Migrating naps

By Published On: October 6th, 2014

Making plans when dealing with a baby’s nap schedule is […]

Making plans when dealing with a baby’s nap schedule is already a challenge. Scheduling appointments weeks in advance when your wee-one’s nap schedule is continually evolving, that’s a problem. Accomplishing this task combines two themes that have popped up repeatedly in the last 11 months:

  • Sleep dictates everything.
  • Don’t get used to babies’ “schedules” because as soon as you think they’re predictable, they will change it up.

image1Rowan and I have gone through a lot together sleep wise. If you told me six months ago I’d be worried about him oversleeping, I’d have assumed we’d transported to an alternate universe. But here we are, in the same galaxy, where my son can go 10+ hours straight without crying in the night and can sleep up to 2.5 hours for a single nap during the day. This might just be one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.
My son’s sleep schedule is evolving. The early-to-bed, early-to-rise mentality of his infancy has shifted, for which I am (usually) happy to accommodate. But now that his wake-up window is anywhere from 7-8:30 a.m., his first nap of the day starts anywhere between 9-10:30 a.m. Most days, this isn’t a problem. Sleep when you want to sleep, Ro! But when we have midmorning commitments, which wouldn’t have been a problem two months ago, we have to make some adjustments.
The old adage, “Never wake a sleeping baby,” has been a favorite in our house. As much as it pains me to do so, though, I do wake my sleeping baby every now and then to make sure we can honor our appointments. Fortunately, most of our scheduled activities are flexible; so, we can’t make story hour this week—better luck next time! But some sleep sacrifices must be made for the more rigid events, such as the family photo shoot scheduled months ago.
While I’d much rather be in this sleep situation than the one I was in earlier this year, it just seems backwards that six months later instead of waiting for him to fall asleep on his own, I’m waiting for him to wake up.
Or is this constant upheaval just the theme of parenthood?