naps at 13 months
Last week one day Forest decided not to take his afternoon nap. I was in disbelief but educated enough to know that it was possible around this age. Amazingly although he got tired and fussy in the evening, he made it until about 5 PM before it started to show.
So Brad and I sat down and did some more research and have decided to make a plan of attack and be the ones leading this change instead of having it wreck havoc on my much needed organization. Don’t get me wrong, if I only had one baby, I would probably say screw it and just go with the flow. But with twins, I find having a schedule and order to things gets us all through the day in the best moods possible. I’ve also had the opportunity to see what good travelers and visitors my persistence has made the boys while on recent trips and vacations.
The boys had been waking at around 6 and taking their first nap at 9 followed by another at 2 and to bed at 7:45ish. Their naps used to be for as long as they wanted to sleep but about two/three months ago it started to effect their ability to sleep through the night so I started cutting them off at 90 minutes. As usual, the boys adjusted and started waking themselves up before that usually. On Saturday we started keeping the boys up until 9:30-9:45 and letting them sleep up to 2 hours followed by another nap at 2:25-2:30. Forest is only allowed to sleep for an hour in the afternoon but Logan can go up to 90 minutes.
The idea is that the afternoon nap will shorten as the morning nap continues to get pushed back. Eventually we’ll have a morning nap at around 11 and need to eliminate the afternoon nap all together. But since that’s still a bit early, the bedtime will probably move up an hour until the nap makes it to sometime between noon and 1.
Forest has a problem with waking up at 4:15-4:30 AM and not going back to sleep unless brought to our room for some snuggles. Yet another problem with twins, we can’t just shut the door and let him cry it out because at that time of morning, Logan’s not in deep sleep either and we end up with two screaming babies. And Forest is not a “CIO” baby, he is too sensitive and it completely backfires. However this new schedule seems to be changing that. Or maybe it’s just coincidence. I’ll let you know in a few more weeks. But all this week he’s slept until 5:15-5:30. We give him his bottle and he goes back to sleep until we wake him up after 6.
So yeah, we are loving this new nap schedule.
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that is so weird, dawn, i was just going to write you an email asking about their schedule and how it looks at 13 months. we have the boys on a similair routine, but they are tough to get good naps out of. i am struggling in that area, and in the early a.m. waking. but, hey, it just keeps evolving and i have learned to not expect, just enjoy and persevere. thanks for such informative posts. smiles to you and the family.