My baby is catnapping. It’s driving me nuts: I spend 40 minutes getting him to fall asleep, and then he wakes up 20 minutes later! He wakes up with a broad smile, his arms and legs wiggle vigorously, so I reluctantly take him out of the bed… just to have a very cranky baby hanging on my shoulder until the rest of the nap. How come?

First of all, I refuse to try “cry it out approach”. It is harmful for baby’s development, his confidence, his future. You can see more here: “Crying it out” may damage baby’s brain.

So, what’s left?

In my favorite “sleep” book by Elizabeth Pantley, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night , there is a section on the importance of naps. Gentle, kind, loving approach of that book was a lifesaver for our first kid, who woke up every 15 minutes during the night! Now I needed something for my second one, something to get him to sleep longer during each nap, to fall asleep all by himself, to wake up happy.

Imagine how thrilled I was to find out that there is a new book by Elizabeth Pantley, The No-Cry Nap Solution: Guaranteed Gentle Ways to Solve All Your Naptime Problems.

At first I was doubtful: do I need another book just for naps?   Apparently, I did: my baby was turning 4 monts and there was no light seen at the end of the tunnel.  Both of us needed him to be able to sleep.

The book has three parts:

Nap Magic
Here are the physiological and psychological factors influencing sleep; sleep stages; charts with duration and benefits of each sleep stage; how naps effect baby’s development and daily activities; and tables how much nap is required at each age (up to adulthood). This chapter helps to identify the sleep dynamics, identify sleep patterns of your particular kid and work out a realistic goal for both of you.

Newborn Babies
This chapter is specific to the most little ones. It has lots of information on how to introduce good habits early, how to prevent problems in the future… and how to start solving issues right away. We realized that my son’s catnapping is abnormal quite early, so these steps were the first ones for us to utilize. However, I wish I started reading it even earlier – may be we could prevent this problem in the first place?

This chapter is useful even to the parents whose babies are already past adorable (and sleepless) newborn stage, since it has many concepts and suggestions that could be utilized with older babies as well.

Solving Napping Problems: Customized Solutions for Your Family
This is the biggest part of the book. It has lots of suggestions. Some of those suggestions weren’t new to us – we’ve read them in other books by Elizabeth Pantley. Others – were as new, as helpful! We were thrilled and eager to try the new ideas! It has a section for most of the sleep issues: catnaps, resisting naps, shifting schedules (oh, it used to drive me nuts with my first one! I wish I had that book then!!!), teaching baby to fall asleep in her bed instead of a car, sling, swing or, the most beloved place for all babies – in her parent’s arms. It has suggestions for babies that wake up too often to nurse; babies who need swinging, bouncing, gliding to fall asleep; newborns who prefer sleeping on his stomach; and even colic care.

Honestly, I haven’t encountered an issue that isn’t covered here. This book quickly became my bible, just like its “sibling” – No cry to Sleep Solution.

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So, the results?  We are slowly working on it.  My little one just turned five months.  We can’t try every solution in a book due to the conflict of schedules with my older one, but even those solutions that we’ve tried helped us to improve the situation dramatically.  As I am writing this article, my little one is finally sleeping in the time-slot that works for everyone in the family, in the location where I want him to be during the afternoon naps, and… it’s been already one and a half hours since he finally drifted to the dreamland!

As for my older one: today is especially memorable, since we had a great nap-success with him as well. With the help of the No-Cry to Sleep Solution book, we managed to teach him how to fall asleep in his own bed, without our help and without tears. That was more then two years ago. Naps is a whole other story: I was always so worried he would stop napping altogether, so I was afraid to change anything about our technique, since it is so important for him to sleep! However, slowly, I started working some of Pantley’s suggestions into our routine and… today he fell asleep all by himself! I was putting baby to bed in another room, anxiously listening for his chat with himself and terribly worrying that this conversation would excite him so much, that he would miss a nap – a disaster in our house. Nevertheless he did it! (Now I almost sound like Dora the Explorer). Yes, he did manage to fall asleep all by himself! Both of us felt very proud. And the little one just felt good – I had time to put him to bed and he got a nice hour and a half nap as well.

I’ve got to admit, I owe this book a lot!!