When to Call it Quits

Okay, so its time to admit that I was totally wrong! After about a month of trying to move Sophie to one nap, it seems the only thing I have accomplished is totally sleep depriving my baby.

I promised myself along time ago that I would never parent myself into a corner. I've watched too many friends pull their hair out trying to get their child to fit a specific model, or behave the way a certain book said they should. I'm not opposed to parenting books, I think they are great tools, but I've never been good at fitting molds.

So when Sophie arrived BJ and I agreed that we would always be flexible. If we tried something with her and it didn't work out, rather than keep pushing we would simply try something else. I'm all for owning my choices and admitting when I mess up.

So here I am barely 3 months into the parenthood and I'm already having to readjust. Poor Sophie! I really did have the best intentions moving her to 1 nap. She really seemed like she was ready, and admittedly selfishly, I didn't like her playing in her crib for an hour before she finally fell asleep. I want her to play with me!

At first it seemed to be working out okay. Sophie was a little tired and in the evening she would have a few mood swings, but for a little while (very little while) it seemed we were on the right track. But the reality is that though she's stopped asking for her morning nap, she is clearly becoming more and more sleep deprived.

My poor baby isn't taking longer afternoon naps to make up for the lack of a morning one. In fact her afternoon naps were becoming more restless, and disrupted by her waking up crying. The last straw of us was that her night time sleep was beginning to get disrupted! This week she's been waking up crying much more often and getting up in the morning earlier and earlier.

If you know me at all you know that I cannot be sleep deprived! When I don't get enough sleep I can barely be civil let alone kind. I've adjusted to waking around 7a, but 6a or earlier is out of the question (at least when I know that her healthy wake up time is 7a).

So yesterday (BJ's birthday) was the last straw. Sophie was clearly tired in the morning so I decided to put her to bed about 11:30a. I was hoping that she'd get a few good hours of sleep, so we could have a fun afternoon with daddy, but it was less then an hour before she woke up screaming and would not go back to sleep. We ended up putting her back down about 3:30p and slept till 5p. And still by 7p she was ready for bed, but then had another restless night and was up early again this morning.

BJ and I had discussed a few time this week about whether it was time to rethink our plan, and yesterday it was very clear that it was time.

So we are going back to 2 naps...at least for now.