Babies: 9 - 12 Months
Filly78
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Nap battle on the weekends
Filly78
member
DS is 10 months 1 week. He usually naps at daycare around 3 hours a day broken up into 2 naps. He gets to daycare around 8:30AM and usually naps for the first time around 9:30 or 10AM. When he's home with us on the weekends he wakes up at the same time, around 7AM, but refuses to take a nap until noon or later despite our best efforts. We try to keep him on the same schedule when he's home on the weekends, but nothing is working. We try to put him in the crib when he starts looking tired and leave him in there for an hour or so, but he ends up standing up, walking around the crib, jumping up and down, etc. In the past rocking him for a few minutes to settle him down has worked and then we lay him in the crib and he will fall asleep, but that does not work anymore. This weekend we had to resort to driving him around in the afternoon to force him to take a nap. Ugh. Any suggestions?
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Re: Nap battle on the weekends
Daycare still puts him in the swing!! We stopped using the swing a long, long time ago..... Usually when he sits still enough to fall asleep he will, so using the swing and locking him in works. That's cheating though!
Oh wow this is us exactly, except instead of playing around in the crib, he would just scream. We've been making some progress using some suggestions from our ped. We started by sitting right next to the crib, and comforting him by holding his hand and shushing, until he falls asleep. We did have days where he didn't fall asleep at all, but we tried for an hour anyway. We did spend weekends sitting in the dark while our son cried his heart out, without picking him up, and it was terrible.
Even though we're only doing this on the weekends, and his routine is totally different at daycare (same deal, they put him in a bouncy seat to sleep), he is starting to get the hang of it. He'll now fall asleep within five minutes. The next step, in theory, is to move the chair away from the crib and have him fall asleep without the (literal) hand-holding, and then sit by the door, and finally, be able to put him into the crib and walk out of the room. Supposedly, it does work! I think it's just persistence, try picking whatever method works for you, and stick with it. We used to dread weekends because of nap fails, but now that it's starting to get better the stress level is dropping.
OK, reading back, I realize I haven't given you any useful advice you probably haven't already heard, but you're definitely not alone and I wish you nap time success in the very near future!