Shandelle! Sherri! Juliet! Calling all October moms (and dads)!

[papal]

Girls,
I was just curious.. how much do your babies nap during the day???
Today i was really tired and decided to sleep in. So after letting Leela play in the crib from 9.0-10.0, I swaddled her and after protesting for a bit she fell asleep. I woke up at 11.30am but she continues to nap!!

- Normally she wakes up for the day around 9am (anything before that I swaddle her back up and put her back to bed.).
- Her first nap is around 10.30. This is usually a short nap.
-Then its another nap at around 12.0 or 12.30 (seems like 1.5 hours after she wakes she gets really tired). This is sometimes a longer one.. sometimes upto 2.30 or 3.00p. But not always.
-Then she takes another one sometime around 3.45 -4.15 (depends when she wakes up from previous nap). She wakes up from this one around 5.0
- And then we put her down for then night around 6.0 - 6.30p.
Dh comes home around 5.0p so he gets just an hour with her. :(

I have a feeling she is napping too much???? Is this possible? Do babies this age take 3 naps a day, especially when they have slept more than 12 hours at night??
I thought it was not possible to _get_ babies to sleep.. that they only slept when _they_ were tired and wanted to. Now i am slowly beginning to doubt that!!! Sometimes she will sleep longer when i am sleeping next to her. In her crib the naps are much shorter.

I just wanted to compare notes with you gals. I know each baby is different but i was curious what your babies were upto! :)

ETA: I did not mean that Leela sleeps for 12 hours continuously. She wakes up every 3 hours, feeds and then falls back asleep. As long as she does not want to 'play' at night, i am happy!

[todzwife]

Sheesh Rashmi! You are lucky! Dallin cat naps throughout the day, unless I am holding him or sleeping by him he wakes after 20-30 minutes. He wakes for the day at about 7 AM ( he seems to be a morning person like DH) but goes down for his first nap an hour and a half after he wakes. IF he took longer naps he'd probably take 3. He goes to bed at about 8-8:30 and I get him up at 10 for a last diaper change and nursing. He WAS sleeping till 5 AM, but has regressed and is now gettin up to eat at about 3. He then sleps till 7...thats our day! LOL

[s_gosney]

well, we don't have much of a pattern thanks to my lovely school situation. That said though, there are some constants.
On her own, Kylee usually wakes up around 8, first nap around 10-10:30...who knows from there....sheesh. I really need to be more diligent about this I guess.
About naps in general...Kylee used to be a terrible napper, doing the 20 minute thing unless I held her, but she has gotten to where she'll sleep for longer periods of time by herself now. Thank God! Now her naps vary widely in length.
I think it's totally normal at this age to take 3 naps. I think 2 naps comes later (maybe 6 mos?). I too have wondered about the issue of whether or not I can make her sleep when she's not sleepy, but I don't know the answer. But I'd say that some days she definitely sleeps more than others.
I'm still holding out for sleeping through the night, though I don't see it happening any time soon. I'm trying to figure out what to do about transitioning her to the crib. She's finally gotten where she can sleep without me beside her, but in the middle of the night she's used to eating at will. I'm afraid she would headbutt the crib trying to find something to latch on to. :P I know it will be hard when we move her, so I've procrastinated so far. I can't decide how important it is to me I guess. Have any of you went from co-sleeping to crib yet?

[papal]

>I'm afraid she would headbutt the crib trying to find something to latch on to. :P

ROTFL :)
I totally understand what you mean!!! Suddenly i find Leela attacking my back or arm or neck in the middle of the night!
Or if i am changing her diaper and she is hungry.. she will grab my arm and start sucking on it. The true test of her hunger is giving her the binky. If she is hungry she spits it out so viciously that it goes flying across the room or behind the bed. Ah.. the number of times dh has gone crawling under the bed in the middle of the night in search of the binky. And he is not allowed to put on the lights (for fear of putting Leela in the 'play' mode) so it takes him a while and sometimes he comes out dusty (i do not vacuum under the beds everyday!!). I did try offering her one of those glow-in-the-dark binkys but she rejected it outright. For some reason she only likes the binkys for the older age group (6-9 months?).
But i digress... looks like Kylee and Leelee have similar sleeping patterns. She is not anywhere near sleeping thru the night either.. she gets hungry every 3 hours.. but she goes right back to sleep which is a blessing.
In the day time she naps in the crib but at night she is with us. Truly, i don't know if _I_ am ready to not have her in bed with us... i just love cuddling with her at night and once she leaves us for the crib, i fear she may not want to come back!!! Also, it just is so much easier to know when she is starting to wake when she sleeps next to me... if i wait too long she gets hysterical and then it is really hard getting her back to sleep.

[jec2]

I commend you on getting Leela to nap. Please, please, please bottle whatever you do and send via priority mail!

Finn is an alert and active little bug so naps are hard even if he is really tired. We are getting better, but I feel like I spend all day getting him to nap. It is frustrating. Some nights we have the "over-tired meltdowns where he screams his head off and DH sticks him in the Bjorn and walks the neighborhood. He has fallen asleep in the car a few times lately and am not opposed to just driving around town until he wakes.

Our schedule is roughly as follows:

6:30 am nurse and fall back asleep
7-8 wakes up and plays in bed with daddy.
9-10 starts getting cranky & sleepy and so we nurse and rock and sometimes sleep for a bit. If all else fails I stick him in the sling and wash dishes or do laundry and he falls asleep.
12-1 same as above
4-5 same as above or pull out the big guns and climb into bed together and nurse/rest/sleep maybe watching Opera on really low volume
6-7 get ready for bed
7:15 usually asleep in crib
11-1 wakes up for a feeding/diaper change/moves into our bed.

[s_gosney]

Yeah, Kylee's been known to attack all sorts of things including DH's nose. :) Kylee still won't take the pacifier, though I keep trying. I suppose I should just give up. She is doing well with the bottle now, so I was hoping that would help her learn to use the pacifier, but no luck. She likes to play with it, but she doesn't ever use it the right way. Oh well.
I think the biggest benefit of cosleeping is the whole going back to sleep issue. She never gets fully awakened, so I never have to fight her to go back to sleep. Every now and then DH asks when she's going to start sleeping in her crib, but I don't think he minds too much. We may switch to letting her sleep in the crib until she first wakes up soon, but who knows. Everything is just going so smoothly that I don't want to mess it up. I really wonder if moving her would help her sleep through the night sooner though. Hmmm...risk vs benefits. I guess I'll have to sleep on that one. ;)