"How dare you disturb me during nap time!" part 2
In yesterday’s post, I started writing about cutting Abbie down to one nap per day, and then went off on a long tangent describing the nap process leading up to this point, and why we use a scheduled system. Today I promise to actually talk about present-day Abbie; no more of this fixation on stuff that happened in the past.
In the past, cutting the number of naps involved picking one nap and slowly reducing its allotted time, like a lion culling the weakest gazelle from the herd or Jennifer Lopez picking a new husband. At the same time I increase the time she stays awake between all other naps. After slowly changing times, sometimes reducing the nap time by minutes a week, for a few weeks, we hit the point where I just can’t cut her nap any more. A 30-minute nap seemed to be about the shortest she could go, especially since she can take as long as 30 minutes to fall asleep in the first place. It feels a little cruel to wake her up as soon as she dozes off, and I’m already plenty cruel to her by inadvertently bonking her head on protruding objects while carrying her.
I know it’s time to eliminate a nap by following complicated charts like this one, and by paying attention to her cues like taking longer than a half hour to fall asleep. According to the chart, Abbie is supposed to drop the second nap sometime between 12 and 18 months, her current age. According to the chart, she should also be sleeping 13.5 hours everyday, which sounds more like a pleasant fantasy than a goal. Over the past few weeks, she has been hinting in the only way she knows how, i.e. lots of screaming, that her second nap is about to go the way of the dinosaur and Rafael Palmeiro’s Hall of Fame chances. I had already cut the second nap down to 45-60 minutes, which is as far as I could cut it considering that she always took 15-30 minutes just to fall asleep. I tried pushing it back later in the day, moving her wakeup time from 5pm to 6pm, which worked well for a little while, but I could only push it back so far without interfering with her bedtime at 9pm.
I finally knew it was time to give up the second nap for good last Saturday when she screamed for the entire 45 minutes she spent in her crib, which was a real shame because her first nap was painfully short that day, giving us an excruciatingly cranky child for the rest of the day. Fortunately, Abbie obliged us the next day with a gloriously long nap the next day that left her refreshed and pleasant until about 7pm when she reverted to tired and cranky. Apparently she’s mired in a difficult in-between phase where she refuses to take that additional nap, but isn’t ready to stay cheerful for the six hours of straight wakefulness that accompanies a single-nap schedule. Right now I plan on just tolerating her crankiness as long as she takes one long nap earlier in the day; I know that if I just tolerate it for a little while, things will soon improve, much like things improve if I just tolerate whatever schlock Fox shows Sunday night between The Simpsons and Family Guy.
I really hate giving up that second nap. I have a list of things I accomplish during her naps, like showering, blogging, and taking a nap for myself. When we eliminate one nap, I need to find another time to accomplish all of those things. Chores like folding laundry I can do as long as she’s entertaining herself at the moment, but the authorities tend to frown on sleeping while your 14-month old plays in the next room. So I compress my responsibilities into her rapidly diminishing naptime. If she wakes up early while I’m trying to do something important like blog, I drop what I’m doing to take care of her. I just need to learn to live with not being able to finish everything all of
In the past, cutting the number of naps involved picking one nap and slowly reducing its allotted time, like a lion culling the weakest gazelle from the herd or Jennifer Lopez picking a new husband. At the same time I increase the time she stays awake between all other naps. After slowly changing times, sometimes reducing the nap time by minutes a week, for a few weeks, we hit the point where I just can’t cut her nap any more. A 30-minute nap seemed to be about the shortest she could go, especially since she can take as long as 30 minutes to fall asleep in the first place. It feels a little cruel to wake her up as soon as she dozes off, and I’m already plenty cruel to her by inadvertently bonking her head on protruding objects while carrying her.
I know it’s time to eliminate a nap by following complicated charts like this one, and by paying attention to her cues like taking longer than a half hour to fall asleep. According to the chart, Abbie is supposed to drop the second nap sometime between 12 and 18 months, her current age. According to the chart, she should also be sleeping 13.5 hours everyday, which sounds more like a pleasant fantasy than a goal. Over the past few weeks, she has been hinting in the only way she knows how, i.e. lots of screaming, that her second nap is about to go the way of the dinosaur and Rafael Palmeiro’s Hall of Fame chances. I had already cut the second nap down to 45-60 minutes, which is as far as I could cut it considering that she always took 15-30 minutes just to fall asleep. I tried pushing it back later in the day, moving her wakeup time from 5pm to 6pm, which worked well for a little while, but I could only push it back so far without interfering with her bedtime at 9pm.
I finally knew it was time to give up the second nap for good last Saturday when she screamed for the entire 45 minutes she spent in her crib, which was a real shame because her first nap was painfully short that day, giving us an excruciatingly cranky child for the rest of the day. Fortunately, Abbie obliged us the next day with a gloriously long nap the next day that left her refreshed and pleasant until about 7pm when she reverted to tired and cranky. Apparently she’s mired in a difficult in-between phase where she refuses to take that additional nap, but isn’t ready to stay cheerful for the six hours of straight wakefulness that accompanies a single-nap schedule. Right now I plan on just tolerating her crankiness as long as she takes one long nap earlier in the day; I know that if I just tolerate it for a little while, things will soon improve, much like things improve if I just tolerate whatever schlock Fox shows Sunday night between The Simpsons and Family Guy.
I really hate giving up that second nap. I have a list of things I accomplish during her naps, like showering, blogging, and taking a nap for myself. When we eliminate one nap, I need to find another time to accomplish all of those things. Chores like folding laundry I can do as long as she’s entertaining herself at the moment, but the authorities tend to frown on sleeping while your 14-month old plays in the next room. So I compress my responsibilities into her rapidly diminishing naptime. If she wakes up early while I’m trying to do something important like blog, I drop what I’m doing to take care of her. I just need to learn to live with not being able to finish everything all of
posted by Matt at
9:25 PM
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