routine or cat naps? which works best?

[steph & baby]

hi everyone, its been a while since my last post. my little girl is now 27 months. recently had a baby boy 9wks old. i have a dilemma, my dd was brought up on tracy hoggs sound advice, some of it i realised for my self and other guidance came straight out of her books. she is a textbook/spirited and apart from the occasional blip she thrived. the occasional blip would be overstimualted/tired and not always easy to get to have a nap. (usually when family were visiting etc) on some occassions i would be at it for 1-1 1/2 hrs. she would never go to sleep in her pushchair it usually had to be in her cot with no noise or distraction, as we had tought her to go to sleep by herself-no rocking etc from us. mostly though she was wonderful - in the week i would plan my day around her and go home for her naps, put her straight in her cot and off she drifted to sleep with no probs. however if we wanted to go out and about at the wknd she would struggle to fall asleep say at in laws (in her car seat with all family cooing over her!)

now i have a son and a busy week socialising dd. i am wondering wether to follow the same techniques with ds or to take him out and about and let him nap as and wen he drops to sleep.
will he learn to sleep in various places and in a noisier environment, will he be more easy going (unlike dd who if she doesn,t get to bed by 7 or have her nap is really put out)
at present i take him out and about in the morning and he cat naps then i respect his nap in the afternoon and put him to bed, he usually has a good 3-3 1/2 hr nap and early evening depending on how tired he is or if he isstruggling to sleep downstairs i may put him to bed again.
i realise at 9 wks he is still young enough to be adaptable and so need to decide shortly which route i will take.
looking back over my dd early months/year she was very good and always slept through the night form very early on. she would also go to bed in the evening without any trouble at 7.30 pm. but i wonder if it may be easier with ds to be adaptable giving our family more freedom to go out during the day and even stop up for the odd social event in the early evening.
has anyone tried both methods with thier kids? thanks steph

[momofclaire]

I only have one and thus have only does the EASY thing but I do have a friend who had a baby nine days before me.  She had read BW and decided that a schedule wasn't for her.  My baby slept through the night 8-9 hours at 2 1/2 to 3 months, hers not until 11 1/2 months.  She still has nw way more often than I do.  I think a schedule is best for baby and mom but you don't have to be super strict.  It's more about the order of events than watching a clock.  My vote is to continue with the baby whispering.  Good Luck

[tylersmommy]

I think you can have it both ways! My DS is 3 and my DD is 3 mo. He has preschool 4 mornings a week, and the drive to and from has been right in the middle of both AM naps. I also use the time while he's at school to run errands, so we usually aren't home at all until lunchtime. She's on EASY, has been since birth, but both of her AM naps are short. I shorten the time between feeds in the AM and she goes back to 3 hr EASY in the afternoon. I time it so that she goes down for her afternoon nap shortly after DS goes down for his...and that's when I sleep trained her in her crib. Her catnap was in the swing but is now in the crib, and bedtime is always sleep training in her crib. It's worked. When I want her to sleep in the crib, she goes down easily and is even falling asleep on her own. Our day usually looks like this:
730 - wake, eat
9-945 - nap
10 - eat
1115-12 - nap
1230 - eat
130-330 - nap
330 - eat
5-530 - catnap
530 - eat
7 - eat, bedtime
11 - df
up once at night to eat

It gets messy sometimes, but it works. She's incredibly adaptable and can take short naps on the go, then handle bizarrely long stretches of awake time to check out the scenery. So I don't think you have to choose one route or the other at all. I think that it becomes more and more difficult to sleep on the go as they become toddlers, so having that consistent foundation of BW will come in handy when your DS gets older.