Mid day nap question

My baby is approaching 3 months. She's been on Gina Ford since birth and she has been sleeping through the night from 7-7 with only a dreamfeed at 10:30pm. At night, she sleeps so well I really shouldn't complain. It's the mid day nap which she never goes down well which is quite a headache. At this age, her nap pattern goes like this:


7am wake up

9am morninig nap for 45 min

12 - 2:15pm mid day nap for no more than 2.5 hrs

4:30pm power nap for 15-30 min

7pm sleep


She takes 3 day naps and it's the mid day nap that is the issue. For all other naps I just put her down in the cot and pat her she will fall asleep quite easily. For the mid day one when we put her down she will scream hard. So sfter struggling for 30-45 min I'll have to carry her to fall asleep where she either wakes up immediately when I put her down, or sleeps for a further 15-20 min only and then wakes up crying frantically. At the end, it's another round of hugging, rocking, putting down, screaming... to make sure that she sleeps until nearer to 2pm so the rest of her routine doesn't go too haywire.


This has been going on for weeks and I don't see an improvement at all so I would like to seek advice here. I rule out the possibility of hunger as she just got fed not long before the nap. I would also rule out the possibility that she is not tired enough as it's 2 hrs from the time she woke up from the morning so she should be pretty tired and she does show signs of sleepiness. I am thinking then would it be tummy pain coz quite often she wakes up crying as she just pooped or having bowel movement. I wonder why it always happen during mid day which disturbes her nap. Is there any way I can do to make her sleep better at this nap?

have you tried gripe water? it is especially for infants with colic, gastrointestinal discomfort, teething pain, reflux and other stomach ailments. my baby (reaching 5 mths tomorrow) seems more at ease after taking gripe water and he falls asleep quicker when he has just taken it.

Thanks kissy.missy, how frequent do you offer hte gripe water?

I followed Gina Ford for a day and decided it wasn't for me. The only thing I follow from her book is the feeding schedule, I just let my baby sleeps/plays whenever he wants as he's sleeping through the night anyway, so if he decides he wants to sleep all day, as long as he's eating and sleeping at night then it's alright.


Maybe your baby isn't tired and doesn't want to sleep at that time? Have you tried putting her on swing chair? Or just let her lay on her playmat and see if she is content lying there?


A dear friend of mine said to me that "all those baby books are great, but too bad baby doesn't read the book!". So maybe it's ok to listen to your baby rather than the book.

i give mine 5 ml a day but think it is 2.5 ml for younger ones. you can google it or you can read the feeding instructions on the bottle. buy one which says "alcohol-free". hope it helps! :)

A disclaimer -- we never followed Gina Ford. However, I found with my #2 that if he was reliably screaming before going to sleep at any given naptime, if I moved his nap 10-15 min earlier it pretty much solved the problem. He's now almost 15mo and when he dropped down to one nap we went through this again -- he would scream bloody murder if we tried to put him to bed at 6:45, but he goes down like a dream at 6:30.

Thanks Z, if that's the case maybe that's the reason of overtiredness. Let me try and see if it works better on my baby. Thanks!