It all started with a lovely girls-weekend (+baby!) at a women's retreat at a very nice hotel that was supposed to be a wonderful relaxing weekend and turned into an exhausting no-sleep-for-anyone weekend. Bjorn refused to sleep in the fancy-schmancy hotel and I guess I reached my breaking point.
(You'd sure think he was happy there, wouldn't you?) :o)
So, on one of our little outings to the nearby mall, we ended up in the baby-book section of Border's and I found a book called "the no-cry nap solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. Yep. I bought it just because of the name. And because I was exhausted.
I'm pretty sure my mom laughed at me. (And if she didn't out loud, I'm sure she was laughing on the inside!)
Well, it turned out to have some pretty good ideas in it! And I will confess, I haven't even read the whole thing yet... just skipped through and read some chapters here and there that seemed to relate to us. I really like the no-cry thing. (Or I should say relatively-no-cry, compared to the CIO methods out there!) I guess I'm just not strong enough to listen to my baby wail when all he wants is me!
Basically, for us, it was a change of routine as far as his eating goes (remember him always falling asleep nursing?) and re-learning his sleepy-signs. I think I was always letting him go too far into exhaustion. Now he rarely stays awake for more than 2 hours during the day, except for the evening stretch before bedtime. And he nurses when he wakes up instead of when he gets tired, and has a real-food snack before naptime if he's hungry!
Now, there are so many more things I have learned already from this book, but I will stop for now. I don't want to bore you all! :o)
And I want to enjoy this relaxing coffee break while my baby naps away in his crib and my other baby watches a little Dora!
