I did it people, I put my foot down and re-instated the nap today. Small fry has not been napping for maybe a month now. I don't really know how it happened because she has always had a nap. I think it was when she hit a stubborn streak and it just became a battle and it was really hard to fight that battle with a little baby in tow (as she wasn't fully scheduled either) and I was exhausted and so I just said "to heck with the nap then" and really she did okay most days but the evening hours on the days that she wasn't doing okay were horrendous. I made up for the lost nap by putting her to bed earlier which was fine also because she was exhausted and I welcomed a little extra peace in the evening and occasionally we would take her for a drive in the afternoon which always put her to sleep and then she would sleep longer once in her bed but most days were just long and had some degree of crankiness. I knew she was still needing to nap but every time I mentioned the word she would just burst out crying and screaming "no nap, mama, I no like naps no more," and I wasn't prepared to face the battle again. Why? Well to be honest I think I was scared. Not scared that she could hurt me or something but scared of her explosive reaction and how horrible it made me feel. The last time it happened (when I decided to just give it up) I felt like a complete failure as a mother. As I kept putting her back in her bed, with her screaming and crying I just kept feeling like I was not capable of being a good mom because a good mom would not be in this position (so I thought at the time). I don't know who was more broken down by the episode-her or me. Well things finally came to a halt today because I couldn't take the crankiness any longer and I decided that no matter how big the battle I wasn't going to lose my cool and she was going to have a nap. So I just kept mentioning it throughout the morning, and I tried to play her out as much as possible and when the time came I told her after her nap she could choose a show to watch and a snack to have and despite her initial resistance, fiddling around and crying, I persisted, stayed firm, read the stories and said "night night" and......she said "night night" back and stayed in her bed and fell asleep. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? And in classic "my life" luck, my little pumpkin decided that she did not want to be asleep at the same time, but I persisted with her too and enjoyed nothing but the hum of my sewing machine for almost an hour. Wow. It feels so good. Cannot believe it went so smoothly. I can only hope it goes as smooth again tomorrow.
I feel like I should post about our experience with getting little miss small fry to sleep through the night by herself in her bed. I am no expert on anything to do with parenting or child's sleep habits and the few tidbits that I try, I have gotten from magazines or Supernanny. However this was a super trying experience for us and has turned out successful and I feel like there might be someone out there who is either going through the same thing or may face it in the future and maybe this will be of some help. When we moved small fry into her big girl room before our little pumpkin was born she did just fine. Slept in her bed with no problems and stayed in her bed with no problems. She still sucked on her binkie then and drank from a bottle at night before going to sleep. Even when our little pumpkin was born she didn't seem to have a problem with going to bed in her big girl bed and staying there and sleeping all night. We did however encounter a high tantrum phase in December and that led to her chucking her binkie in the car after a disastrous Walmart experience and so he (binkie) was gone. Well things kind of just fell apart on us. She didn't want to take naps or go to sleep without it. And if she did fall asleep then she would wake up multiple times in the night crying for binkie. For nap time I had to keep her up until she was good and tired before putting her down and then as I would read her stories she would fall asleep. I thought that was great. It ended up biting us in the butt because she got so that she would not fall asleep on her own any more. And so if you tried to leave the room and she was still awake it was a screaming and crying fest. We would have to wait until she was really tired to put her to bed and read until she fell asleep. And then there was the night waking. She would get up sometimes 7 or more times in the night. I told my husband we were going to just take her back to bed each time. Don't cuddle and linger, just put her back in bed. One night we did that for 2 hours solid and she finally fell asleep in the hallway and we got her in bed. We were exhausted. We tried putting her in her room and just closing the door and letting her cry it out until she fell asleep and then opening the door afterwards. That worked but I didn't like how it felt to me. So one night I just put her in bed and then sat down on the floor in her room, not right by her bed but where she could see me, not facing her and I didn't engage in conversation but just sat and she cried for a bit but eventually fell asleep and I was able to get up and leave. It felt so much better. It didn't take nearly as long, there was no tantrum, I didn't feel like I was going to lose control. It was a fairly peaceful way to get her to go to sleep. So that became our plan. If she was to wake up we would take her back to her bed and then just sit on the floor and wait. We started in the middle of the room then after about a week moved closer to the door and closer and closer every few days. But she was smart and insisted that we sit on the floor. Still there was no crying to I felt like this was what was best. But that was in mid December. When we were still sitting on the floor by the door in Jan I thought this would never end. There were plenty of nights when I was in tears thinking "we are never going to be able to just sleep in our bed again." It felt like we weren't making any progress and if you tried to get up before she was asleep she would let you know that was not okay. But we eventually made it out the door and were sitting by the door in the hallway. Then it happened that I was home alone and the baby was crying and I just told her I needed to go and check on the baby and I would be back to check on her and she said "okay." And she fell asleep on her own. Then a few days later the same thing happened and I told her I had to go check on the baby and check the fire and I would be back and she said, "okay." Soon it got to where she would say to me, "check baby?" when I would kiss her good night and I would say, "ya I will go check on the baby and then I will be back." And guess what-we don't have to sit by the door anymore. I can say goodnight and just walk right out and she stays in her bed and sleeps through the whole night. It felt like it would never happen and I kept thinking that it wasn't working but it was. It just took time. I am so glad we didn't just give up on the idea and let her jump in bed with us, or decide to have one of us hold her every night until she fell asleep. Those habits would be so hard to break down the road. It just took time but it worked. And maybe it will be helpful to someone else out there too.
