Judgements: “Just be flexible with his naps!”

I am a prisoner to this child’s nap time. He is almost 8 months old and still has 3 naps per day. Typically they are from 9am-10:15, 12:30pm-2 and 4:30pm-5:15. My life revolves around these precious sleep periods because if he is late for one or skips one, all hell breaks loose! I just wrote a post called “not helpful” https://lovingheartsroughstarts.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/not-helpful/ and in it I described what unhelpful feedback I received from people during my rough start. Well, another unhelpful comment I often get is “can’t you be more flexible with his sleep?”. Now don’t misunderstand me, I completely respect parents who are flexible when it does not have a negative impact on their child. Some kids adapt very well and it probably makes life easy to just go with the flow. My child, however, isn’t that easy-going. He enters a major state of fussiness when he is overtired. He is very much by the clock and practically welcomes his crib when it’s time to go to sleep.

So here’s the problem, I have a hard time finding programs to join such as music and swimming because the times don’t usually work with his naps. I also have trouble making play dates and attending family functions. We had a family dinner the other night and I decided, as an experiment, to try being “flexible” by having baby stay out late and pushing his bedtime an hour later……………for those of you who are major sleep schedulers, you’re probably gasping! So how did it go? REALLY BAD! Poor child was so tired, rubbing his eyes and whining. My husband drove him home so I could stay and enjoy the rest of the evening. Baby was hysterical the whole drive home and had difficulty settling down for the night. The only positive to this experience is that my family got to see firsthand the effects of being “flexible”. I’m hoping that they will now think twice before making suggestions around his sleep. When I weigh out the pros and cons I feel strongly that I need to continue with a rigid sleep schedule. It’s actually nice to have structure and some predictability. During our rough start, I never knew when my baby was going to fall asleep and he only slept in my arms, so I did not have any time to myself. Now I can put him down and then eat or check emails or write a quick post (naps don’t allow a lot of time to write so excuse any grammatical errors!).

I suppose I worry about people’s judgements about me as a mother otherwise I wouldn’t care what they thought of my rigidity. Being a mom is my most important role in life, so I desperately want to feel like I am doing a good job at it. I always thought of myself as having a “thick skin” but motherhood has really exposed a vulnerability that I didn’t know I had. 7 months ago when I was feeling very down, my cousin asked me how I was doing and I broke down. I tried using every ounce of energy I had left to not cry, but it was impossible to fight. My cousin said “you’re doing a good job, you’re a good mom”. I really needed to hear that and even though there was a part of me that didn’t believe it, I held on to it for dear life and tried to take it in. Amazing how one’s thoughts can spiral from “why don’t you try pushing back his bedtime” to “you’re a bad mom”. If any of you are familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), you’ll know a bit about working through negative thinking and finding your core beliefs. I have worked with clients on thought records to challenge unhelpful thoughts on many occasions and yet in the moment I still struggle to use this skill. It’s a work in progress for me. If you are interested in learning more about CBT I would be happy to do a post about it.

Thanks for reading….