Having been a stay at home mom for the past 7 years, I’ve had the luxury of living a pretty non-scheduled life with the kids. They don’t have to get up early to get to the sitter’s before work, and nap time has always been a relaxed process of just going with the flow and sensing when baby needs a nap.
This needs to change.
Now that Elijah is in grade 2 and Nevaeh is in preschool, I have to be available to get them to and from school which means there are certain times of the day that Everleigh, 10 months, can not be napping. Wouldn’t you know it, these are the times she seems to give in and decide that yeah, maybe it’s time to sleep.
My kids are genetically not good sleepers. I say this tongue and cheek because many of you reading this right now can see that my lack of structure with naps has likely played into this issue the whole time. I don’t like the idea of scheduling my kids, I disagreed reading friends Facebook status discussing scheduling their newborns, “When can we get him on a schedule?” they’d post, and I’d cringe.
So, this is new territory for me! This past week I’ve been working on scheduling naps which has been a definite work in progress! I’ll say first that I don’t agree with nor will ever practice crying-it-out and yes I realize that this makes the process longer and more difficult but I’m not willing to do that.
The process for getting Everleigh to nap right now involves a bottle if she’s hungry, then carrying her to the crib, giving her the soother and then leaning over the rail of the crib so that one hand or arm is in contact with her. She puts herself to sleep this way and this is big for us considering we rocked the other two kids to sleep for the longest time.
I’ve been generally following this schedule:
Wake: 7:30 am
1st nap: 10:00am (1 hr)
2nd nap: 2:00pm (1 hr)
This enables me to pick up the older two from school at 3:30. I try and back up the 2nd nap to 1:30 when I can to help ensure that. I would love a 2-3 hr nap period in the afternoons like I hear some mom’s talk of but that’s completely foreign to me so I take what I can get!
So, scheduled mama’s, am I on the right track? I read somewhere that babies need about a 3 hr awake period in between naps so I hope I’m on the right track. Everleigh is helpful one day and then other days she fights me and sometimes we don’t get an afternoon nap in because she refuses to until she is tired at 4 but then that hurts bedtime.
Right now I’m frustrated but hoping that I can get some rhythm going here. My hip aches from leaning over her crib all week convincing her to sleep. I’m tired. I try and push the negative thoughts from my head when she’s refusing to nap (failure rings pretty clear at this times).
Any tips, advice, schedules to share?
Well, I get where you are coming from on not wanting to schedule your kids, but I think that kids really do well when they know what’s coming next. My kids and my daycare kids are like little alarm clocks when it comes to meals, playtime and naptime. I think you’re on the right track with Everleigh. But, a little crying won’t hurt her if you leave her in her bed and walk away. Doesn’t mean you have to leave her there for an hour screaming. But, saying goodnight with a big hug and kiss and walking away while she cries for a few minutes is ok. If you do it a little at a time with increasing the time period you are away before coming back in to assure her that you are still around, but that it’s naptime, she may just start to get the point and lay down and sleep. All of my daycare kids that have come to me as babies, cry for a little bit and then fall right to sleep. Now, I just lay them down and walk away and they are out! It doesn’t take too long to get the routine down. Try it next time! : )
We have nap times for little ones from:
9am – 11am and 1:00pm-3:00pm.
Seems to work for us!! Good luck!
How old is she?
I am pretty good with sleep routines (I used to be a Baby Whisperer mod online for sleep training), but may not be able to get it all out on this post. Feel free to email me if you like, sami@platinum.ca
My w weren’t on a schedule. As a single mom who worked full time and went to school, they had to get up and get out when I did. I didn’t necessarily wake either of them up, but I did get them fully dressed when we left in the morning. If I had to run errands, then so did they. Now my 6 year old never takes male, but my 8 year old still does.
My youngest are 5 now, so I can’t quite remember when they switched to just one nap a day. That would ensure the longer nap. The other factor is how many hours she sleeps at night.
It’s kind of rough when they are still taking two naps. Once she’s down to one, you’ll be able to have her sleep from 12-2 or 1-3. That doesn’t really help you now though. 🙂 We have used the Sleep Easy Solution as a guide ever since Sweet T was 4 months old. It has sample schedules from birth to 5 years. I’d recommend it!
THere’s a book called ‘Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child’ by Marc Weissbluth that is awesome. It doesn’t just tell what to do (it gives you multiple options) but it explains what is going on with your child developmentally at each age and how that affects sleep etc…
My first son was an amazing sleeper and still is. My second is 11 onths old and has only been a good sleeper for 2 months now (barely). He is a lighter sleeper and easily disturbed, so I bought a little noise machine that plays white noise, rain (I live in the Lower Mainland = rain capital of Canada so I use that one), heartbeat and so on…. I turn it on during his daytime naps when there are more house sounds, and set it for the timer at night. Best $20 I ever spent.
I actually have 2 kids that love to sleep {most of the time}. Before my kids went to sleep at night, at a certain time, we did what we called “Tour de Clocks.” It’s something we totally made up! We picked them up, walked them around the house showing them that it was bedtime/nap time on the clocks. They loved the clocks and loved us walking them around. They went to bed with no complaining.
My sister’s kids slept with their parents for awhile. Then when it was time to switch them to their own rooms/beds they didn’t do too well. She actually put one of her night shirts in with the baby. It wasn’t dirty, she just wore it once. Her scent was good enough for them. They went to sleep like she was right there with them.
Wow, for having never scheduled your children you sound like you are doing great. Like SamiJoe mentioned above, I too did “the bay whisperer” techniques for my first child. It is not so much a schedule, as you base the child’s day on their wake time. So it’s not like “oh, it’s 10am no matter what or where you are it’s bedtime”
However, with my second… no such luck, she is completely different. She gets extremely overstimulated extremely easily.
I longed for the baby whisperer, but as much as I tried the different methods it just didn’t work. I did not believe in the cry it out method, but after 3 mos of being consistent with the baby whisperer techniques, it was time for her to cry it out. I was exhausted.
**I was rocking her for 1hr min for her two daytime naps, at night I was up 4-5 times to nurse**
In the end as much as I needed her to fall asleep a certain way, she too needed me to help her fall asleep. I worked with her personality and needs and as time went on she needed less of me. I keep consistent, I sing her the same three songs, lay her in bed the same way etc. I started implementing the above around 10mos. Now she is a dream, I am in and out of her room in less than 10 mins and she will nap for 2-3hrs.
My boys had never been good nappers in the day. They have always slept good at night which is a big bonus. Mine started skipping the morning nap really early. Supper time is the worst time of day since they are tired. Funny that you would not put your kids on a schedule but it’s the kids that forced you in a schedule 🙂
I was SERIOUSLY OCD about schedules with my girls and even now continue to be. I was probably one of those moms that made you cringe. I ran a moms group and I remember catching crap all the time because I would leave playdates to make sure the girls napped on time, ate on time, bathed on time – whatever. The thing is, I HAVE to have that kind of structure in my life, and my girls are the same way. I hate surprises and get stressed out when things do not work out well, so I do my part every day to try to keep things running smooth. I thrive on a schedule and my family does as well. When my girls follow the schedule we had no problems with meltdowns in stores, whining about being hungry, sleepless nights from naps that went “too late” (yes I woke my babies up – it was part of the schedule) Like I said, I was probably one of those moms that made you cringe lol but it worked wonderfully for me and still does to this day. My girls – now 12 and 5 – are delightfully independent and we do not struggle with things the way I see other families do. It just makes our lives run that much smoother.
Looking at your schedule – do you think if you combined the naps – say making it from 11-1:30 or even 12-2:30, then you have time to feed her lunch and play for a while before getting the older two. She will be sleepy by bedtime (which for my girls has always been 7:30 – yes, even still with the 12 year old) and you can get your couple hour break in the middle of the day.