Thursday, February 4, 2010

Yep. That again.

Oh, let's discuss naps again. Just for fun.

Remember when we tried to go from 2 to 1 naps? And then when we went right back to 2 naps?

We made our first attempt at dropping the nap around 11 months. She was napping poorly to sporadically, and was also making the switch from the Bunnies to the Bears room at school. It was very hard to entertain her for multiple hours in the morning, and after 3 weeks of effort, I decided to revert back to the 2 naps. (Especially after my scientific mommy poll revealed that most of my friends had toddlers who still took 2 naps).

I was encouraged that maybe our Girl would continue to take 2 naps, and maybe even longer naps once she started walking!

Ummm ... not so much.

Our Girl is an excellent sleeper at night, and used to be a wonderful napper before starting daycare at 12 weeks. I believe that daycare really messed with her napping, or perhaps she just evolved into a poor napper, but that is what she is. I've learned (am learning) to deal with it.

I had a lot of trepidation about her move to the big girl room at school, mainly related to the single nap and sleeping on the cot. She really adjusted pretty quickly and was consistently taking a 1 1/2 - 2 hour nap at school within about 2 weeks. Far better than she ever did in the baby room. (Again, I underestimated her and was pleasantly surprised. When will I learn?)

So ... at home, she continued to take 2 decent naps for about a month. Then, ever so slowly, her naps got all wonky. Because she is an early riser, she was taking her first nap from about 8:30-10:00, then her second nap from around 12:30-2:00. Then bedtime at 6:30ish. Then, she just stopped taking the second nap, or cried and fought us until it was too miserable to stand. If you are calculating ... yes, she would be awake from 10:00a until 6:00p. And yes, god-awful.

I knew this was really the sign that she was ready to go to 1 nap. I resisted it - I thought it might be a phase - because I was really enchanted with the idea that she would continue to take 2 good naps well into her 2nd year. It finally became beyond obvious that we needed to make the switch.

About a week ago, I just kept her up through the morning nap and put her down at about 12:30, which is what they do at school. She required far less entertaining than our previous attempt, which was also encouraging. She adjusted very quickly.

We are now in a pretty good place at 14 months. I can count on her sleeping at least an hour, usually 1 1/2 hours, and on a good day 2 hours. I still would love for her to sleep longer, but she consistently sleeps 12 hours at night, so I'll take what I can get.

Hard to believe that I've spent so much time and mental energy pondering naps. NAPS! And now, no more pondering until the day she drops this last nap altogether.

Please, please ... let that be a long time from now.

3 comments:

Bets said...

Don't worry ... before you know it, she'll be in college & she'll be napping in the afternoon between class & going out! Oh wait, that's about 18 years from now. :)

mary_marshall said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks daycare has messed up my child's napping. I had a very solid 2-nap napper before starting daycare & now we're lucky to get an hour nap out of her each day. So frustrating. Glad the one nap is finally working out for yall!

Carrie said...

YAH!!!