Friday, September 16, 2011
the nap saga
i am officially retracting this post. i have read endless material that gives advice for when your baby leaves the endless sleep stage which according to the books is 4 or 5 months. emma taylor's ended at 2 weeks. she has never really been good about taking naps. luckily she does sleep well at night and has since the beginning. i am not good at taking naps either. you know how people tell you to sleep when they sleep well with the exception of my time in the hospital right after she was born, i can't count on one hand how many times i have napped in the last 2 months. maybe the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. emma taylor usually doesn't nap more than 30 minutes at a time, and i know she needs more sleep than that because she is definitely a bit cranky when she wakes up! she is now on a semi-schedule (more like a pattern) of eat, activity, sleep. we also darkened her room and now she is listening to a little ingrid michaelson on my ipod (i don't have a sound machine or anything) in hopes that she will nap for more than 30 minutes. does anyone else have a baby that doesn't nap?
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Liam slept in his Rock & Play sleeper, day and night, until he was 8 weeks old. I then started reading stuff about babies having flat or mis-shappened heads and torticolis(sp). So at that point, I told Jonathan I wanted him out of it. He always favored sleeping to one side from the time he was born. So we started sleeping him in the pack & play. Nap time became so hard then. He slept good at night in it but during the day, only like ET, for like 30 mins. So I would just let him sleep on me, just so he could rest. Well, it didn't take long for this to wear me slap out! But I wanted him to rest because I knew he needed the rest. To be honest, it only got better when I would start putting him on his belly to sleep. He began to get use to it and would sleep longer intervals. By this time though, I went back to work and he started daycare. Liam is very observant and nosey, so he doesn't nap very well at daycare, he does the best on his belly there too. When he gets home at night, he is tired so we put him down on his belly and he will usually sleep for hours at a time. We turn him to his back when we go to bed at night. We also have small fan running and classical music playing in his room for bedtime. He will nap better in the living room, on the coach, rather than his crib during the day too, so I guess he associates his room with bedtime not naptime. I think all babies have a hard time sleeping until they can roll over to their bellies. I'm much of a worry wart to let him sleep on his belly at night, but I really believe he would sleep soundly and through the night without moving around a lot. We did buy a video monitor also, it helps out a lot day and night. It is a samsung video monitor and was a lot less expensive than the baby name brands in stores. We got it on amazon. It has night vision, nightlight, lullabies, and you can use it to talk to them in there from your monitor to their camera. So anyways, my best advise is to sleep ET on her belly during the day, in a room other than her nursery for at least a nap or two. Just keep checking in on her. Most babies have enough head control at 2 months to keep their head from getting stuck down on their nose. We have friends who started sleeping their baby on her belly at 8 weeks due to reflux and a breathing problem. She is now 9 months and is walking. They say babies develop faster sleeping on their bellies. Just hang in there and it will get easier. Trust your instinct most off all and do what you feel is best for her. All babies are different. Good luck and I will be thinking about y' all.
ReplyDeleteInfant sleep is seriously the hardest accomplishment as a mom that you can have! And as moms, we are all so completely different in how we try to achieve it. Like I am pretty much the opposite of the mom that just posted above me! That is okay! They are SO hard to get to sleep and stay asleep! You would think it is natural, but you honestly have to train them that way. All I can say is that we did a mix of BW and the Healthy Sleep Habits book. I leaned more towards the HSHHC book than BW, but I definitely had to crack down and do some BW training to get my crazy colicky child to learn how to sleep. If I hadn't done some of the BW principles, then I know he would not be a good sleeper now. From BW, I really tried to start my day at a somewhat consistent time EVERY day. Within 30 minutes to an hour. Then we followed the eat, play, sleep cycle for most days, but there were many times that I nursed Cai to sleep, too. We also developed a nap time routine and kept that super consistent. Like same exact book, in the same chair, with the same song. I always laid him down to sleep for his nap right after that and left the room, even if he cried. I would give him up to 10ish minutes to cry and if he didn't stop, then I would go in and soothe and rock to sleep a bit, but lay him down again as soon as he was slightly sleepy. Their wake time at 2 months is extremely low, like only 45ish - 55 minutes, so I would try to do calming things before his naps. We swaddled and did our similar nap time routine. At that 45 (or 30 minute) transition that ET is experiencing, I would go in and switch him to his swing. Do you have a swing? If not you can have ours. We are done with it. I definitely made the room dark at about her age and kept it dark until like 10 months! We definitely used a fan in his room to buffer noise. My advice is to do WHATEVER it takes using WHATEVER means necessary to get those longer naps of more than an hour. 30 minutes is a huge indicator that she is really overtired and before you shoot me for saying that, because I wanted to shoot other moms that said that to me. I admit they were really right. It is extremely difficult to get back on top of that kind of sleep debt when they get that overtired, but try an early bedtime if you can squeeze in her feedings closer together in the afternoon. A video monitor is amazing for figuring out sleep issues. I would study Cai on his camera, then go in and adjust when necessary. It was amazing. Lastly, there comes a point when you have to just let them CIO and mommy interference, especially too quickly at night and too much during naps just ruins it for them. They force themselves to stay awake for you and you just have to let them figure it out. I had to dedicate some serious stay in during the day time to sleep train. Most books say 2 full weeks of staying home and always letting baby nap in crib. If you have to go out, then do it after the first nap of the day. Getting that first nap is the easiest to achieve for longer periods of time. Let me know if you want to troubleshoot. I love figuring out sleep issues in babies! Due to the fact that I had a really difficult infant that never slept, I feel somewhat confident in baby sleep issues, but then again...what do I know! And after I get back from the beach, I'd love to come drop off my gift for E.T.! Praying her naps get better! You can email or facebook me anytime about it! :)
ReplyDeleteJudah sounds a lot like Emma Taylor ... great sleeper at night, rough during naptime. We followed the same routine as Vanessa. He was swaddled for every nap and took a lot of them in his swing until three months old. We also stuck to a pretty rigid routine (like V, if he fussed we comforted but he still had to stay in bed) and did not let him sleep in our arms. I followed the BW's advice, which is teach them to sleep on their own. I will say it is HARD WORK in the beginning if that's what you want to do, but I have two excellent sleepers now. I promise it pays off in the end.
ReplyDeleteGood luck! I know this phase is super exhausting, but you are doing such a good job with her!