I became a little nap obsessed! I read 3 books, Googled everything imaginable, and tried every which way to get him to take longer naps. My solution originally was HIS SWING!!! His wonderful swing!! This, paired with a schedule worked wonders!! Until that is...I told our pediatrician at 4 months and he basically told me I was creating a bad habit. I felt a rush of anxiety and I thought to myself "well there goes that idea"! He was right though, the days of the swing would be coming to an end and then what would I do?
We started transitioning him to his crib for naps. The wonderful catnaps picked right back up where we left off, and my little evening beast was back in full force. We had to try something new. I figured at this point, we could try a little crying to sleep because, to me, having a baby that isn't well rested is probably more destructive for their development, than one who fusses to sleep.
Greg and I were both on board and we tried some modified crying-it-out. I say modified because we are too big of suckers to let him actually cry too long, so we would go in to soothe him constantly. Although, this could have created a whole new problem, it surprisingly started to work. It took about a week, but Nathan was learning how to self-soothe! The 45 minute battle of rocking, bouncing, jumping, pulling my hair out to get him to fall asleep was coming to an end. It didn't immediately solve the catnap issue, but I felt like we had some success. No more swing, no more rocking to sleep....we could do this.
This brings me to now. I never thought the simple concept of a nap would mean so much to me, but really our day to day life has changed so much. I would say about 2 weeks ago I stopped stressing over his naps, and just wanted to sit back and let the little guy take his new self-soothing skills and ease into them the way he wanted to. Guess what the results were? A napping pro (well don't get me wrong, he still has his occasional "nap FAIL!" we like to call them). He wakes up for the day at 7:00am, eats then plays. At 9:00am I take him up to his crib, turn out the lights, music goes on, white noise goes on, I put him down wide awake (I am still in shock over this part), tell him I love him, turn on his seahorse and out I go. 5 minutes later...the giggles turn into silence. 1.5-2 hours later the giggles resume because he is awake, alert and WELL-RESTED after his long nap!! Yes read that again...1.5-2 hours later!! He eats again, plays some more then we repeat this again around 1:00 and sometimes he takes a little catnap in the early evening. His demeanor has completely changed. He never cries (unless we are trying to feed him a bottle, which is a whole other issue), he is so playful and the best part....I have time to sit and write a long winded blog that most people won't even care to read! haha.
My mom sent me a journal she kept of my infant days where she wrote down everything I did. The times I slept, the times I ate, the things I learned, how much I weighed (I guess I see where I got this nature from). At 5 months....she wrote in huge letters, starred and underlined "LIFE WITH LAUREN IS FINALLY GETTING EASIER!!!." Here we are almost 30 years later and I am going to write the same thing in my journal about my own child!! :::tear:::
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1 comment:
I'm so happy to read this, Lauren! We are feeling the same way. Our life has changed unbelievably once naps got straightened out! I mentioned it in my latest blog post as well... must be a trend. ;)
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