Saturday, September 18, 2010

All important sleep?

F has mostly acclimated to daycare. He likes the women in his room, enjoys the other babies and eats well. He is not sleeping well.

Most days he'll only take two short, 15-20 minute naps. Then when he gets home, he's tired and miserable. I've taken to putting him down for a third nap around 4:30 or 5 just so he's not so sad all evening. The short naps during the day are beginning to affect his nighttime sleep too. On days that he doesn't sleep much during the day, he gets up earlier the next morning. Then, on the weekends when he finally gets good napage, he'll sleep for 13+ hours overnight. For F, anyway, sleep begets sleep and no sleep begets no sleep.

This can't be good for him, right? Ry thinks I'm overreacting, but I've started to look into a home-based childcare arrangement or nanny for F. I think the daycare is just too bright, too loud and has too much going on for him to sleep well. Am I overreacting? I keep thinking the sleeping will get better, but if anything, it has gotten worse over the past 3 weeks.

Is the catch-up sleep enough? Is sleep important enough to move him even though I like everything else about the school? This is hard. :(

5 comments:

Cathy said...

Hmm, why don't you try and problem-solve with the daycare before making a drastic move. An extra fan in the room, a different room altogether (maybe they could just set up a pack and play in a spare office), darker shades, etc., you are paying for them to care for your child so they should be willing to make reasonable accommodations. Also, do they try to get him to go back to sleep after 20 min or just get him up? And on a second note, it takes awhile to get in to a new routine, especially for sleep, so it's only been a few week, give it some time. Try not to fret, F feels that. You'll get through this!

Becky said...

I agree. I feel like the daycare ought to be able to tweak his routine to help with this. It certainly couldn't hurt to look into other options, but I'd try to work with the daycare first.

nana said...

I think you will find that they are getting him up when he fusses at the 20 minute mark so he doesn't wake the other children instead of letting him fuss a little and go back to sleep. A fan would probably help the whole room.

Jube said...

I am definitely going to try and work with the school. Unfortunately, there is only so much they can do. There is no spare room for him to sleep in the dark and it's pretty unfair to expect the rest of the babies to play in the dark so F can rest. I'm going to bring in a fan tomorrow and see how that goes. I'm also trying to see if there is any kind of pack-in-play shade that could go just on his pack-in-play, so it wouldn't have to affect the rest of the room. Still, I think sleep is pretty important to developing baby brains ... so I don't know what I'll do if the sleep situation doesn't get better.

ldupbeat said...

After your visit here, I realize how very important naps are to your babies. Hopefully, his system will adjust to the new schedule without to much hardship. Keep in mind that the kids in programs like headstart and some preschools, don't get many, if any naps. In kindergarten he won't get any at all, but that is a couple of years away yet. Good luck!

 
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