I’m re-nap-training Allie right now. After a week, she has learned that if she wakes up after a natural REM cycle during her nap and cries, a really fun nice nanny will come get her, and they’ll play. Toward the second half of the week, she’s learned that not only will she get picked up if she forces herself awake and cries instead of going back to sleep, but she’ll get a big bottle, too. The result is that for the past few weekdays, she’s had 30 minute naps, a big bottle, a tiny bit of play before she’s tired because the last nap was insufficient, so she’ll get another unscheduled nap which will last for 30 minutes (because now it doesn’t match her biorhythmic tired time anymore), she’ll get up and cry, she’ll get picked up and another big bottle, and this repeats for 4 little naps and 4 big bottles in the day until we get home. She’s flying through the stored milk, pooping a lot, and becoming more cranky from nap deprivation without a nice long consolidated restorative nap.

So today, I played with her until 8:30a, when I started soothing her for her morning nap which is supposed to occur around 9a. She fell asleep in her crib at 8:45a, and sure enough, in half an hour, she was up and crying. She had a FIT in there, but I didn’t go in to get her. This has happened before and the crying would last about 10-15 mins before she’d just go back to sleep and sleep solidly for an hour or more, but this time, because she expected to be picked up, she kept it up for 23 minutes. I watched anxiously on the monitor, and when Mr. W came out of the bedroom to see what was going on after HIS nap, I immediately hissed, “Don’t go in there!” He didn’t. I can see her sucking her thumb to self-soothe here and there, but she’d pull off and yell and cry again. Clearly she was still tired and needed to sleep, but wanted to play. Finally, she got the hint (altho 23 mins felt like an hour) and went back to sleep at 9:44 am. She’s still sleeping now. She’s woken up in between REM cycles since then, but would immediately put herself back to sleep instead of fighting it and waking up.

Now I have the opposite problem — if I let her sleep too much longer she’s going to be off schedule in the other direction. She’s already missed her 10a feeding, and I don’t want her to miss her 1p nap due to this nap going long. I’ve gone in there and opened the doors, but she simply soothed herself right back to sleep again and I didn’t have the heart to wake her because she clearly is exhausted after a week of irregular naps.