Just recently I made the decision to stop giving Addison a nap during the day. It was a mental health decision for both Addi and Mummy. For a while now it had been becoming more and more difficult and stressful to make sure Addi got his afternoon nap. To the point that we would leave the house and Mummy would walk around the shops for hours while he slept in the pram just because this was easier than staying home and getting him to sleep there. There was a week where he didn’t have a nap at home once, we were out everyday. It was just becoming stupid!
Now don’t get me wrong, Addi was very good at listening to me when I said it was time for a nap. I rarely had to fight with him about it. It was more the fact that he required me to lay with him both to fall asleep and to resettle (which knowing when this was going to be meant laying there the entire nap, quite difficult when you have another baby that was often awake during the time period). If he woke up and I wasn’t there he would cry and scream and it was very hard to get him to go back. Likewise when he would wake up from his sleep he was extremely unhappy, crying for sometimes 30 minutes after a nap and generally inconsolable.
There had been a couple of instances where Addi didn’t have a nap and was fine and still function (not grumpy) at the end of the day. After this we decided it was time to trial run it. It has been going pretty well. If he falls asleep while we are out in the car then I still do my best to transfer him to the pram and give him that sleep, but if we are at home then I just don’t worry. I figure if he really needs a sleep he will just do it. That point was proven today when he fell asleep on the couch watching a movie (sure enough he woke up cranky and upset, but once in a while rather than every single day is a little easier to cope with). I know it’s not normal for a not even 3 year old to stop having naps, but nothing about Addison’s sleep has ever been “normal.”
