I wrote here about our adventures with sleep training. It went incredibly well, and I was shocked at how quickly bedtime got better. I realize that’s not the case for everyone, and for those of you cursing me, here is where you get your retribution. The dreaded nap.

Nap training is a completely different beast. Little Oats has always struggled with her naps; she would only nap on my chest for the first two months, then exclusively in the swing for another 2 -3 months. She has always had a problem joining sleep cycles together, so naps had been exclusively in 40-minute segments. By six months, I could count on my fingers the number of times naps had been longer than 90 minutes.

We decided to nap train at the same time as sleep training; I figured we’d tackle it all at once, and hopefully just have a few awful sleep-deprived days. Like I wrote about earlier, it took about three nights before Little Oats settled into a great bedtime routine, but naps were an entirely different story.

As with night-time sleep training, our schedule looked a little something like this:

1. Notice Little Oats’ sleepy signs (rubbing eyes, yawning, getting cranky)
2. Make sure she’s fed and changed
3. Put her in the Zipadee-Zip
4. Lay her down in her crib and walk away.

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For the first two weeks, meltdowns ensued immediately. She would roll onto her stomach, jam her hands through the crib slats, and scream. I’d wait 5 minutes, flip her over, shush her and leave. Then I’d set the timer for 7 minutes, flip-shush-leave again. She usually took about 20 minutes or more to fall asleep, and once she was out, she stayed out for maybe 40 minutes.

Was this even worth it? 25 minutes of yelling and flipping for a 40 minute nap? I spent so much time just getting her to relax that by the time she fell asleep, all I wanted to do was collapse on the couch with a cup of coffee. What was so wrong with relying on the swing for naps?

But at 7 months old, I knew Little Oats would benefit from more sleep. She needed to be napping, and since night-time sleep training had gone so well, I had hope that naps might follow suit. She slowly began falling asleep faster and faster; 15 minutes of crying, then 10, then finally, just a couple minutes of babbling before she was out like a light.

And then she started sleeping longer, too. We saw the first 1.5 hour nap in ages…and in her own crib to boot! It was still a daily struggle; wasn’t sleep training supposed to work in the first few days? It took about two weeks, but soon enough, Little Oats was putting herself to sleep the majority of the time. She was on two naps per day, and I could generally gauge when it was time to put her down. Morning nap was usually about an hour, while her afternoon nap ranged from an hour to three(!) hours on occasion.

At about ten months, Little Oats hit a major sleep regression, and at the same time, she decided to transition from two naps to one. Ten months is young for that transition, so it caught me completely off guard. She was napping anywhere, anytime, just so I could catch a break. So, with this change in schedule came the complete undoing of all of our nap training. It was once again taking upwards of 40 minutes to get Little Oats to sleep (if she napped at all), and I often resorted to driving around in the car, or walking around the neighbourhood with the stroller to get her to sleep. It was exhausting for all of us; Little Oats badly needed the sleep she was fighting, and I desperately needed that hour (or more) of alone time. So once again, we started the nap training process. This time, things were much easier. Three days of putting her down and letting her cry (with checks after ten minutes), and she was back to putting herself to sleep.

Now Little Oats is 14 months old, and she’s at daycare three days a week. As long as she has her Sleep Sheep (affectionately called ‘Beeshee’ by LO) and her Zipadee-Zip, she can put herself to sleep just about anywhere. She sleeps 2 hours on average at day care, and usually about an hour and a half for my mom (on Mondays). There are still the occasional three hour naps, but those are few and far between. And, with every growth spurt, cold, or new tooth, we backslide a little. But it only ever takes a few days of ‘re-training’ to get her back on schedule. Those retraining days usually involve about 15 minutes of crying or so; nothing like the initial 25-40 minute yelling sessions.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I’ve learned that ‘sleep training’ is never a one-time event. It is a continual reinforcing of good habits, sticking to the schedule that works for you and your little one, and not panicking when things start to slide a little. There are always going to be ups and downs, easy stages and rough ones. And on the days that I’m particularly sleep-deprived, I just remember how much I love sleep now…eventually Little Oats will catch on, too!

What do naps look like in your house? Have you struggled with sleep training?