Oh Beata please do not feel that way you are not doing anything wrong at all many of us are in the same boat with our littlies!

I have to pat DD off for each of her naps during the day (somehow she just goes off by herself at night but not during the day) and quite often she wakes shortly after, getting to that 2nd sleep cycle is like searching for the holy grail sometimes! The last couple of weeks it has been 20 or 30 min catnaps and it's been really hard, so I know what you mean. And don't feel guilty for not establishing a routine, we don't have one! When I refer to routine for me it's more like just the steps I follow, but we don't have any set times. For anything! We do sleep/feed/play, so she wakes, I feed her, she plays, then approx. 2hrs later she goes back down. Sometimes (often) I miss the window and she's overtired, and I have to settle her with a feed so she'll go to sleep. So it has then become sleep/feed/play/feed/sleep and I've thrown out any kind of 'routine'. Just go with what works I say!

With Cam waking so quickly, can you put a comfy chair next to his bed and just stay there, and when he starts to wake, but still really sleepy, pat him/rock him, without lifting him, and see if you can stop him from waking fully? And if he does drift off, then maybe stick close by and do it the next brief awakening he has? It will be really tiring, and trying, but if you manage to get him to start sleeping a little longer he'll start doing it himself without you needing to resettle him. But it could take a good week or two to really kick in. This is how I got DD sleeping longer for naps around 10wks, but had kinda forgotten about it, and started doing it yesterday and today. She kept waking around 40mins, so 30mins after she falls asleep I go in and sit by her cot, and when she briefly wakes I shhh and pat her, and today I caught it twice and she slept for another 1/2 hr. I missed on 3 naps though, but tried not to get stressed out and just thought 'try again next time'. Hey and I am not afraid to admit when it's all too hard I'll put her in the pram and go for a walk round the block, normally she crashes and if I can get back through the front door without knocking the pram on it (bad aim ha ha) I can sometimes just roll her in asleep and I leave her there.

Sorry to go on, I just hate to hear you feel like a failure. You are not a failure. You have a beautiful little boy who loves his Mummy very much and is very lucky to have you. As for your hairdresser, it's great for her that her daughter is so clockwork, but believe me, there are many many many babies out there that are not. Please don't be too hard on yourself