Your story could be my story... except my boy is 6 months old! I so hear you on how frustrating this can be! Today I was going absolutely bananas! Our day was 30 mins of settling for 1 45 min sleep, then 1 hour for 1 45 mins sleep, then another hour for 1 sleep which he woke up after 20 mins!!

The other have given great advice... when it all gets too hard with DS yes I sometimes just put him in the sling or carrier and go out for a walk... he used to fall asleep that way, now he sometimes will have a 20 min nap which is better than nothing, but at least we both get out of the house and I don't go crazy, and he is usually happy being carried around, even if he is tired.

I have been trying for the last 1.5 weeks to see if I can get him napping better but I think I need a break!

Trish's suggestion of going in at 40 mins to resettle straight away, before they really wake up, is a good one too- this used to work for us but lately I've found he will wake up really quickly and once he sees me he's wide awake so it doesn't work any more. He also occasionally will sleep through a cycle (during the day) and have a 1.5 or 2 hour sleep (maybe once a week!) so I know he can do it and don't want to muck things up if he is going to sleep through. I boob him to sleep- and only boob him- so maybe thats why it doesn't work- I can't get the boob in his mouth without him seeing me! Have been reading No Cry Nap Solution and thinking maybe I need to stop feeding to sleep, but that just seems like such a HUGE change to make and I'm not ready to do that. DS has been sleeping on our bed (mattress on the floor so it's ok if he rolls off) as I feed him on the bed but maybe I will get the hammock out again so I can try the bouncing thing....

Like you my DS sleeps pretty good at night- be grateful for small mercies! LOL I think he has a very good "body clock" in terms of reacting to night and day- so maybe that's why our little boys don't sleep so good in the day, cos they know the night is for sleeping? Just trying to put a positive spin on it.

The other thing that stuck out in your post for me was your DS being a fussy feeder during the day. My DS is still a pretty distractable feeder- feeds great at night, but during the day he has to either feed in the carrier, sometimes moving around, or lying down in the darkened bedroom with me and no one else around. He still latches on and off about 30 times each feed and now he can roll thinks it's great to feed a bit, roll over to the other side, have me bring him back, and feed again. Of course he gets very overtired by the end of that!

But previous to this we went through a stage of real breast refusal- extreme fussiness, it followed months of undiagnosed reflux which we finally got sorted but even once the pain was fixed the breast refusal continued for a while because he associated feeding with pain. He always still fed good at night though, because apparently they are in a more "instinctive" state at that time. I spoke to an ABA counsellor about breast refusal and got a copy of their booklet on the topic and it was quite helpful. He was still refusing and difficult to feed for at least a month, but now is much better.

It might be worth a) considering the possibility of reflux- as this can affect feeding and sleeping- although usually it's present from birth, so if he's only started to get fussy lately, it's probably not that or b) getting some tips from ABA about breast refusal- things like feeding in the bath, offering the boob more often, minimising distractions- helped us.

Big hugs to you!