I’m not sure where to start, or if I’ve even posted this in the right place. Please move if necessary!
My little man is almost a year old. He is a GREAT nighttime sleeper, I have no complaints there, but he is a terrible napper – at home anyway. I’m going to try to make this brief but cover all the questions you all might ask, so let me try it this way:
- Breastfeeding, baby sleeps in crib. He’s in daycare 5 days a week, and takes 2 naps during the day, always at the same times.
- I nurse him to sleep most nights, and I don’t mind doing this because it’s easy, it works, and it’s a nice way to get another BF into my very distractible nurser. On nights when he doesn’t fall asleep while nursing (and lately, it’s maybe half and half), he’ll pop off while he’s still awake, and I’ll put him down either awake or almost asleep, and he usually goes down the rest of the way on his own. On nights when he nurses all the way down, I’ll then carry him over to his crib. Sometimes he wakes up while I’m carrying him there or when I’m putting him down. He usually doesn’t complain when he wakes up – he’ll just roll over onto his belly and go right to sleep. Sometimes he may start crying when I put him down and he wasn’t asleep yet – if he does, I’ll often tell him I love him and that it’s time for night-night, and I’ll leave the room to see if he goes to sleep on his own. I’m not into letting him CIO, but sometimes if he complains initially about being put down, if I leave he’ll calm himself down within a couple minutes and then go to sleep. If he continues crying or it escalates, I’ll go back in. Again, usually nighttime is really easy and predictable, but I want to give you all the facts so you know what we do for all sleeps. My husband can also put him down, usually involving a bottle first and then a little cuddling, but I tend to do most of the nights since we're nursing.
- He usually only wakes up at night if there’s a reason (he’s sick, teething, etc.). If he wakes up, often he’ll fuss for a minute or two and then go back to sleep on his own. He might wake up and need help going back to sleep once every couple weeks. Unless, like I said, there is some reason. We’ll always try to wait him out, because very often he just puts himself back to sleep. If he needs our help, we’ll give it to him (nursing, rocking, etc), since he doesn’t need it too often.
- He sleeps at night from 7:30pm until around 6:00am.
- At daycare, he naps brilliantly. They plop him in the crib, and he goes to sleep. Period. No rocking, no bottle (though he is well fed, within an hour of his naps), and most importantly – no crying! He naps about 1.5 - 2 hours in the AM and then another 1 - 1.5 hours in the PM.
- At home however… naps are a nightmare. He’s all over the map. One day, he’ll go down awake and put himself to sleep for a 2 hour morning nap, so we’re thrilled and thinking we’re on the road to an easy naptime routine. Next time he’ll cry and fight us the whole time, and absolutely refuse to sleep, no matter the rocking or nursing or whatever he’s given. Sometimes I’ll nurse him down, and wait till he’s really out, but then when I try to put him in the crib he’ll wake up. We’re trying this: husband takes the morning nap on the weekends, and I take the afternoon nap. Husband will give him a bottle right before nap (in the darkened room, music playing, etc.), and then lay him down whether he’s awake or asleep. Sometimes it “takes” and sometimes it doesn’t. For “my” nap, I’ll nurse him down and then try to lay him down in the crib (just like we do at night). I say “try” because it rarely, rarely works for me anymore – he usually wakes as I lay him down. Sometimes at this point I can nurse him back to sleep (at which point, I just let him sleep on me because I feel it’s fruitless to keep trying), or he may just decide he’s done with naptime for the day. At this point, if I put him in the car for a drive, he’ll usually conk out, so I know he’s not really done even if he wants us to think he is!
- He’s going through a bit of separation anxiety, but seems to be getting better with that. I think his naps got worse when he started with the sep anxiety, so I keep hoping that as he grows out of that his naps will get better.
- I am scared to do anything here, because of his history. He was always a very high-maintenance sleeper. Always needed to be rocked, held, cuddled, nursed, etc. to sleep, even overnight. Now that he’s so easy at night, I’m scared that if we try to make a change to his naps, it’ll come back to bite me at night. I know that we’re lucky with the nighttime sleep! We’ve gotten to this easy phase at night by just pushing him little by little, every chance we get. Gradual changes, if that makes sense (putting him down sooner and sooner in the process, letting him “fuss it out” rather than going to him right away – that kind of thing). I’ve wanted to do that for his naps too – just give him what he needs, and hope we can make gradual changes. But now that he’s almost a year old, I’m worried he’ll never change and I know this lack of sleep on the weekends isn’t good for him.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!! I look forward to any advice or tips that anyone might have. Do you think I can make a change here, and not affect his nighttime sleep?
