Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Mission Accomplished

Even though Dexter had transitioned to his crib for nighttime sleeping long ago, we continued to use the swing for naps. Part of this was that it worked so well and part of it was that we hadn't established a real nap schedule for him, just put him in the swing when he looked tired. Well, a couple of months ago, we started establishing a nap schedule (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) and tried to put him in the crib but it was a miserable failure. We were concerned that Dexter would never get a nap and we would never get a break so we went back to the swing but at established nap times. Then we tried again to move him to crib for naps and he wasn't having any of it. Around this time, Madoka mentioned that she learned that babies experience even small transitions as big disruptions and Ben's sister, Steph, suggested we first move the swing next to his crib for a little bit. So that's what we did for a couple of weeks. Saturday, we finally made the final transition to "regular naps in the crib" and moved the swing into storage. Dexter didn't do much napping on Saturday (just a bunch of screaming), there were vehement nap-time protests on Sunday but he eventually fell asleep, and he only put up minor protests yesterday. Today, I am thrilled to say that he has gone down for both naps in his crib without a fuss and slept like a baby.