A Naptime Story

Frazier was the perfect infant. Really. Like, couldn't have been more perfect and still been a real baby. He slept all night, plenty during the day, super happy all day long. I got spoiled.

And then 6 months hit and he was still a great baby like 98% of the time, but we had the little hiccup with getting him to sleep in his own crib at night. Hence, the eventual Ferberizing you may remember.

For months now, however, nighttime has been blissfully perfect. We rock and nurse for 10 minutes or so, then I put him in his bed with a nature sounds noisemaker, a womb sounds bear, a sheep and the Twilight turtle (call me excessive, but I told you, it's blissful). He grabs the sheep, rolls over, and goes right to sleep...for 10 or 12 hours. Lovely.

What is the problem you may ask? Naps. Now here's a rundown of how naps have happened over the course of the year: as an infant, he usually fell asleep nursing so I'd just transfer him to his bassinet and he'd sleep there. The older he got, and the less seldom he nursed, he started falling asleep in his swing or his bouncy seat. No problem, I just let him nap there. Then he outgrew those and things got hairy. He was down to two naps a day at this point, so I started nursing him to sleep on our bed and sneaking away. This worked until he got too mobile not to wake and crawl off the bed. At this point, I started planning outings around naps so that we arrived home right at naptime. He'd always fall asleep in his carseat which was the kind that came out of the car so I'd just bring him in and let him sleep in it. By the time we went to Belgium, he was outgrowing that carseat and we knew we needed to install his big boy carseat. The whole trip he napped in his stroller because we were walking so much, but when we got home and he wasn't in his stroller so much and sleeping in the carseat was no longer an option (because his big boy carseat is not removable like the infant carseat)...naptime pretty much DIDN'T HAPPEN.

This brings us to just a few weeks prior to the present. I kept up the afternoon nursing session for awhile just so that he would fall asleep. I'd even sit here for hours and let him sleep in my lap and nurse on and off, just to get a break and let him nap. Moving him to his crib was not an option. He woke and screamed. This was not a good system. Until he was asleep at night I never got a minute without him. And Frazier without a nap? Not a happy camper. It was bad for both of us.

Where are we now? Well, I'm going walking every morning and he sleeps in the stroller for about an hour during our morning walk. Morning nap? Check. Then in the afternoon, I've been biting the bullet and following Dr. Ferber again. I let him cry. And today? He cried for less than five minutes and slept for an hour and a half. An HOUR AND A HALF. I don't remember the last time he slept that long in his own crib during the day. I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Almost.

I think he's getting some new teeth. And he's still really missing the afternoon nursing- weaning is so much harder than I'd anticipated. So lately, and even today with the hour and a half nap, he spent a fair amount of the afternoon whining and pulling on my clothes and wallowing around and throwing things listlessly and I almost wanted to pull out my hair. Almost.

But now he's asleep and as tired as I was after today...I miss him already because the times today he was happy were worth 100 more of the times he was not. In fact, I'd be happy if tomorrow were half as good as today.