I don't know what's happened to my decent morning napper. Mornings used to be the one time I could reasonably count on a decent nap, especially if I napped with her. Now nothing is working. Mari is strongly resisting going to sleep and getting crankier and crankier. Hardly has she gone down when she's back up again. I am at a loss.
Today has been pretty much worst-case scenario so far. Mari was up at 6:50, and I started at a very reasonable 8 AM, I thought, to get her down for a nap. But she was not having it. She went from energetic to overtired very quickly and screamed and screamed for 40 minutes straight before I had to ask Jon to take over. She didn't fall asleep until some time after 10 AM and only slept an hour or so.
For the afternoon nap, again I thought I was giving her plenty of time to fall asleep, starting at about 12:30. But it was evident she was cranky as hell and yet wouldn't fall asleep until 1:25. Half an hour later she woke up screaming and it took me 15 minutes to get her back down. Then she woke up again within 10 minutes. I wish I knew what the problem was -- if you have any idea, let me know. And no, she's not teething yet. I keep checking, but nada.
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Isaac has been having some trouble with naps (actually, it's me who's having the trouble; he still seems in pretty good spirits!). He pushes up on his hands -- elbows locked, in the six-month posture -- and screams and screams. He very much prefers to sleep on his back; I don't think I've ever seen him sleep on his tummy, even though he can roll both ways and as soon as Caleb could, he went to his tummy to sleep. When he's up, he's working on crawling, so I'm guessing that when he goes down for a nap, he wants to use the space in the crib to practice. But then he realizes he's tired and is not in the position he prefers for sleep, and then 'forgets' he can roll back because he's so interested in learning to crawl.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe something developmentally going on? I feel like that's usually the default answer for everything, and it doesn't really help, because there's *always* something developmental going on. Our schedule has also been seriously disrupted because my husband was away for a few days, and we've started going to the gym (I put them in the kids room there and they both seem to like it, but it's new for Isaac and therefore weird; he has been a little clingy to me). Bedtimes have been the same, mostly.
I feel like the disruption affects naps more, because they both still sleep at night but Caleb has also been having some napping trouble. The only thing that's really different is that the drive to sleep waxes and wanes during the day, where at night people are pretty much just tired and ready for sleep, and it's hard to find those moments during the day when the drive to sleep will be strong enough to overcome other drives (exploration, connection, etc.).
The only thing I might suggest -- and I might have suggested this before? -- is that if she's not asleep in 30 minutes, consider the nap over and try again later when the drive to sleep might be greater. When you are accustomed to having dinner at 6:00 p.m., your body will send signals of hunger then; if you decided to have dinner earlier, you might not be hungry at first but then your body would adjust in a few days to the new time. It often works the same way with sleeping -- say bedtime is 6:45 - 7:00 p.m. We very rarely deviate from that, and as it approaches, Isaac starts acting tired, because his body is trained to anticipate sleep at that time. It's more difficult to train naptimes, because the drive to sleep doesn't work quite the same way, but it's there; it just needs to be accessed before it can be counted on or planned for.
All makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks!
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