Easier said than done. When she was a newborn I was always trying to run around to get stuff done around the house while she napped. And now she’s down to one nap a day and then bedtime. So I really don’t get much done, nap times are now for writing blog posts, or doing the dishes, folding laundry, or getting dinner prepared.
We did get lucky though. When we would transition her down from 3-2-1 naps, we sort of did it cold turkey. Just one day we did it and moved on. She’s a very big “if she doesn’t see it/use it/do it she won’t miss it” type of girl, so those transitional periods really never bothered her. Now that’s not to say we didn’t have some hiccups and early risings or middle of the night wake ups, but they were fairly few and far between.
Now I know this probably means, if we have a second child we won’t get as lucky!
I don’t want to jinx ourselves but we got fairly lucky with how she does sleep. She was sleeping pretty much through the night pretty early on. And although she’s had some sleep regressions we have gotten lucky with how we were able to “sleep train” her. Now I put that in quotes because I don’t feel that we really trained her in any way. At the moment if she arises in the middle of the night, I wait 10 minutes because most times she will put herself right back to sleep. In the chance she doesn’t, the 10 minutes sort of shows her that we won’t rush right in if she cries, but that we will come check on her. And if this situation repeats during the night, we just circle back and do it all again. In the morning the rule is, we do not go and get her until she is standing up in her crib waiting by the door end of her crib. For us this way, we get her breakfast started, tidy the house up, and other things, because some days, if she makes a noise at 6-6:30 she will put herself back to sleep for a little bit so we don’t want to rush in the first sign of noise and risk keeping her from more sleep. At 18 months, she now sleeps 7:30-7am on MOST days, with a nap from 12-1:30/2. Now I say most days because some days she will rise about 6:30, or will take a longer or shorter nap. Just depends on the activities and excitements of the day, but a good 80% is the same sleep schedule.
Now for what she sleeps with, she has a musical giraffe, a few pacifiers, and her blanket. Her blanket is her absolute favorite, didn’t think she would cling to something so young, but here we are, so that will be a fun transition when we need to wean her off of that. She’s now only getting her pacifier for bedtime and nap-time and that wasn’t a very hard transition so hoping the blanket won’t be either.
Sleep is one topic I had a lot of questions on, but it was also a topic that you really had to see what related most to you by doing and testing our different options.
