Nap time advice

Has anyone gone from breastfeeding to sleep / contact naps and successfully transitioned to putting baby down for naps when they're awake? Our little one is still EBF and at night she sleeps through which is great. During the day so far all of her naps are basically her feeding then falling asleep in my arms and this is the routine we're in. Apart from the odd occasion if we're out and about she might nap in the pram or car seat. I don't have too much of an issue with this right now but I do want to start putting her down for naps and getting a better routine in place that isn't as dependent on me 😂 We've tried it a couple of times using the Huckleberry sweet spot - the timing of this is usually spot on in terms of predicting when she needs a nap. However, putting her down for one does not go well. She cries, which just intensifies into inconsolable screaming and it just doesn't stop no matter how long we wait or spend trying to soothe or comfort her. I can be lying down next to her stroking her back and it won't even make a difference. She will lay next to me screaming. We can carry her around and bounce/rock, nothing. White noise, nothing. Dark room, light room, no difference. The only thing that will make her stop and fall asleep is a boob 😭 Has anyone had a similar experience and gotten through it? Anything else we can try? 🙏

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We had this exact issue, up until 10 weeks we co-slept with her and putting her down for a nap was like I was placing her in hot lava. She now does all her nap night/day in her cot. I still feed to sleep at night, but during the day I changed it so I feed her straight after a nap. So she had nap/feed/play/nap. This has helped to break the needing to be fed to sleep. I watch really close for sleepy cues and the second she rubs her eyes I take her up to sleep. She has exactly the same routine at every nap - we put her in a dark room, she has her rain sounds on and she goes into her sleep sack. So she knows it’s nap time.

Thank you @Lucy - this is pretty much what I want to try and break out of, right now its fees/sleep/wake/play/feed/sleep... Making that shift is hard because I'm always worried about trying to put her down and her being hungry 😭

@Lisa I know that’s what I thought as well but they do get used it pretty quickly. It’s really hard to get out of feeding to sleep as it’s something you are so used to doing but if her wake window is say 2 hours then she definitely won’t be hungry if you feed her straight after her nap.

I could have written this myself, nothing calms my baby down except the boob. He will literally thrash about, even if he's on my chest or in my arms he arches his back and kicks and throws his arms around screaming until I give him the boob and he stops instantly!

@Katie it's getting hard isn't it! I have absolutely loved all these cuddly moments as I didn't think I'd ever have another baby so I'm not exactly regretting anything but I just would really like it now if someone else could also deal with nap times sometimes 😅 I would kind of understand if she was just screaming because I'd left the room but that isn't even the case! I can literally be laying right next to her and she just gets so worked up!!

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