About a month ago James started struggling a little bit with his two naps so I thought maybe it was time to drop the morning nap. We started by only letting him sleep 30-45 minutes in the morning to help him make it to the afternoon nap time but not be so well rested he couldn't sleep in the afternoon. Eventually he got to a point where he would just sit and play in his crib the whole time and not sleep. We had several days of this so I decided maybe it was time to do away with that nap altogether. The problem is no matter what I did...morning nap or not...he would only sleep 1 hour in the afternoon. James likes/needs his sleep so I was pretty sure this wasn't enough but didn't know how to help him sleep longer. I tried putting him down earlier for the afternoon nap thinking maybe he was over-tired but that just meant we had a longer time between nap and bedtime because he would still only sleep an hour. Very frustrating!! Most days he seemed to cope pretty well on very little nap time. He still slept great at night and was definitely very tired when it was time for sleep but not falling apart too much. This past week we finally started making some progress. He went to 1 hour 15 minutes for several days and then moved to 1 hour 30 minutes for a few days.
THE BIG NEWS!!!
Today he slept for 2 hours for his afternoon nap. I am trying not to get too excited and start thinking that naps will be 2+ hours from now on but I had to blog about it quick while it was still exciting (before tomorrow rolls around and he decides to only sleep 45 minutes-we've had several days like that thrown in). Hopefully, even if he doesn't make this an everyday occurrence immediately, it will mean that he is moving towards better naps in the not too distant future. I'm ready for the long afternoon naps we are supposed to be having!
I HEAR YA! jai has only taken one nap for a few months now because he is SUCH a sleep fighter at night... we figured out if he slept in the afternoon, he'd fight worse. so we were just doing one nap in the middle of the day. we're still doing that but trying to move the nap from 11am to a little later so he doesn't have SO much time from nap to bedtime. we were noticing that by 4-5pm every day he was TIRED already... little stinker is the WORST napper though. in the past he'd often sleep for 20 minutes. that's it. now his usual is 45 but we've had a few hour and 20 min naps this week. i REALLY wish we could get those long early afternoon naps going. mama needs a break!
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