The time has come!! It's an extremely exciting day for Mommy & Sprout!! After much deliberation and consulting with my most fabulous older sister about the deletion of the dreaded morning nap, today was the day to start cutting it out! Let me share how my incredible experience has gone thus far (and it's already 1:00pm!)...
'N' is for NO NAP!
I have conversed with a bazillion other moms about when, where, why, and most importantly, HOW, to cut out the morning nap. I got a flurry of differing opinions and advice: "Let them decide when it's time to cut it out...", "Start waking them up sooner and sooner until they don't need a nap anymore...", "Push back the start time of the nap and wake them up when it's time to eat lunch...", and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, all of these seemed like horrible options for Sprout, who really just got crabby around 10-10:30 ish and appeared to desperately cling to that nap. Then I consulted with my sister, A, who is a dayhome QUEEN and mother of her own to two gorgeous kidlets. Her advice was the only advice that made sense to me.
"Have a strict rest-time established where the child lays down on the couch (with or without you) with a drink (milk, formula, whatever - in a cup) and watches a show for a half hour or so, just to re-charge. Then have lunch about an hour later and put them down for their nap shortly thereafter."
Wow. Why didn't I think of that!? So here's how today's schedule went (so far):
8:00am - Wake up!
8:15am - Breakfast
10:30am - Rest time with 4oz of formula in a cup. Sprout laid on the couch with me under a blanket and snuggled while watching 40 minutes of 'Finding Nemo'. Awesome! I got to cuddle her without rocking her to sleep and disrupting her sleep schedule!
11:45am - Lunch (which Sprout promptly laid her head down on her tray afterwards and said 'bye bye', which translates to 'night night' when she's tired)
12:00pm - NAPTIME!!!
Like I said, it's now well after 1:00pm and she is still sleeping!! We've also just been putting her straight to bed - no cuddle, no rocking, nothing - and she has been going to sleep like a champ on her own. She whimpered a little for the first day, and now it's day 4 and she doesn't even care! She snuggles her Monster, cuddles into her blankets, and goes to sleep after about 10 minutes. It is absolutely incredible!
Part of me still feels guilty and wants to rock her to sleep and keep giving her a bottle. It's so hard to let go of that with your first baby. Especially now being pregnant, I know I'm not going to be able to snuggle her the same way for long, and that she's going to have to be the big sister about 5 months from now...I was definitely trying to hold onto the 'baby phase'. I guess what she is telling me today is that she is indeed moving into 'toddler' mode, and she is completely fine with it. Sigh. I love my Sprout. And my Seedling. It makes me so excited to have another tiny one to snuggle for another year!
Anyways, there's my advice for you to follow for how to delete the morning nap and bottle. If you're lucky like me and have an easygoing child, it might just fall into place like it seems to have for us! Now to work on the soother...
Love you so much, Sprout! You're such a big girl, Mommy is so proud of you! Keep up the good work...Santa is watching :)
xoxoxo
Mommy
