 and 17 hours a day. Overtired babies are clingy, whiny, won't keep themselves amused, always look worried, and are kind of no fun, which is exactly how my poor son was all the time until I started sleep re-training.