Leila has switched to one nap. ONE. She is only 10 months (well… almost) and has gone all toddler on me. Oh I’ve tried…. I was all – you WILL be sleeping or else! And she was all – WATCH ME, WOMAN! Fast forward seven days later she is taking one nap ONLY. And that’s how I roll. I am THAT parent. I give in, I can’t force it… and convince myself that when it really matters I will be able to suddenly turn in an authoritative parent… whom am I kidding? Me thinks… not very many.
And remember my virtual victory dance for sleeping through the night? Yeah… about that… I enjoyed every second of those five minutes that it lasted. As soon as she got sick the sleeping schedule went out like it’s a Friday night, got drunk and is still missing. She is now waking up again at least once per night. Well… that’s not so bad, you say. You surely don’t feed her, right? Right? Please tell us you don’t feed her?!…. Why yes I do! (stop shaking your head – it’s not working) I can explain… if she goes to bed at 6pm and wakes up at 3am crying… I think it is safe to assume she is hungry, no? I know that some scientist (a bunch of childless single dudes, I am sure) have written dissertations on how children over the age of 6 months don’t really need to eat at night blah blah blah. I know better, but I can’t do better. Once again I give in and adjust to baby’s schedule. Once again I dodge the conversation with Dennis about letting her cry-it-out… I would but I would rather stick a fork in my eye than listen to her cry. Not now. Not yet.
oye. so we have a coupla things to chat about tomorrow then. i promise not to judge you, coach you, or dance around you laughing and singing the toldyaso song. promise.
Oh my. The one nap, is it long? I think I might be able to deal if it was once a day for three hours, but anything short of that is a dire problem.
I too was feeling pretty confident about sleep, but Bea’s started waking up at four-frickin’-a.m. and it’s NOT COOL. We’re too lazy and tired to comfort her in her own room so we drag her to our bed where I pretend to be asleep while she punches me in the eyeball and pulls my hair. Bitch.
The one nap is about two… sometimes two and a half hours, so not bad. Kisses to you and your adorable Bea!
Can you blame her? She gone and found herself some toddler friends and is now you have a grown-up-big-girl type situation on your hands. Good luck with that. ….Now back to my kid who shares none of those things, unless you count the waking up at night to eat and check on my existance, mostly naps and has learned to stomp around for dramatic effect.
Ooooh lady! You made me laugh at 7:30 AM plus you made my day. I thought I was the only mom doing those things!!!! Thank you for being so honest and humorous : )))
Thanks, Dearam! It surely is nice not to be the only push over mother
I read that most babies keep two naps until 18 months old, but around 17% or something drop the second nap much earlier. I live in fear that Jack will be in that minority. Not that I can get him to nap more than 45 minutes anyway….but still. Here’s hoping that wee Leila will decide that she is NOT hungry at 3 am!
Cheers!
Wow, I am so feeling you on this post. No one can really understand what it’s like for a mother with a child who won’t sleep except another mother with a child who won’t sleep. My little Henry is about 10 1/2 months old, and he goes back and forth between one and two naps a day. Sometimes, he even screams through BOTH naps and then ends up with nothing (except a Mommy who’s hanging onto the quickly unraveling last thread of her daily rope). AND he’s still waking up once in the middle of the night, around 4:30 or so, sometimes to eat and sometimes ready for the day, which is a huge nightmare. I have no idea how some people do it! I have read so many books and talked to so many people and no one knows what to say…Henry’s a situation of his own, unlike any other. And I totally get the whole “obey the baby” shirt, because when you’ve tried everything else, that’s about all you have left to do. Too bad that sometimes means sitting in a rocking chair on your fat ass for over an hour with a baby hanging off of your nipple just to be sure they get their precious sleep. Like one of my friends told me in response to my divulging Henry’s sleep problems: “teenagers sleep a lot, don’t they??”
Precisely.
M
You know, Hayley’s been waking up at night lately, too. I’m sure she’d like us to feed her but we just lay her back down, rub her back a little and go back to bed. For 5 minutes. Cause that’s when we have to go do it all again. Usually after a few times she really does go back to sleep for the night.
Last night was pretty bad and Geoff brought her to me in bed while he went to make a bottle but she was so stinkin’ tired and just wanted to cuddle so we didn’t feed her and she passed out. I was then able to put her back in her crib and she was still asleep when I left for work. I really don’t want to do any of this every night but I have to admit it was fun to cuddle.
I don’t know what happened to our little sleeper.
You crack me up!! Annabelle is the lamest napper and I honestly almost hope she goes to one nap soon because having to be tied to home on my two days off a week in case she decides to grace me with a 30 minute a.m. snooze and then later a 30 minute afternoon snooze is a ginormous buzzkill. And she still totally wakes up at night, maybe 3x a week? Although the doc said she has these constant ear infections (don’t bother her at all in the day!) so maybe it’s that? Who knows. I have to take her to a pediatric ENT and we’re probably looking at tubes for her ears. Fun! At any rate I never feed her at night but she goes to sleep later…any chance you can push back Leila’s bedtime (super buzzkill when you’ve been on Mommy duty all day, I know…). Maybe if she went to bed at 8pm she’d make it until 6 am without eating. Just a thought…hang in there chica, you are not alone and it’s good to know we are all muddling through this together.
We have tried putting her to bed later, but that didn’t make any difference – she was still waking up at the exact same time. We have tried it when she was around 6 months and then again around 8 months, but I think we will try that again maybe when she is 12 months… It has to work some day, right?