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It looks like I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board in terms of Tater Tot’s sleep schedule. She’s still sleeping a solid 10-12 hours a night which is great but her naps are wiggy. She usually can swing a morning nap but, regardless of how early I put her down for her morning nap or how early I put her to bed, she has skipped her afternoon nap two days running. Not good. Especially since she is super-cranky by bed time which means that she has a harder time getting to sleep at night. In recent posts I have wondered if she is ready for one nap a day but thought I’d try putting her down earlier for her morning nap. That part seems to be working but maybe I need to put her down earlier for her afternoon nap as well. For example, yesterday she woke up from her morning nap at 10. I put her down for her afternoon nap at 1:30 and she decided to have “Quiet Play Time” instead of napping until 3:00. At 3:00 I decided to get her out of her crib because bed time is 6:00 and, if she napped from 3 or 3:30 to 4 or 4:30, who knows when she’d be tired enough to go to bed! In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Dr. Weissbluth mentions that putting them down earlier rather than later seems antithetical to getting your child to sleep but I have found that it has worked with Tater Tot in the past. I don’t know when I got away from doing it that way but, apparently, I have. So I’m going to try putting her down early for her afternoon nap to see if that helps. That’s assuming she takes a morning nap! If that doesn’t work, I’m going to try super-early bed time (another Weissbluth recommendation). And, if all else fails, I guess I’ll start pushing the two-nap-to-one-nap transition. Can you sense my reluctance?

I know that, at this age, it’s normal for their nap schedule to be weird so at least I’m prepared. I’m much less frustrated with it than I was when I was trying to get her to sleep more than 9 hours a day! Yes, you read right. There was a time when The Tater Tot only slept 9 hours in a 24 hour period. It was NOT fun. She was understandably fussy because she was sleep-deprived which made it even less fun. And I was understandably fussy because I was freakin’ exhausted! But those days are behind us now and, thankfully, we’re only having some minor napping issues.

This morning I was thinking back to a year ago when she had only been home from the ICU for two weeks. I remember the anxieties that I had about medication to regulate her breathing, breastfeeding difficulties, her immune system immaturity and, oh, just about anything else you can think of to be anxious about! And I am so grateful that we have come as far as we have. Grateful that we got through the anxious situations. Grateful that I was able to breastfeed her with supplementation until she was 9 months old. Grateful that she has done so well. The only thing that I wish I had done differently would be not to worry so much. I know that it’s normal for a first-time Mommy to worry but I would have enjoyed that time in our lives that much more if I had chosen not to worry as much. Oh well, hindsight is 20:20 as they say. What I can do is choose not to worry now and instead to enjoy this time in our lives. And, aside from my few “those days”, I am.