Set Naps

[Spleenie]

Hello,

My DD is 8 months old and her routine has gone out the window. I have no idea what time she wakes in the morning as she's so quiet.

I am due to return to work in a week or so and I am wondering if set naps might be the way to go for me as my mum and nursery may find this easier that me explaining the whole BW thing to them.

Has anyone got any info on how i should start this and how it works?

Thankyou for reading x x x

[~Karen~]

Here's a previous post on set naps if there's any help in it for you:

http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=209813.0

They can work but your lo needs to be getting up around the same time every morning.  You could always wake her up at a certain time if you want to know exactly when she woke up.  My ds2 was/is the same.  He'll lay there so quietly some morning I have no idea what time he's actually been awake from.  I guess if you really wanted to know you could have a baby monitor in the bedroom with you and then you might be able to tell? 

[Spleenie]

Thanks for this Karen. I woke DD up at 6:45 this morning so will see how long she goes before getting tired. How do set naps work once your little one increases their activity time tho. Won't they start to resist the nap? x x x

[clairebear79]

I'd just also like to add be very careful about what times you choose to set the naps at.  

I've tried on 2 occasions to implement them with my EWing DS & have found that a 1st A time of 3.5hrs+ (to try & break the EW cycle) for him is just way too much.  Both times he's just ended up horribly OT & after a week of persevering we just had to give up & follow cues.  Having said that, he is Touchy, so is prone to OT & doesn't cope well with it at all.

I think if you know roughly what A times your LO can handle so you can set the naps accordingly, if she gets up around the same time every day and if she handles OT well then you should be fine.

Good luck if you decide to give it a go!xx

[~Karen~]

Just to add.....when my Mum has ds2 I just tell her when to put him down from when he's woken up in the morning.  When he was on two naps I'd just check in with her to see how long he'd slept for and what time he'd woken up and then tell her when to put him down again.  That might not work as well with nursery though!

[sianie]

Hi...

I've done set naps with both my LO's & they have worked really well for us. However, I do agree that they don't work for every LO/family situation.

I started doing set naps when my LO's were around 8 mths old & had settled into a 2 nap routine. I always woke my LO's up at 7am if they weren't already awake.

I think at around your LO's age our routines were something like:

WU: By 7am (usually between 6.30/7am)
AM nap: 10am
PM nap: 2/2.30pm
BT: 7pm-ish

If you decide to do set naps then there is usually a few days of OT to start with whilst your LO gets used to a new routine but in my experience it has really helped 'set' my LO's body clocks so that they automatically got tired around the same time, regardless of WU. It also made our days a lot more consistent & predictable....

Good luck! 

[Spleenie]

Thankyou for your replies! 

How do set naps work when your LO's A time increases? x x x

[sianie]

I usually find that when we start getting nap/BT resistance &/or earlier WU's then I know it's time to do a routine tweak.