How to darken baby's room for naptime?

[Babywhite]

My 16 month old DD sleeps very soundly at night. If she wakes up, she can soothe herself back to sleep. Naptimes are different. She goes to sleep for 30 - 45 minutes and wakes up. If that was all the naptime she needed each day, everything would be fine. That is not the case. If I give her a few minutes to go back to sleep, she cries loudly and becomes hysterical. She is very crumpy the rest of the day. If I go and pick her up, she will go back to sleep on my chest for approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. When she wakes up, she is very happy and content until bedtime. While I'm glad she enjoys napping with me, it is very inconvenient some days. (I need that time to do things I can't do when she is awake. :)) While the blinds in her room are closed during naptime, there is still a great deal of light coming into the room. Maybe she can't go back to sleep upon waking b/c it is too light?????? How could I darken the room just at naptime?

TIA for your help!
R.W.

[Piglet]

It isn't pretty, but DS2 has a very bright room so we taped garbage bags to his blinds. The bags are taped to the top of the window sill and to the bottom of the blinds so that when you open the blinds, the bags move with them. I wanted to buy black-out fabric, but never got around to it after he was born. Out of desperation, we taped on the garbage bags and they work great! Not pretty, but functional, LOL. This way, you can give it a try and if it helps her sleep then you can get proper black-out fabric and if it doesn't help you haven't wasted any time or money!

HTH,

[mudder17]

We had to darken DD's room as well and I took some old navy blue flannel sheets, cut them in half (they were King-sized) and made curtains out of them. Those, along with the blinds, do an excellent job of blocking out the light, even with full sunlight streaming in on that side of the house.


Eileen

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[kristenk]

I think black-out roller shades are incredible for blocking out light. We have a roller shade and a denim curtain (with additional black out fabric b/c I went crazy one day trying to darken the room) up in DD's room and it's really dark in there! The only thing to beware of with roller shades is that you can get light coming in on the sides of the shade if your window isn't perfectly straight. Oh, and if you decide to go with a roller shade, make sure to measure your window precisely, b/c they can cut them to an exact size at Home Depot, etc.

[tiapam]

We basically have two cellular blinds on one mechanism. One blind is for blocking out light, the other lets lots of light in while still maintaining privacy. The blocking one is on the bottom. This is perfect for us because our neighbor's house is so close, I would not usually want the blind open anyway. This was not a cheap solution, since we basically bought two blinds for one window, but we needed a new blind anyway. I think it is Levolor. We have one in our room, too, and we love it.

-Pam

DD - One year old!

[missliss55]

We bought some cellular shades. It is one shade that has blackout material in it. It was the best money we ever spent. My older DD's room was realy bright because the sun was faces her room during naptime, it would also get real hot. The blinds have made a tremedous difference. She also has some cute shear curtains over them. We bought ours from Home Depot. They are made by Bali. HTH.

[jordan1212]

I bought a darkening drapery set at Linens and Things. It was only $25, and it attached to my existing tab top drapes. It helps a lot.