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My boy is a couple weeks past 5 months.  He has been a poor sleeper since birth.  After reading several, general baby books, we took to carrying him in a sling and rocking him in the hopes that it would help his napping and minimize crying.  Up until two weeks ago, we were still carrying him in slings – I had to stop this practice purely because he was getting too heavy and I was developing severe back and shoulder pain.  When I stopped napping him in slings, he was napping for 30 minute segments.  After he woke, I could usually rock him back to sleep for another 30 – 50 minutes.  He was taking 3 naps a day.

I started putting baby in his crib for naps 2 1/2 weeks ago and now his whole schedule has been disrupted and his napping is almost obsolete.  It is extremely difficult to follow the sleep-eat-play routine due to his short naps and his feeds being 4 hours apart.  For naps, the routine is that I sing him lullabies for 5 – 10 minutes while patting his back and gently bouncing on an exercise ball.  I put him down when he is still drowsy.  He begins to fuss and cry immediately.  On the rare occasion, I can soothe him by rolling him onto his side and patting his back.  More often than not, his fussing becomes loud crying+waving limbs and I end up having to pick him up to repeat the routine then try to put him down again.  If I manage to get him down for a nap, it may only last 10 minutes.  We have had many times where we keep repeating this routine but the entire 1 – 1 1/2 hours go by without him napping.  The longest nap is 30 minutes.  Only twice have I managed to do the routine again, then get another 20 minutes out of him.  I try not to let him stay awake longer than 1 1/2 – 2 hours.

At night he has a routine of bath, swaddle/sleep sac, story, nurse +/- bouncing, then crib – all the while with white noise going on in the background.  We have had this routine in place since he was 2 months old.  We aim to have him in his crib around 7PM, although lately I have been trying to put him down earlier because of his horrid daytime napping.  After putting him down for the night, he will wake and cry every 5 minutes – 2 hours.  If we ignore him for a few minutes, the crying escalates to full-on shrieking to the point where he become hoarse.  If we get in early, he will sometimes settle with just patting on the back.  If we're late, we have to pick him up and shush/pat/bounce.  My husband has taken to "singing" Brahms lullaby at the top of his lungs.

I realize that baby probably has strongly entrenched sleep associations…I just don't know what to do about it!  We tried the Pick Up/Put Down method in the "Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems" book with no success.  I would not be able to do the Extinction method.  Should we just wait and see if his naps lenghthen on their own?  Which sleep training method might we have the best luck with?  With his naps being so poor, I'm scared that night sleep training would make things even worse.  This all just seems like one big mess and I'm worried sick that I've messed up my baby's sleep.  We had planned on moving baby into his own room at 6 or 7 months but now this idea is also frightening to me.  Any advice on how to start tackling this situation would be much appreciated.