An Intro and Help with Naps and Daycare

MommyinTraining44

Hi! I'm Jessica, mom to 7 month old daughter, Briggs.  

During pregnancy and before the birth of my daughter, I was convinced "attachment parenting" was not for me.  It was gonna be sleep training from the get go and fitting baby into a consistent schedule from the start.  Many friends before me had pushed this idea on us and our church is a huge advocate of Babywise.

After 22 hours of natural labor and 3 minutes of pushing (whoa) Briggs came into this world and forever changed my heart!  I wear that baby all the time, nurse on demand, share our family bed, and have never tried to sleep train or schedule...and it works for us...most the time.

At 12 weeks I went back to work 4 days a week but was committed to maintaining our parenting choices.  Her nursery school is wonderful and her primary caregiver is extremely supportive of all the choices we have made.  Briggs is rocked to sleep at every nap, eats on demand, and they have also accommodated our choices in baby-led weaning rather than offering pureed baby food (prior to Briggs, infants were only offered purees as a first food).  AP and working is hard, but is incredibly worthwhile as we have a healthy, happy little girl.   

With that said, THIS GIRL DOES NOT LIKE TO NAP.  She constantly has bags under eyes because she barely puts in 30 minutes of sleep in any given day.  She is a little social butterfly and literally melts down when she gets tired and no amount of rocking, nursing, cuddling, wearing will calm her down.  When we finally do get her asleep (usually by nursing at home or the bottle at daycare) she stays asleep for 15 minutes tops and then is up and ready to play.  She is usually happy and content regardless of this lack of sleep, but lately she just seems so overly tired 24/7.  I feel like I am not doing my job as a parent in making sure she is well rested.  She sleeps from 8:30pm - 7:00am most nights so we are happy that she is getting good stretches of sleep there, but I feel so incompetent with knowing how to navigate this napping situation.

 We have started putting her in her crib awake for naps at the first sign of sleepiness, but she will cry and scream. If she is only mildly fussy, we will let her stay in her crib without going to her, but at the first sign of real crying we always rescue her from that horrible, awful place (accordingly to her, i'm sure).  And we are happy to do so, but she continues to scream in our arms. 

What have other AP families done to help with naps?  Any working moms out there with any advice?  I just want a happy, healthy, rested daughter, but I don't know how to navigate this situation.  It seems that the best thing for her would be to let her cry until she falls asleep, but in the few times we have done this, she is back up in 5 minutes.  I don't want to let her CIO, but I don't know what more I can do. I just want her to get better sleep.  I have read the no-cry sleep solution (maybe should re-read it).

 Thanks for letting me share!  And I applaud you for hanging in there on this VERY long post  

  

aglenn

Is this a new thing, or has she always been this way?  DS is the same age and his naps have been horrible lately, too.  I think it has a lot to do with teething and starting to get mobile (he is on the verge of crawling and I think he's trying to work it all out). 

Is the naptime routine the same at home vs. day care?  Does she nap better one place or the other?

cesehorn

I know how you feel. I stayed home with LO until she was 13 months though. She has NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, been a good napper. She will sleep for 45 minutes tops and then is ready for play. It sounds like your little one is in the same boat as mine. We've tried and tried to get her down early, but she resists. We've just taken to letting her work with us. For the past several months she has started nodding yes to, "Do you want to go to bed now?" and we whisk her off to the bed.

Our daughter went through this and she no longer has bags under her eyes or anything. She was so excited about crawling, and then walking, add some teething in there, and she never slept (or so it seemed to me). 

 Everyone has always asked what I do to have such a happy little girl, so it works for us. Everyone has their own routine that they find works for them though. You'll get there. 

FairyDuster003

She sounds just like this baby girl at the daycare I worked at a few years ago!! She always looked so tired but had a tough time going down for a nap. I found that if she had a bottle till she fell asleep she would sleep for about 30 minutes then as soon as she started to stir, I'd walk over to the crib and pat her back and sing softly. She would usually go back to sleep for another 3045 minutes on that stretch.

When her mom saw on her sheet that she was napping so long I told her what I was doing and she started patting her back instead of immediately picking her up. She let me know what a difference that made at home as well! She also seemed to be a lot less fussy in the afternoons after a good nap. She was such a sweet and happy girl!

But that's my only experience. I just had to tell you because she sounds so similar to the baby in my class!

MrsKeene12

Tell her ahead of time that a nap is coming. I watch two lil boys and I give them notice that nap time is coming. I start before lunch, we are going to have lunch, play then nap time. Play after luch does not include stimulation, no tv or music. If the younger of the two isn't really tired i do the normal diper change before nap then baby massage with lotion over whole body. If he gets up in the middle of nap, I check diper, talk calmly and ask him to keep head on pillow/hug teddy, then tell him it is nap time we have to rest. Since I started a routine of telling them what I expect, it has gotten easier. They are napping better and don't fuss or cry about it. The 4 year old now lays down for nap time when I do diper change getting the lil one ready. I don't have to remind him/tell him.