My 6 month old just started crying before naps?

The Question:

Hi Jane,

Wondering if you can help!

My six month old daughter has just started crying before her day time naps.  And when I say crying, I mean really screaming sometimes kicking her legs out and arching her back, and for up to 20 or 30 minutes before going to sleep.

Up until now she has been an absolute angel.  She sleeps about 12 - 13 hours through the night with 1 or 2 feeds (usually 1), but she goes straight back to sleep after the feed, or I put her in her cot and she puts herself to sleep.  She is still doing this now, and is still an angel at night, but it's the day naps that have started causing heartache.

She has always only power napped in the day - usually only sleeps for about 30 - 40 minutes at a time and 3 or 4 times in the day.  In the past she'd start grizzling and rubbing her eyes and I knew she was tired, so I'd give her the dummy (she only uses this for day time naps) and she'd go to sleep straight away.  Now she screams and screams.  Is this normal?  At first I thought she may be teething, but why would she only cry at pre-sleep time?  Then I thought that maybe she is just at that age where she changes a bit, gets her own personality, and isn't just a dream baby who only sleeps, eats and poo's!  A lot of people have told me babies change at around 6 months.

Anyway, would appreciate your advice, thanks so much!

Kindest Regards,

Clair Mudaliar

(Gold Coast, Australia)

 

The Answer:

Dear Clair,

 

I just noticed that you sent this letter in July and I'm just getting it answered in October!  That means that your baby is nine months old now and is probably doing something completely different.  I love your Australian accent that comes through in print!  A "dummy" must be a pacifier, "grizzling" must be fussing, and every mother everywhere loves her baby to go to sleep "straight away."

 

I agree with your friends that tell you that babies go through changes at six months.  And they continue to change pretty regularly until they are 3 or 4 years old.  It's frustrating for a mom because just when she thinks she's got a great system going, her baby quits cooperating.  They don't need as much sleep, they become more aware of their surroundings, they teethe, they catch a little cold, they take a jump in appetite.  If you want to maintain a strict schedule in your life, if you want your baby to be in her bed at certain hours, you can.  But you'll have to plan on letting her scream or just lay awake to accommodate you.  I had eleven children.  Some were content and happy, others more demanding, but I never accomplished the feat of determining when they would sleep and when they would wake.  I knew every trick in the book to get a sleepy baby to sleep.  My husband was genius at it.  But if they weren't ready, I just let them be up until they were. 

 

Judging from the letters I receive, sleep seems to top the list of difficulties you face as mothers.  Sometimes it's easy to equate your overall success and failure as a mother, with how well your children go to bed.  There are hundreds of books written on the subject.  I've read some of them.  But I think that really, I just gave up fighting it.  The more I read about brain development in the first year, the less comfortable I felt letting babies scream it out.  So I didn't.  I walked, rocked, used binkies, bottles, car rides,etc.  When I was worn out, my husband stepped in.  Many times when we'd had a particularly rough night with a baby, we'd find that they had a fever in the morning and probably had been achy and miserable during the night.  I was glad we hadn't left them to cry.  After the first year, I had tender feelings for them.  I had a relationship.  I didn't feel comfortable letting them cry then either.  Sometimes I let them sleep with me.  It just wasn't a big deal.  By the time they were three or four, they seemed to go to bed better unless they had a late nap.  You see, my policy was just to be sensitive to their feelings...about sleep and about everything else.  They were people.  I just tried to treat them well.  I wanted them to feel secure, safe and loved.  It isn't, perhaps, the neatest, tidiest way, but it's a way that I look back on with satisfaction.  I believe that unique bonds are formed in the long, hard nights.  Motherhood requires continual sacrifice and then sometimes even new levels of sacrifice.  

 

This has been a long answer to a short question.  So...I would move through the stages of your baby's life with flexibility.  Don't get frustrated.  Just meet her needs from day to day and enjoy each new stage of development.  Accept that they are part of life and that she's growing as she should, and find tender ways of helping her learn to sleep as she changes.

 

All my love,

 

Jane