I was too busy being a mum, I forgot to be a sleep consultant.

Ok, so let me tell you a story

‘The one where I was too busy being a mum, I forgot to be a sleep consultant’

To state the blindingly obvious, I help parents identify and solve their children’s sleep problems, and I love it. But recently I decided not to follow my own advice and it totally backfired on me.

I have 3 daughters including 2 (almost 3) year old twins, and for the most part we’ve been able to navigate sleep with ease compared to our first child (that one’s a whole other story for another day). But for weeks maybe even months, I’ve ignored that they needed to drop their nap.

Dropping the nap usually falls into one of two categories: 

1. Due to a child’s age, usually in combination with disturbed night sleep and behaviour issues or,
2. Child may be on the cusp of an age bracket where dropping a nap is appropriate, but it’s not yet clear that the cause of sleep issues are not due to other contributing factors.

My daughters fell into the first category, yet despite the broken night sleep and being total assholes all day, I continued to offer the nap! The sleep consultant in me knew that it was time to ditch the nap, but the mum in me really wasn’t ready to let go. Each day was becoming exhausting trying to support them through what I had considered delayed ‘terrible two’s’, until eventually admitting to myself that this was simply a symptom of a lack of appropriate night sleep. 

The other ridiculous thing is, we’d already been on this roller coaster before with our oldest daughter! And when we did finally drop her nap, her behaviour resolved in almost an instant. I told myself to never make the same mistake in future, but I again fell in the trap - the trap to keep the nap!

In the end I admitted defeat and we have now dropped the nap. It’s been hard, I grieved, and the girls are still adjusting and in true twin style their response has been totally different.

The baby of the pair (twin 2) is struggling the most- she loves sleep- and isn’t able to fight the urge not to ‘rest her eyes’ during quiet time, but I know that this won’t last forever.

Twin 1 (our middle child) has adapted fine, she’s really more of a ‘self-manager’ compared to her sister, and to her I am more of a ‘collaborator’ than her parent and has been happy enough to have quiet time looking at books and has also just ditched her dummy. 

Why am I telling you about my epic sleep fail? Because at the end of the day, I’m a mum first and foremost, and I know… I really do know how hard the balancing act of parenting can be. Even with all my knowledge of infant and childhood sleep, and all the families that I’ve supported through this almost identical situation, It was hard for me to recognise and accept the changes that were needed to restore the sleep equilibrium in our home. But once I did, it was allllll worth it.

If you want to chat naps pop a comment below

And now that’s done, I am going to have a Gin.

Danielle.

x