Iron Will
My daughter is VERY stubborn! She does not want to sleep except on her terms. Today she has not really taken a nap and it is 2:30. She woke up at 7 so that is 7.5 hours since she woke up. Any parenting book you read says that a baby her age should take a nap about 3 hours after waking in the morning, maybe 4 hours if they got over 12 hours of uninterupted sleep (which she does not). She actually briefly fell asleep at 11. I nursed her and put her in her crib. After 20 minutes she woke up. She then cried for 1 hour before I got her up, fed her lunch and played a little. We went back into her room about about 1:45. I put her in her crib and stayed in the room reading. For about 25 minutes she actually played in her crib. Then my mistake was that I left to room to get a glass of water and my camera. I wanted to take a picture for this post on how funny she was playing in her crib. Well, when I left the room it made her MAD! So, instead I got these pictures of her screaming.
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| From February 2007 |
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| From February 2007 |
She has 5 mintues left until her hour of crying is up and she is still screaming. Why an hour? I have also read that not to let them cry longer than an hour at naptime. I would love any input and personal experience from you other moms out there.
Another stubborn sleep story happened Thursday night. She woke up at 4:45. I went into her room to talk to her and try to calm her down. 45 minutes later she was still crying. I left the room to get my alarm because I kept falling asleep and had to get up for something in the morning. Well, that made her mad and she screamed so loudly that it set off the glass break alarm of our home alarm system. The security company thought it was funny that our baby set off our alarm by crying so loudly. It was not funny at the time, especially to Sam who was awakened by the house alarm going off (he slept through the crying) and then I said, “it is the glass break in Katherine’s room” without clarifying that she set it off. So he thought someone had broken into her room.
Well, her time is up. What am I going to do with my precious, but very stubborn baby?
An update: Katherine never did take a nap! How can she do it? She did go to sleep at 6:30 which is about 1-2 hours earlier than usual. Here is a photo of her sweet sleeping face. How can I not love that stubborn child?!
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| From February 2007 |