But We Digress…

For most of her life, Iris has made her parents very happy with her sleep habits. Once we got over that hump of the first few weeks, she was actually letting us get several hour stretches of blissful snoozing. For many months, we could count on her to stay in bed – seemingly contentedly – for nine to 12 hours.

Then, I got to learn about sleep regression. I’d heard about it, and pitied the poor parents that experienced it at the four month mark. Our baby slept peacefully through that age.

But now she’s 10 months old. She can sit, crawl, pull herself to standing, move around a bit on her fat feet, find her grandma’s nose and dance to music. Obviously, sleep is not the priority. I think that little brain is working really hard, and that’s awesome. I’d  much rather have her be mentally active than the opposite.

However, she appears to have trouble shutting her brain off at bedtime. I get that; I really do. No one’s guiltier than me of going over lists of to-do’s and ideas and conversations when I should be relaxing and sleeping. Except Iris really has no obligations. If she forgets to remind herself to make that call on her plastic cell phone, or try that new move to the music on her play center, it’ll be ok.

Fortunately, she’s still a pretty easy going gal. Over the weekend, the husband tried a new tactic at nap time and bed time. We put her in the crib, sleepy but awake, in positions she prefers for sleeping. When she inevitably whines and tries to get up on all fours, we gently keep her horizontal and simply say “No.” Who’d have thought?

So far, it seems to be countering the digression of regression.

The problem comes when she falls asleep in our arms. On one hand, it’s super sweet, and something I know we should treasure while we can. On the other hand, it gets her too accustomed to that sort of situation. Naps must occur, whether in a crib or on a chest. This is the idea we need to communicate to this ever expanding and strengthening personality.

Of course, as you can see from the picture above, sometimes all you need is a blanket, a kitty and the blue glow of the laptop.