Our First Compromise (Maybe)

Ken says we’ve compromised – Nora and I. I don’t think she’s really capable of compromising, but it’s nice to think that is why I still have to nap with her every day. Not because I failed at Operation-Nap-In-Criib, but because mother and daughter have made the first in a long series of compromises.

The nap still traps me. I avoid the car after 11 – or I do some crazy dance, song, toy throwing in the car to keep her awake. I schedule my mornings around errands that will fit in before 11, before the danger of ruining the nap sets in.

At the start of the summer, Nora refused to sleep in her crib at all during nap time. We “fixed” that. Now she walks very willingly to her room when I tell her it’s time for her nap. She brings her baby, puts her in the crib, I turn on her white noise machine, we sing three songs, I put her in her crib and she sleeps. All by herself.

For 45 minutes.

And then she wakes up and cries and doesn’t stop until I go and get her and bring her to my bed and sleep with her. And she sleeps for another hour or more. With me. In my bed. Mostly while holding onto or lying on my arm to make sure to prevent me from reading.

I found this “compromise” doable. I had my 45 minutes of freedom. I needed a nap myself most days, and it’s really nice to sleep next to a tiny, nice-smelling baby (when she isn’t thrashing around).

Would I have liked to have the whole 2 hours to myself, yes. But at least now I know that Nora still makes some of the same faces she did when she was asleep as a newborn. She makes a very annoying squeaky sucking sound with her thumb in her mouth while she sleeps. She hates to have covers from a bed even brush against her toe (but she has to fall asleep with a blanket on her?). And she is immediately happy when she wakes up with me next to her. And when I accepted the compromise I was too. Most days.