Just wanted to share a bw success story! On March 1, we started our then 7 week old on EASY. He WOULD NOT NAP!!! This was a result of accidental parenting on our part, where both sets of grandparents came to visit for most of our lo's first month of life and we let them (not knowing the disaster it would cause) hold him while he napped. Well, when they left, I put him down in his crib for a nap on the first day on my own and therein started the month of almost no naptime all day from his 7am wake up until his then 11pm bedtime! He was never a problem to put down at night because we had always put him in his crib at bedtime and from 4 weeks he would sleep a 5-6 hour stretch (though this isn't happening now, but that's another story!)
So, we plugged away at pat/ssh, routine with EASY and sleep times, even dabbledin some pu/pd despite his age. We were dedicating almost all of our waking hours to making this work since we had to sit in with him through his naps (not only the 45min if it would work at all to get him to sleep but then throught he transition, too) and we wanted to give up so many times but stuck to it. Around the end of March things started to click and he finally started having longer morning naps on his own.
A week later, a bad chest cold hit and everything went out the window! His coughing would wake him up from his sleep through the day AND he started to wake up 45 min into his night time sleeps, too! We just lived with it through the cold but by the time it passed we were practically back to square one. Despite reading in tbw that once you have the foundation, it is easier to get things back on track after an interruption in routine, we found it was not so "EASY." Maybe because he had only really figured it out for a week before his cold!
We were now at the beginning of April and once again had to sit beside his crib and help him to sleep (granted nowhere near as long as before but still at good 20 min) and for 35-40 min for each transition. He was napping longer but we were tied up with him for almost the entire time of every nap.
By May 3, he had made it through about 2 or 3 naps on his own at random times and I was dreading a 2.5 hour flight to Toronto to visit family, fearing things would go back to square one yet again. Our lo was an angel on the flight and even slept in my arms for a nap each way. I sat by to extend his naps the first few days on the trip and he was sleeping through with my help and then one day I missed one and he stayed asleep! For the last 2 days of the trip, I left him alone and most naps he worked through on his own, we even had to wake him up from his last nap of the day for one nap because it was getting so close to bedtime. I don't know why things clicked there, maybe out of pure exhaustion on his part so I was skeptical that it would continue back at home.
The first nap back at home on May 8 was a bust and we thought that the problem still hadn't remedied itself but we were determined to not go in at transitions and see what would happen. Well, I'm happy to say that he has slept through almost every nap since we've been back and the few times he woken up early he has been in good spirits and obviously didn't need to sleep more!
He now takes an approximately 1.5 hour nap in the morning, a 1:45 nap in the afternoon and a 45 min catnap a few hours before bed. He is 20 weeks old and on 4 hour EASY finally for the past week very comfortably.
Trust me, I know how dark those days seem when you feel like you are being held prisioner in your own home trying to make this thing work and feeling like your lo's darkened bedroom is your daytime cell! But, I wanted to tell our story to tell you that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. All babies are different and some will not have all of their nap problems solved in 3 days, 2 weeks or even a month - hey, it took us two months to work things out with our spirited baby! But it can and does work, just don't give up!
Our lo is bf and just been taking a very small serving of cereal a day for the past week. He has more than doubled his birth weight and is currently about 17.5 lbs. He is a very happy baby through the day, still will have a bum nap here or there and is grumpy afterwards but we know it will be short lived. Still not a super sleeper at night, wakes 3-4 times and eats 1-2 of those but because we now have some Y time through the day, the nights are much easier!
Hope this story gives you some motivation to carry through! Thanks to all of the moderators that gave us tips and support throughout the way, especially Stacey and zandersmummy! Feel free to pm me if you have questions or need a pep talk!
