With my three older children, I was pretty loosey-goosey about naps and bedtimes. If they got naps, that was great. If they didn't, no biggie. Until they became school age, at which point I tightened up bedtimes, I tended to let them stay up in the evening until they actually acted sleepy. But when they were babies and toddlers, we had very flexible sleep routines - certainly nothing resembling a "schedule." I was inordinately proud of the fact that all of them could generally fall aslseep anywhere, at any time, with any amount of distraction, That worked fine for them, and fine for me.
With their one year old sister, however, we actually have a schedule and frankly, I am rather rigid about it.
This is C operating on plenty of sleep.
Jon and I first discovered C's love of a predictable routine before she was even three months old. Through trial and error, we realized that if we bathed her, nursed her, swaddled her, and put her down to sleep for the night at approximately the same time and in the exact same way each evening, she slept far better than if we mixed things up, or kept her up later. Given that I returned to full time employment when she was only 8 weeks old, and Jon has a full time job, too - plus I have three other children to care for - maximum quality sleepage for the baby meant happier household.
She still isn't what many more highly scheduled parents would consider a "good" sleeper, if your definition of that is sleeping 8 hour stretches in a separate bed. Instead she sleeps with us, and she does usually wake a time or two for a moment or two during the nightttime hours. However, she goes down to bed at a very regular time each night - between 7 and 8 pm - and the little bit of wakefulness she has at night is easily soothed; she goes right back to sleep with little effort on our parts. If, however, we keep her up much past her bedtime, or if she misses her bath, or if we sleep somewhere away from our house, her sleep is greatly disturbed, and so is her mood the next day. This is a child who craves a regular schedule, and who lets you know when her beloved routine has been disturbed. And have I mentioned the white noise machine? She will really only sleep deeply with the white noise machine turned on; we even take it with us when we travel.
This is C, awake after her bedtime after a day with no real nap
This is even more true of her naptimes. C generally takes a 1-3 hour nap every day right after lunch. If she misses that nap, or if it is disturbed in some way (like, we are out and about at that time and she only gets 30 minutes while riding in the car), she transforms from a sunshiney toddler into Princess Whines-A-Lot. Missing the nap, or significantly altering the nap time or location makes everyone else in the family's day a living hell. She simply cannot function on sub-optimal sleepage. There is no "second wind" later in the day after a missed nap. Instead, there is meltdown after meltdown after meltdown. Plus, somewhat counterintuitively, she sleeps much worse at night if we alter her regular daytime nap schedule. So then we have a double-whammy of sleep deprivation going on.
Having realized all of this about my child, I have become something of a nap nazi. On weekends, I regularly turn down opportunities to do anything that would interfere with C's naptime, and I often find myself rushing home with her to avoid missing the optimal nap window. Night time activities are planned carefully to minimize the chance that C will miss bath-and-bed by 8 pm. I am sure my zealousness about this routine seems a bit odd to those who know how differently I approached sleep with my other children. But this kid is different; she's more like her Daddy, who is a noted lover of predictability. I am parenting what I got, and what I got this time is a child who needs a lot of sleep, provided at specific times in specific places. Plus, it's a bit selfish on my part. I don't really relish dealing with a widly fussy toddler all weekend or all evening after being gone at work all day. And getting her down to bed at a reasonably early hour each night means I have more time for the older kids, who, of course, stay up later and also need mama-attention.
SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG
FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK
READ MORE OF KATIE'S BABBLE BLOGGING
VISIT KATIE'S OTHER BLOG
