What to do with a child who just won't nap without assistance?! I hate to make him cry. This is the second day trying to help him fall asleep on his own. And he has gone for 1 hr straight both days! Getting him drowsy before nap, patting, pacifying intermittently, soothing music won't help! He was sleepy when I took him to his crib, he is well fed and the diaper is clean! He can handle around 4 hours from the time he gets up in the morning... and now with all the crying it is 5 hours!! No, I am NOT a cruel Mommy who doesn't want to rock a baby to sleep. I just don't want to be jumping from crib to crib trying to get two toddlers to sleep... because in that case we are just going to have two overly tired cranky sleepless kids in the house! Patienc - breath in - breath out...!
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Just to be a little bit more clear - so I can seek better advice! We do follow a routine and the kids know it. The only difference is, they kinda recieved individual attention thus far, and so it was easy to accomodate some of their needs (which included attention during sleeping - blame it on burps due to reflux OR Mommy's self built demon?). RT is sleeping by herself (already), she is the one who used to have most issues with sleeping on her own, and RM was the easy one. But for some reason, he has started to get clingy (seperation anxiety kicking back in?). He will get in to the crib... roll around, shut his eyes and almost fall asleep and then... bam! He gets up and wants to be held! I wrote the above part while he had reached his 1 hour mark of crying. He slept after around 1 hr and 10 minutes of crying, but got up in 20 minutes (he usually naps between 1.5 to 3 hrs now a days - mostly one nap a day). We are still going to keep trying. He is a tough cookie - as described in previous post - a focused & determined kid - which is back firing in this case!
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Just to be a little bit more clear - so I can seek better advice! We do follow a routine and the kids know it. The only difference is, they kinda recieved individual attention thus far, and so it was easy to accomodate some of their needs (which included attention during sleeping - blame it on burps due to reflux OR Mommy's self built demon?). RT is sleeping by herself (already), she is the one who used to have most issues with sleeping on her own, and RM was the easy one. But for some reason, he has started to get clingy (seperation anxiety kicking back in?). He will get in to the crib... roll around, shut his eyes and almost fall asleep and then... bam! He gets up and wants to be held! I wrote the above part while he had reached his 1 hour mark of crying. He slept after around 1 hr and 10 minutes of crying, but got up in 20 minutes (he usually naps between 1.5 to 3 hrs now a days - mostly one nap a day). We are still going to keep trying. He is a tough cookie - as described in previous post - a focused & determined kid - which is back firing in this case!
CIO is hard, very hard!!! I caved many times as I couldn't stand those pitiful cries and crocodile tears. The only advice I can give that really made a difference for me was to pick a nap/bed time routine and stick with it, be very consistent. They will eventually learn the routine and accept it. But if you cave here and there, they know they can break you and will cry until you cave. I can have Tyler going to sleep on his own, maybe cry for 2-5 mins, for several weeks in a row. I can cave 1 day and it's amazing how far that sets us back. It takes a few days to get him back to realizing that I'm not going to cave. I will say you have it harder than I, Tyler has never cried for more than 22 mins and I only have 1 baby, so I can't compare, but I have found consistency to be key. Best of luck to you!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the PP on the caving thing.
ReplyDeleteThe reason RM is crying so much before naps is probably because the drive to sleep during the day is not nearly as high as at night. So the crying is going on for longer. If you stick with the CIO it should get better soon. But naps always take longer to improve than nighttime sleep. It's just the way babies are wired!