My Non-Nappers

The one thing I remember, though vaguely, about Elias' early months is that he did not nap. Yes, you read that right, my son did not nap between 2 and 4 months. Yes, he fell asleep while eating and I'd let him lay there (after burping him), or he'd fall asleep in the carrier as I was doing something, but neither of these types of naps lasted more than 30 minutes. When I tried to feed him and then lay him in the crib, he'd wake just as I laid him down, or 5 minutes later when I got to the kitchen for breakfast/lunch/snack. I went back and rocked him again. And then again. And then again. And then it was time for him to eat because it had been 3 hours since he last started eating.

At about 4 months, I worked really hard to get him to sleep after his lunch feeding. He'd sleep for 45 minutes which turned into an hour then 1.5 hours and eventually he was sleeping 2 or more hours. When I was pregnant with Zoe, I counted down the minutes to this nap because I also wanted to nap. If he woke early, I'd say "sleepy for Mama" through the monitor. If I said it after his first few cries, before he fully woke, he'd go back to sleep and I got more sleep!

Well, Zoe is the same way. As soon as she learned to differentiate day from night, she took the sleeping at night thing too seriously, only sleeping at night. Sometimes I'd spend most of the day rocking her, and she'd fail to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. Yes, I prefer her sleeping at night because this means I get sleep during normal sleep hours, but it does make the day so draining. Especially those days after nights when I had trouble falling asleep after laying her down, or when she's woken up multiple times instead of her one wake between 2 and 3am.

Now that she's two months old, my routine is:

First I see when she wakes in the morning. If it's before 7am, I have a CHANCE at getting her to go back to sleep for another solid hour.

If she doesn't go back to sleep, I usually hang out with her, pump, have breakfast, then feed her when she's sleepy and lay her down. Sometimes she falls asleep, and if she does it's only for 30 minutes. At this time I eat lunch, or shower.

The next available time for a nap is after she eats at 12pm. Usually she'll sleep 30 minutes, but by the time I rock her enough times to do this, it's usually 2pm.

From that point, I put her in the carrier and she naps maybe once more between 3 and 4pm, or if the weather is nice and not cold, we go for a walk. During a walk she will nap for one or more hours. This is the best scenario!

Her last breast feeding is at 5pm. She's usually cranky from 5:30pm to 6pm and falling asleep on our shoulders as I get her milk ready. We feed her a 6oz bottle of breast milk at her 6pm bedtime so that my husband and I can alternate which child we put to bed. She's usually sleeping by 8pm.