Not a bad mum because my lo takes short naps

[alison toms mum]

Tom has been taking short naps since just after he turned 3 months old and started sleeping longer at night. Apart from this he is brilliant, hes been on easy since he was 3 weeks old, sleeps 12 hrs at night, is (nearly) always in a good mood, and wakes giggling as often as he wakes grizzling

i find it so easy, however, to get hung up on those short naps, trying every suggestion in the book as well as suggestions everyone online has offered. I even put my life on hold to try to sort out the nap issue for 2 weeks (and ended up getting really depressed as id spent so long in a darkened room, with no improvement whatever). I streached his awake time on the advice of one person, and have now shortened it again on the advice of another...... (BTW this has helped a bit) and i often take this failure to improve the situation as a sign im doing something wrong (and therefore a bad mother)

Im now trying to worry less about the short naps, and lengthen them without dwelling on them. My hv said she truily believes tom needs less sleep than many babies so although he may need a litle more than the 45 mins hes currently getting, there is no point aiming for 2 hrs as he simply doesnt need it!

So to all mums suffering short naps remember YOU ARE A FANTASTIC MOTHER, MANY BABIES GO THROUGH A PHASE OF SHORT NAPS, OTHERS JUST NEED LESS SLEEP. EITHER WAY SHORT NAPS DOES NOT MAKE YOU A FAILURE.

i think this site is great, the tips are really usefull, i plan to continue to fight short naps, but i also plan to keep things in perspective :wink:


BTW i posted 2 weeks ago to ask how people whos babies needed less sleep organised easy, i got some tips on how to lengthen naps, but no one replied to say how they delt with easy if there lo needed less sleep. if anyone can help with this id REALLY apriciate it because im worried his short naps will confuse the routine we worked so hard to set up

[evanskimberley]

Thanks for posting this, sometimes I think we get a bit hung up on trying to sort other peoples babies so they do the same as our own, and all babies are different and need different things.

My DD has always been a massive sleeper, for a few months she'd have two lots of two hours, however my best friend had a baby and he never sleeps!!!! She has battled with him for 8months with him catnapping all day and now she can get him to have one scheduled nap for an hour in the morning. Any more sleep and he won't sleep long enough at night. You can imagine how frustrated she was as holly was sleeping so much, she found it hard to get anything done in the day whilst i had time to kill!!!

She's happy now she knows this is his routine and this is obviously just how much sleep he needs, she's not doing anything wrong, her baby is just different!

With regards to easy, have you looked at how to do easy with an older baby, that may give yo some ideas on how to adapt it, cos as they get older they generally give up a nap. have a look and let us know if you need an hand adapting it!

[Meg's Mom]

Thanks for sharing -

i'll try to help answer your question - to keep easy you would do an activity after the sleep and then Eat again at the scheduled time.

E - 7am
A
S - 9am
A - 9.45am
E - 11.00am etc.

To ease the confusion, keep eating at the same times (like w/ an older baby) and sleep will fall where it will.

Does that help?  If not let me know i'll try again :-)

[HeatherC]

What a wonderul post.  I ended up finding that naps were alot like getting pregnant...once I quit worrying over it, she suddenly started taking long naps.
And as far as EASY goes, with a short napper (mine was for 6 months), you do more of an EASAE.  As the pp said, try to keep feeding times consistant, although if baby is cranky you sometimes have to give in early just to passify the lo.

[alison toms mum]

thanks for the advice, it really reasures me to know doing EASAE wont mess up his routine too badly......this seems to be his prefered choice as he gets over tired if i try to extens a time and actually seems to nap less

i had a really bad day yesterday, and felt all i was dwelling on were his short naps, so REALLY had to have that rant (mostly a rant at myself for letting short naps become such an issue for me). Ive got the hv comming today to talk to me as i think im starting to get a bit depressed..... so hopefully ill be able to keep things in perspective a bit better once i get some help.

thanks for all your support

[Caroline-Charlies Mummy]

Hey Alison, how you doing?

You're right, you're not a bad mum b/c lo has short naps - I've read a lot of your posts, and I know you're a FANTASTIC mum. My ds also does the same thing - cannot get him to do 2 hour (or even 1.5 hour :roll: ) naps, 1 hour is a good nap here. So we too do the EASAE thing, and he's a happy, contended little boy. Don't beat yourself up! No baby has read the same textbooks as his mum, and they just don't like conforming. As long as Tom is happy & healthy, you're doing a great job, and maybe he doesn't need as many naps as other babies.

I hope your HV visit has gone well (& she's more bloomin use than mine  :roll: ). If you start to feel down, pm me and we can chat or even go for that BW coffee (btw do you ever get to Chester at all? could that be a good middle place?)

Let us know how you're doing
Caroline xx

[HeatherC]

Alison-I know what it's like to start to feel depressed.  I felt that way when dd didn't nap well, and then again when she was sick/teething and just in awful moods.  Please take the time to have someone watch the baby and get out of the house.  It is so necessary to refresh yourself, and that doesn't make you a bad mom either!  I took 7 hours one day all to myself, even caught a movie, and boy did I feel much better.