Hi everybody, Melissa here from cloudmom.com answering a question today from a viewer,
Tashira is writing in on Facebook and here's her question.
How do you put your kids down for naptime?
My son usually eats to sleep or uses me as a pacifier.
I'm going to try to take your advice on a routine.
I'm really trying to do it but he's just not falling asleep.
Alright, this is a great question!
I love questions about babies, I love questions about sleeping, I love questions about naps.
I got a lot of things to say here so I'm going to try to be efficient with it.
Um and I have my notes, OK.
So, naps, Tashira, in my view are tricky.
It's sort of a, they get used to what they get kind of thing and some people sort of
are of the view that they're living their life, they're out in the supermarket, they're
out for lunch and you know what, the baby's going to sort of fit into their schedule and
so be it.
And those kids tend to be quite flexible; I call this the go with the flow route.
Those kids might nap, you know, at a friends' house, they might nap in the stroller, they
might take a later nap when they're home.
It all sort of works out like that.
Now, that is one way to go, that was not my way.
My way was the Melissa aka control freak way.
Which if you watch some of my videos and read some of my schedules, you'll see that this
isn't how I did it.
I followed an incredibly strict and very regimented sleeping and nap routine.
This worked best for me and for my personality.
I would have a sense of when the baby was waking up, I would feed the baby, try to make
sure the baby was full, I would then have the sort of play time with the baby, or they
would be in the bouncy seat and within a certain period of time I would put that baby down
in his or her crib for a nap.
And, when I gave the nap it wasn't a sort of like oh they're here, they're there, you
know they're in the living room, or you know, sleeping in the pack and play in my room,
no.
They were in their crib, in their room, with the blackout shades, I was emulating the night.
This is very controversial.
Some people think that when it's daytime, babies and kids should know that it's daytime
and they should learn how to sleep in that light.
I think that's a great thing to do, I was too scared.
I needed that naptime; I needed that uninterrupted break so that I could nap, so that I could
be with my other kids, so that I could get my life in order.
So I just went, you know, hook line a sinker for the like night during the day thing and
their rooms were you know tightly sealed from light and they never would have known if it
was day or night.
And my kids were actually great nappers but not flexible nappers.
When I would go visit friends, and you guys know I'm like a little crazy, I would go with
my blackout shades and my blue tape or with garbage bags and I would put them up in the
windows.
And I remember visiting my husband's best friend Johnny at his beach house and naptime
was over and he was there in the room like stripping down the garbage bags from their
lovely windows.
I mean, you know, it's a little extreme.
But, when you got a lot of kids, when you had five kids in six years, you need that
naptime.
So guess what, do what works for you.
So anyway, that's just a little bit about sort of being the flexible napping type or
being the rigid napping type.
What are some of the pros and cons of each.
Let me see if I missed anything.
Uhh, oh ok!
So, alright so listen I have a lot of schedules up on my site.
For most of the ages of young babies, please take a look at those, let me know if they
are helpful for you.
They include nap schedules, they're sort of feeding, napping, feeding, napping and then
nighttime sleeping schedules.
The schedule is a whole 24 hour cycle.
I hope it's helpful.
These are the schedules that I followed.
They really, really worked for me, they helped me get sort of a stability to my life, made
me feel a little more in control, gave me the rest that I needed to get through, and
it was very helpful.
It's a certain particular style, but it was my style.
So I hope these help you, thank you so much for writing in, I really, really appreciate
it.
Best of luck with your baby, and see you next time on CloudMom.