Emma's Grace

Emma’s never been a great sleeper.  Well, I can’t really say that.  For the first 4 months of her life, she slept great!  She’d be awake for a couple of hours, sleep for 4 hours after that.  Rinse, repeat.  All day long.  She slept all night long.

Of course, those couple of hours at a time that she would be awake were full of seizures.  Those 4 hour naps afterwards was time that her brain needed to recover and heal from the constant activity it had just been through.

So really, after she got on the proper medication and didn’t have to go through all of that each day, I couldn’t really blame her for not sleeping much.

But we’re to the point (past it really) where Emma should be going from 2 naps a day to 1 big one.  A typical nap time would be after lunch.  However, this isn’t really a possibility for us.

Our Early On time slot is after lunch.  The teachers have their morning classes, then lunch, and then they have time for us.  This year, on Mondays we have class from 12:30-1:45.  Wednesday’s are up in the air at the moment.  We’ll have a home visit, but I don’t know what time it will be.

Because of this, I’ve tried to keep her schedule so she has regular PT at a similar time.  I don’t think she’d handle it well if 2 days a week she had to stay up and the rest she could nap during that time.  We don’t want a grumpy baby for therapies.  And knowing Emma, she’d just fall asleep during Early On and we wouldn’t be able to wake her up.

So instead, we try and take a morning nap and an afternoon nap.  This week she hasn’t really been sleeping for the morning nap.  At least not long.  And then I lay her down for the afternoon nap.  Again, she doesn’t sleep or sleeps very little.  By the time we’re having dinner, she’s tired and grumpy.

I understand why the school teachers have the Early On session when they do.  And they do a phenomenal job!  But when you’re doing a program for the Birth-3 age group, that’s a typical time for a nap.  Last year, we went to school from 12:50-2:05.  This year will be an easier time for a nap, I’m hoping.

PT on Tuesdays & Thursdays is currently at 1:45.  She goes one day for regular therapy and the other day for therapy in the pool.  We are going to try and see how she handles doing both back-to-back.  That doesn’t help with our naps, but it should make her tired enough to take a nap, maybe even a longer one.

Anyone having a similar problem?  Or have any advice?

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For those of you who don’t know about my other blog, there’s a new post up.  The topic….today is my 10 year anniversary.  For those of you interested, there’s a picture of Jon & I on our wedding day.

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