Church & Routine

[shimmer]

I was wondering if anyone could give me advice.

I have just begun trying to implement EASY with my 6-week-old.  Today has been fairly successful.  She ate at 8, and was down for sleeping by 9:15.  She ate at 11 and was down at 12:15.  She ate at 2 and is now down at 3:40.  I plan on feeding her again at 5 and having her down by 6:30, then feeding her at 8 and hopefully having her down for the night at 9 or 9:30.  Isn't this too much sleep?  Will she actually sleep at night with all these naps during the day?

Ok- now my other question.

I am pretty religious and my Church meets for 3 hours every week and I like to go for all 3... is it ok for my littleone to sleep on my shoulder once every Sunday for occasions such as that?  Or will that throw her off?

Thanks for any answers.

[Critter]

Our son slept in his infant carrier at church.  Now that he's older, we could put him in the nursery, but he wants to play so badly when he's there and the traditional service is smack in the middle of his nap.  Sooooooooo, we're about to start going to the early service.

[julieb]

You can try it for as long as it lasts.  Our church has ALWAYS fallen in his morning naps.  We've only been a handful of times in the past year.    We also tried the infant carrier as much as we could.  I also tried putting him down early for naps and/or shortening them before, or getting him up earlier on church days so we could squeeze that first nap in.  None of it seemed to go very well for us so for now we've just decided to wait it out until he consolidates to 1 nap.  I think it will just depend on how your baby handles changes in routine and how adaptable she is to sleeping in different surroundings.

[CharlotteS]

HI!

VERY good question!  Church days have always been off days for DS's routine.  ALWAYS.  I do let him sleep on my shoulder or in my arms.  It's the only place he'll actually fall asleep letting me (or someone else) hold him.  (If we're anywhere else besides church, he has to be out of someone's arms. I don't know how he knows, he just does.)  I've tried putting him in the nursery during services, but he likes to play, and that just overtires/overstimulates him.  So, he usually takes a 35-50 minute nap in my arms while I'm sitting in the service.  I haven't noticed that this causes any confusion for him.

HTH, hon!
Hugs!

[CaedensMama]

We also keep Caeden with us during the service. It does usually interrup his nap or make for a short one, but he seems to do okay with it.
I would say it is not a problem to make occassionaly exceptions for the baby and I think it makes it easier if they do get "off track" every now and then cause it helps when you have to do something or be somewhere they can learn to adapt a little better to sleeping,etc in different places. Don't get me wrong, the routine is important and stick with it as much as possible and yes, even work around it sometimes. But don't forget you have a life too and your LO is part of it.
They do just fine learning to adapt and be in different places occassionally!

[Noelle]

Hey - me again

Just saw this post....It is perfectly fine   and I'll be honest, for us this is a disadvantage that I forgot.  Though John and Zoe were great independent nappers, I couldn't get them to sleep with me holding them. Carseats/cribs/pack-n-plays/strollers were just fine. Though they would go to sleep in their infant carriers..I would just put the handle up, hang a blanket up over the handle and then rock them to sleep.  But when they outgrew their infant carrier it usually wasn't too much a problem either has they could handle the pushing back of nap much easier.

But wish I could have held them..that would have been the easiest

[GG]

Oooh!  I just saw this post!  I've had a similar issue and never thought of posting on here!!

We head out to church on Sundays just as he should be going down for a nap.  The little booger doesn't sleep in the car on the way there and he simply won't sleep on my shoulder, so he's basically up from 7ish AM to noon w/o a nap.  Considering how spirited/touchy he is, he does extremely well!!  I think it's because there's enough going on around him so that, even though he's exhausted, he',s kept 'entertained' by the other busy bees (the kids in the cry room).  We don't even need to be in the cry room since he's so quiet but we go there just in case.

When he was smaller he would sleep in his infant seat - those things are SO wonderful!  I wish they had toddler seats that were as easily transferable. Someday.   

Shimmer, it's definitely okay to let her sleep on your shoulder once a week.  It won't throw things off.

[lele]

I second the idea of using the carrier and throwing a blanket over it.  We too go every sunday for 3 hours and so far i can get dd to go down on her own in the carrier.  You could even try some practice runs at home maybe, see if you can get your lo to fall asleep on her own in the carrier at that time.  Of course not at the sacrifice of losing the routine completely but it would be nice to have a little flexibility with a baby huh?

[kim&savannah]

We also go for 3 hours each week and I had similar questions/problems when dd was younger, but mainly, I made it my goal to get her to sleep without being bf to sleep while there, so I wasn't breaking our habit in that way.  But we did hold her since she didn't sleep well in the carseat carrier.  And we had lots of short naps at church with the occasional surprise long one (kind of similar to home, though, too).

As she got older, the only way we could get her to fall asleep, in our arms or otherwise, was to take her into the janitors closet (dark and quiet) and sing to her--once she was asleep, I would bring her back out and we could get a 45 min. nap most times.  DH was too scared to ever bring her out so he would sit in the janitor's closet until she woke up

~Kim

[mattandcindy]

We started doing the infant seat with the blanket over it at about 6 weeks. Church NEVER fell at a good time with Abigail's nap schedule but it was VERY important for us to make sure we tried to get to church every week. So we did whatever service worked better with her schedule and if neither did than she just had a day with a weird nap schedule. Honestly, she always did really good and it did not throw her off at all. She wouldn't sleep on us at all (our girl is not a cuddler!) but would sleep some in her infant seat. Now that she is older she goes in the nursery and does great. And she knows that Mommy, Daddy and Abigail all go to church together. (My mom had offered to let us bring Abigail to their house during church but we felt it was important for her to feel included in going to church with us, didn't want to start any bad habits!)
I think if it is important to you than you make the adjustments to make it work.
For us, it fortunately never seemed to have that big of an impact on the schedule!
Hope it works out for you!
Good Luck!

[Gigismom]

excellent question.  we go to church 3 times a week and from day one, it has been a struggle as far as trying to get gianna to nap while we are there.  but we too feel it is important to take her with us anyway. 

so when we go, we have just done whatever it takes to get her to sleep-rock, sing, walk her around outside...anything!  it has never thrown her off.  but we do stick to the schedule pretty closely most other days, so i think that her routine is so ingrained in her that a few days here and there where her naps are off doesn't bother her at all.

good luck!