Advice From an Old Member of the 38-Minute Nap Club
Sending you solidarity, and some words of reassurance, during your time of desperation.
I wrote this one a while go but finally got around to editing and posting. It’s come up in recent convos I have had with new moms, so hoping it’s relevant and helpful to some of you, too!
When CJ was about 3 months old, I started taking on some part-time work again. I thought I’d be able to work for a few hours each day while she napped. Apparently she had other plans. My newborn who spent most of the day sleeping, unless she was awake to eat, suddenly refused to nap. The more I rocked and sang and tried to get her to sleep, the more she screamed and resisted.
When I did get her to calm down and fall asleep, she’d sleep for 38 minutes, no more. The only way she’d sleep longer than that was if she was in my arms. Being nap trapped isn’t so bad if you have nothing else to do… But I had committed to writing assignments so I kind of had to do something more than just lie on the couch bingeing Grey’s Anatomy and The Morning Show (which I had done the first three months postpartum).
In retrospect, that was the worst time for me to try and start working again. Thankfully, my work was for editors who I have written for a ton and who trusted me enough to give me the flexibility and grace I needed to get things done on my own time–I will forever be grateful for the role they played in helping me ease back into working life.
This dreaded time is often referred to as a the three- or four-month “sleep regression.” Parents everywhere lament the nap battles and oddly specific nap duration—ours were usually 38 minutes on the dot. It’s enough to make you want to pull your hair out and cry, which I did at least once a day.
If you’re going through this right now, I will start with my usual disclaimer: It gets better! I promise!!! You’ll get lots of different advice from people on how to survive and get your baby to nap. The truth—which was hard for me to swallow as a health journalist who relies of research and expert advice—is that there aren’t really any studies on baby sleep. Every self-proclaimed baby sleep expert or coach is just that, self-proclaimed. Sure, many of them offer tips that could end up being helpful. But if anyone speaks in absolutes when it comes to baby sleep, run away. Run far away. There’s no real authority here. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics essentially just says, “babies don’t have regular sleep cycles until six months of age, godspeed.” (I’m paraphrasing, the AAP is a little more eloquent than that.)
Okay so, what’s a tired parent with a screaming, tired baby (who won’t nap despite being given every opportunity to do so) to do? It’s kind of impossible to accept “it is what it is and there’s nothing you can do” when you’re going through this. So, I’m sharing what I did. Who the hell knows if any of it “worked,” because babies do just naturally end up sleeping eventually, both at night and during the day. So I really can’t say if my behaviors made the process happen any faster than it would have on its own. But I know you’re not going to just stand by and do nothing. Before you start taping the curtains shut with duct tape (yet), here it goes.
Try, try, and try again. You will feel insane for consistently putting your baby down for a nap and it never working. But I found it helpful to just keep doing it over and over and over again. And over again. The reality is that this is a time where your baby’s brain is changing rapidly, and along with it, their circadian rhythm and ability to self-soothe. It will click eventually. Introducing some habitual behavior—going into a certain room, turning on a sound machine, putting them in the same sleep sack, singing to them, whatever you want to do—can’t hurt. And when they start to process patterns, it’ll only help. Or at least that’s what I told myself and that helped me mentally. At the time, I thought “this is BS and it’s never going to work” but I promise you… eventually they will take actual factual naps.
Babywear. One mistake I made here was that I just resigned myself to a life of being glued to the couch and letting my baby sleep in my arms. What I should have done more often was strap her into the carrier (we loved the Ergobaby Embrace Newborn Carrier for the first year-ish) and go about my day. This wouldn’t have worked very well to sit and write at a computer (though one of my colleagues told me that’s exactly what she did when her first daughter was young and she had to keep writing whether baby napped or not). Even if you can’t get work done, at least you can do the other things—laundry, dishes, hell, go to the bathroom—with your infant strapped to your chest.
Let it go, let it gooooo. Some “baby sleep experts” say to try and soothe your baby or replace the pacifier so they can “finish” the nap. I cannot recall a single time this worked for us. I spent A LOT of time trying to do this, and getting very frustrated and worked up when it didn’t work. So, if it wasn’t working, I just let it go and tried to put her down again later. Some of my most emotional moments (like ever in my entire life) were when I was desperately trying to get my baby to sleep as hard as she was fighting to not sleep. The fight is not worth it. No one wins. Everyone cries. It’s not pretty or productive.
Let them fuss. This is my best advice, but also I’m sure controversial. Popular baby sleep “experts” say to put your baby down awake-but-drowsy and I always laughed maniacally at that advice. Like, whose baby is getting perfectly drowsy and then just settling into their bassinet and putting themselves to sleep? Mine surely did not. But, mine did do it with a little bit of a fight. I’m not telling you to let your baby cry hysterically forever until they pass out. (Please don’t do that.) But I learned that some babies (mine included) just need a hot sec to fuss and cry and figure it out. Soon after I started to put my baby down when she was clearly ready for a nap and leave the room even if it meant she cried a little bit, she started falling asleep on her own and taking longer naps. Five minutes of crying dwindled to two; eventually, I’d hear like three quick cries and then she’d stop. After doing this for a couple of weeks (I think? At most? It wasn’t long), I’d watch her on the monitor as she woke up 38 minutes in, rolled around, fussed a teensy bit, and then put. herself. back. to. sleep. The first time I saw it, I cried happy tears. Soon after, the fussing stopped and she’d just pop her little eyes open, roll around, and settle back in for a longer nap. There’s not much research on it, but studies suggest some infants develop self-soothing behaviors by 4 to 6 months. All I know is as soon as I stopped trying to force my daughter to nap, and gave her a chance to figure it out on her own, she started to get the hang of both falling asleep and staying asleep. (Def in line with her now clearly independent personality.)
Duct tape the curtains shut. Okay maybe not literally, but honestly, do what you gotta do to know that you’ve done all you can. I had to feel like I did everything in my power to make longer naps possible. So I bought blackout curtains (these ones rock, but wait till they’re on sale), turned up the sound machine, and made sure the room temperature was comfortable. It made me feel better to know that I did the things that were within my power, and that if she still didn’t nap, it wasn’t anything that I did wrong.
At the end of the day, we’ll find ways to blame ourselves, even if the “problem” is literally a biological process that we have no control over. So I say do what you need to do to remind yourself that it’s not your fault. Your baby is also just trying to figure life out. They’ll get there soon, so just believe that and do your best to make it through. You WILL make it through.
Signed,
A former member of the 38-Minute Naps Club, who eventually was a proud member of the Two 2-Hour Naps Club, and now, the One Glorious 2-3-Hour Nap Club.