*Naima at about 6 weeks old*As a full time work out of home mom, I make it a point to spend all after-work time and weekends with Naima, to make up for the time that we are away from each other. Thus, when I have activities/meetings outside work, I always bring her with me. This hasn't been a problem since Naima is pretty well-behaved and loves meeting new people. Just 2 weeks ago, we went to Ormoc, Leyte to attend a friend's wedding where she danced the night away!
However, Naima has an unusual nap-time schedule. She's usually up for the day at around 7am and has her nap at lunch-time (12noon or later). We've been trying to get her to nap at around 1030am, to no avail. Thus, on weekends, whenever I have scheduled lunch-outs with family or friends, she always dozes off in the middle of lunch. However, when we're home, she doesn't want to take her nap and just wants to play, play, play with me. Maybe it's also her way of making up for the work week. I'm usually able to put her to sleep at about 1pm. Most of the time, this is okay since I can do grocery shopping and other errands while she's asleep. This becomes a problem when I have activities scheduled at 2-3pm.
For instance, last week, I wanted to attend a breastfeeding toddlers class at 2pm. But since Naima woke up at almost 3pm + an unusually heavy Saturday traffic, we arrived at the venue at about 5pm and I missed the session! I thought about going without Naima but there was also a scheduled toddler playgroup and we were going out for dinner right after the session.
I really don't want to disturb Naima when she's napping since she just takes 1 nap per day - no matter how short that nap is. Sometimes, I have no choice but to wake her up from her nap (like when we're going out-of-town and need to catch a flight) and she gets REALLY cranky towards the end of the day. This makes me wonder how moms are able to schedule meetings/activities around their babies' naps. Waiting-for-Naima-to-wake-up-from-her-afternoon-nap seems to be an important and regular weekend activity for me before I can go out, participate in my various advocacies or meet friends. I guess I can only hope that her nap schedule improves as she grows older.
3 comments:
wow! naima looks like the light of the party! my baby jack jack is almost the same. although he takes his naps twice a day, he won't nap if we're out. then he'd be really cranky unless you can put him to sleep w/c is impossible when we're not home.
go naima!!! party! hehe
Stumbled into this post just today, Jenny. It's the same with my son. He's 16 months old now, and it's so hard to get him to sleep. Plus, he only takes one nap a day, and I try as much as I can to not disrupt this schedule, otherwise he gets really cranky in the early evening and goes to bed really early. It takes about 2 days for his sleep cycle to get back on track, so when we go out, we go out really early, so he can nap in the car on the way home. All else fails, we just leave him at home, and try to come home early so that we can spend the afternoon with him. :-)
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