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Posted by Shana on June 13, 2003 at 14:40:35:
In Reply to: Our napping plan -- please review and help! posted by Steve on June 13, 2003 at 11:51:44:
: LONG POST ALERT! LONG POST ALERT! : (sorry) : My daughter (13 months) is traditionally a craptastic sleeper. Those of you who have been here more than a month or two have seen my pleas for help. Well we've got her nighttime routine more or less fixed and have for a number of months, so now we're going after her napping problems. The napping problems she has are ENTIRELY our creation. My MIL watches her for 3-4 hours during the midday and has insisted on letting her fall asleep while taking a bottle, and then rocking her during her midday nap. I know my MIL loves this (who doesn't?) but the problem is that neither my wife nor I have time to rock my daughter for two hours on the weekend, and since she always falls asleep on the bottle, she doesn't know how to go down for a nap by herself. Her naps are generally between 2 and 2.5 hours IF my MIL holds her. : So ... here's our plan. My wife has today and Monday off, and is going to take Hannah upstairs to the nursery, give her the normal bottle that she gets this time of day, and put her down in the crib once she looks drowsy. I'm assuming this will work (it has before) but I'm also assuming that my daughter will only sleep for about 30-45 minutes tops. The plan for when she wakes up is to do a CIO until she falls back asleep or she's been in her crib for an hour -- whichever comes first. My wife will go into the nursery every five minutes to comfort Hannah, and will lengthen the time between visits. : Assuming we can get this plan to work, we're going to slowly try to switch that bottle into just rocking and reading for a little bit in a quiet room. We've found that the gradual approach works best with Hannah, since she's particularly stubborn (don't know where she gets that .. lol.) : While we're still doing the bottle thing, we're also decreasing the amount of formula Hannah gets. We'll make the bottles weaker and weaker until she's just getting warm water. If she wants to drink a little warm water before her nap, that's fine with me. Chances are she'll lose interest on her own. : Any thoughts? Are we missing anything? I have to agree... you need to do the CIO. It is the ONLY thing that worked for us. Hubby hated the idea, and some might remember my constant whines on this subject. But I couldn't take it anymore. I would wait till my son seemed tired (got too tired) and would try to put him down.... he had to have a bottle, etc. Until I developed a VERY regular routine for him. I make sure everyone who keeps him follows the routine precisely! You may suffer a week or two of crying but it will eventually stop and get better! My son still does it sometimes... but I watch the clock closely (10 minutes). He is usually out by 5 mins! Good luck!
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