Napping - Need some ideas

[LindseyB]

My boy (first and only) will be a year old on September 5. He's always been a pretty good sleeper, but we co-sleep and he still nurses several times a night. I went back to part-time (35 hours a week) when he was 5 months old and my mother-in-law has watched him during the day ever since.

He has always been held for naps or co-slept - up until very recently, he didn't sleep well if he wasn't held or had a warm body in the bed with him. I have recently been able to get him down and then leave him with no issues. My mother-in-law has not. We've been trying to have her transition him to our bed for naps during the day (she lives with us), but she's not having any luck. He's just getting too big for her to hold on her lap for 2+ hours.

So far, she's tried rocking him off to a deep sleep and then laying him down on the bed for the rest of his nap. He immediately pops up and won't go back down.

Any ideas? I know she would like to get her lap back before he squashes it. Obviously, we do not do CIO.

He does take a paci for naps and at night and is still breastfed.

[LilaQ]

My baby was very similar to this until around 9 months when we could finally put him down. Even then we often had to rock him back to sleep when he would wake up mid-nap. It was so frustrating but eventually he was able to make it thru a whole nap on his own. Can your MIL rock him back to sleep when he wakes up?

[tzs]

do you have some sort of contraption on wheels? it could be a small crib with wheels or even a crib that you could shake arounda little bit. or a stroller that lies flat-ish. she could put him to sleep by rocking/shaking/back-and-forthing him in it. i do the stroller with a blanket over the front so she can't see out and can relax more. at the school she just started going to the manage to nap her by shaking/rolling the crib.