Free The No Cry Nap Solution by Elizabeth Pantley Page B

baby’s biology mature any faster, and it
    will distract you from your most important and wonderful job
    right now—getting to know your new baby and letting your new
    baby get to know you. Gradually, your newborn will consolidate
    her sleeping and begin to sleep longer spells during the night and
    combine short daytime sleeps into actual naps.
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    Pa r t 3
    Solving Napping Problems:
    Customized Solutions for Your Family
    We have already talked a great deal about how important
    naps are to your child’s health, mood, and happiness, and conse-
    quently, to your health, mood, and happiness. So, it’s likely that
    you are now a true believer in the magic of naps. But what if your
    child isn’t a believer? What if your child won’t nap when you want
    her to? Or what if naps are much too short or if your little one
    requires an elaborate ritual of parent acrobatics in order to sleep?
    That’s when you get to be investigator, researcher, teacher, and
    the ultimate purveyor of all things nap!
    The following section outlines the most common nap problems
    and provides a variety of solutions for each one. Scan through the
    topics for your child’s nap issues and select those solutions that
    make the best sense for you and your child. Put together a plan
    using the guidelines in Part 1 of this book, or simply begin using
    the tips as soon as you read about them.
    Nap problems can be complicated, and it may take a few adjust-
    ments to your plan along the way, but the end results are defi nitely
    worth every minute of effort.
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    Catnaps
    Making Short Naps Longer
    See also: Newborn Babies (Part 2); Shifting Schedules:
    Changing from Two Naps to One Nap; The Nap Resister:
    When Your Child Needs a Nap but Won’t Take One
    I have a four-month-old mini-napper! I can
    usually get her to go to sleep, but she always
    wakes up exactly forty minutes after I put her
    in bed. How can I get her to take longer naps?
    This is an amazingly common occurrence. I have discovered
    that most mini-nappers are between two months and eight
    months old. Most of these babies fall asleep being fed or while in
    a car seat, sling, rocker, or someone’s arms. They are then trans-
    ferred to bed, where they sleep between thirty and fi fty minutes.
    These factors clearly point to some possible causes and will lead us
    to the potential solutions.
    Could It Be One-Cycle Sleep Syndrome
    (OCSS)?
    In the fi rst six to eight months of life, a baby’s full sleep cycle
    ranges from forty to sixty minutes. When you add your baby’s
    brief in-arms falling-asleep time together with the nap time, the
    total is one sleep cycle . If you’ll recall from the fi rst part of this
    book, human beings sleep in cycles, and there is a brief awakening
    63
    64 Solving Napping Problems
    between them. An independent sleeper will get comfortable and
    fall right back to sleep, likely not even realizing that he’s awake.
    What this tells us is that a short napper cannot put himself back
    to sleep, so his nap appears to be over at the end of one sleep cycle.
    So, you see, it’s likely that your mini-napper is suffering from what
    I call one-cycle sleep syndrome (OCSS).
    Here’s how to understand what’s going on with your baby.
    Imagine this: It’s your bedtime. You get into your nice, comfy bed
    with your favorite pillow and a soft blanket, and you fall asleep.
    If a while later you wake between sleep cycles and everything is
    exactly the same, you might change position, pull the covers up,
    and then fall right back to sleep, possibly without even remember-
    ing this happening.
    What if you woke up to fi nd yourself sleeping on the cold
    kitchen fl oor without blankets or pillow?
    Would you simply turn over and go right back to sleep? I know I
    wouldn’t! It’s likely you would wake up shocked. You’d worry about
    how you got on the kitchen fl oor. You certainly wouldn’t fi nd it
    comfortable! In order to