My newly one year old (birthday post to come) has well and truly begun the transition from two sleeps to one. What a pain! After months of a set routine and an organized life, things have been thrown into chaos again. SIGH!
As you all know I'm a prolific googler and researcher. So from the moment Heike started taking a longer morning sleep and carrying on about her afternoon sleep, I was online looking for answers.
As it turns out (and always does when it comes to babies) there is no one answer for dealing with this "in between" time when bubs don't quite need two sleeps but aren't quite ready for one. The main strategies to try are:
1) Wake them up from their morning nap so they'll be tired enough to take another in the afternoon: Adherents to this strategy recommend waking bub up after 30-40 minutes in the morning and giving them another sleep at around 1pm. The morning sleep will eventually be dropped and the other brought forward.
2) Force one sleep: Keep baby awake until around 11am (despite the fact they will be ridiculously tired) and put them to bed for minimum 2-2.5 hours - this approach can involve quite a bit of resettling before bub really gets what they're meant to be doing.
3) Go with the flow: Let bub have the sleep they need in the morning and, if needed, take them for a long walk or drive in the afternoon so they get another short nap in. Gradually the morning sleep will be pushed back, maybe a half hour each week, until bub only needs the one sleep a day.
Despite advocating going with the flow repeatedly, you may have noticed I'm not that great at it. I like control - order! Thus I have tried the first two methods and can tell you, for us, they've been a complete failure. Personally I found Heike just wasn't getting enough sleep, taking one 30 minute nap and another just over an hour or just taking one 1.5hr nap and then screaming in her cot for an hour. Not fun.
I decided on Saturday to just go with the flow and let Heike do what she wants to do. It's only been three days but so far, so good. Each day she's slept a minimum of two hours in the morning (today she had 2.5) and taken a short nap in the pram in the afternoon. This also works out well for me as it forces me to get outside and take a long walk each day, which should hopefully negate my current penchant for eating, um, everything (that's another post right there).
Transitions suck! Here's to having a good one nap a day baby before I know it.
Z xx
No comments:
Post a Comment