Nap Bootcamp Has Officially Begun

Welcome to Nap Bootcamp 2010!  Join us on this somewhat painful, often stressful journey of getting Perron to nap in his bed instead of in his swing.  Nap Bootcamp has been a longtime coming.   He has napped in his swing pretty much since he got home from the hospital.  He would occasionally take a nap or two in his crib, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times that has happened.  We conquered the first step of getting nap bootcamp kicked off by kicking the swaddle habit.  I must say, I was dreading that step the most.  My sleep and I have a very close and intimate relationship and if I don't get enough of it, let's just say things are not very pretty around here.  Luckily, the swaddle breaking was much easier than we both expected it to be.  He is still a little harder to get down some nights, but for the most part it has gone extremely well.

Now that the swaddle habit has been kicked to the curb, I have to get him to nap consistently in his bed.  I know that I can not send him to daycare napping in a swing so that is a big motivation for me.  I chose today as the kick off to bootcamp mainly because he was refusing to nap in his swing.  He would sleep for 30-45 minutes and then he would be awake.  His OT is coming today for his first therapy session of the new year and I did not want that to occur with him sleeping a total of an hour all day.  Trust me...it would not have been pretty.  I figured I didn't have much to loose. 

I put him down in his crib and turned on his mobile with just the music playing.  As a side note, we practice a very wimpy version of cry it out...that really doesn't involve much crying to be honest.  We put him in his bed and let him cry for a few minutes.  After that, I will go into his bed and pat his bottom for a minute or two.  I then leave the room.  If he is still not asleep, I let him fuss for another minute or two and then go back and bottom pat again.  Then I will usually just sit in his rocking chair so he can sense that I am in his room, but not see me.  The main thing is that once he is in his crib, we do not pick him up unless we absolutely have to (take for example last night when he waited until he was put in bed to poop).  Well, this afternoon it took 30 minutes and several trips in there to pat his bottom....but I did it!  He is now sleeping in his crib.  Let's see how long this is going to last.  I would love it if he would sleep all the way to his therapy appointment so he could be good and rested for that.

Now the hard part is going to be consistency.  If you think I am a wimp when it comes to him crying, you should meet my mom.  Hopefully I can get her on the same page and she can follow the routine that we set in place.  Luckily we have the common goal of getting him to nap in his crib before daycare gets here...and we have four months to make that happen.  The next thing we will have to work on is trying to figure out a way to get him to nap with 8 other kids in the room with him.  That should be interesting.  But for today, we will celebrate this one small victory!