No pacis...no naps!

Well, the girls are 4 months shy of their 3rd birthday and we bit the bullet two weeks ago and gave up their pacifiers. They were only using them during nap and bedtime anyway, so we figured we would give it a shot. It went surprisingly smoothly, and apart from the first night, they haven't even asked for them back! PHEW!

BUT...and this is a big BUT. Naptime now is HORRIBLE!!!!! When they had their pacis, it was a VERY rare day when they didn't both nap at least 2 hours. I often had to wake them up from their naps to make sure they would go to bed at night! Since we got rid of the pacis, naptime is so much more unpredictable and it is driving me CRAZY! Like, I literally am all tensed up even just writing this. I don't know if it is because I don't have control over naptime anymore or what. If they don't get their naps, they are MUCH more whiny than usual, and it is a struggle to get them to go to bed any earlier than usual. THey typically go to bed around 7:30 anyway...it's too hard with our schedules to get it pushed back much earlier than that. And they still wake early too, like between 6 and 6:30.

So, they are getting about 2 less hours of sleep each day. We have tried putting them in "time out beds" (their pack n play in another room) if they aren't quiet. We have tried taking away their afternoon movie, which resulted yesterday in one of the girls not caring, and the other screaming at me for an hour and a half. I just don't know what to do. Luckily, they are still in their cribs, but without their pacis it is taking them forever to go down for a nap, and in the meantime they are having too much fun chatting and singing and playing with each other. Lord help us when they can get OUT of their beds!

How do you enstate "quiet time"? And reinforce it? And how long should you expect quiet time to last for kids under 3? They go willingly into their cribs after our normal pre-nap routine, and are happy the whole time they are in there when they aren't sleeping. Will this all work itself out over time, once they are used to not having their pacis?

Please help! Somehow I need to start being OK with this change and stop letting it stress me out so much!

 

Stick to your guns. My boys' sleep and nap was very interrupted when we stopped their pacis at about 2 years old. Eventually, they started to get back to their usual nap and sleep habits. It's a matter of them not only getting used to not having the pacis to soothe them, but also learning a new way to soothe themselves back to sleep. Now, our boys enjoy the routine set for them. Bath, a little playtime, reading, and them get in to bed. If they want us to sing to them, then we do. But, sleep-time is the same routine and they no longer need their pacis. They stopped wanting them at all after about a month. It took about 2 weeks for them to completely get off the pacis and another 2 weeks for them to stop crying themselves to sleep at all. A lot of the times they didn't cry, but they'd get up or make noise of some sort. That did stop and they got back to their normal sleeping habits.

 

Mine literally didn't know how to fall asleep when we took ours away, so we lost naps for a whole month, and bedtimes were awful, and they woke up super early. After letting they stay up and watch TV during their normal nap time for a couple of weeks, we asked them to lay on the sofa with their blankets and pillows while they watched, but they didn't fall asleep. After a month of Super Cranks, I put my foot down one day and told them they HAD to nap, and my nanny sat in their bedroom with them until they fell asleep that first day. We did have to sit with them for a while, but we weaned them off of that too by saying we had to go do chores in the kitchen and we'd pop back in, etc. I told them the quicker they fell asleep, the quicker they could get up and I even got a bag of little toys and let them pick a toy after a successful nap for the first week, like we did with potty training.

Mine were 3.5 when we got rid of pacis. It is sooooo hard and I wish you the best of luck!

 

WOW, I could've written this! WE haven't actually gotten rid of ours yet but......... I feel like it has to happen soon.

Everything you wrote about is exactly what I'm afraid of happening at our house and I'm dreading it.
We have a good routine and my girls know that the only time they get their paci's is bedtime, so for them that is a BIG sleep cue. They are sometimes fighting the day time sleep as it is even though i feel they still need it. Like you, I need them to still have their day sleep even if just to have that time out from them to get things done kid-free. If they don't have it, they are harder to deal with by late afternoon BUT still don't go to bed much earlier. In our house also, it's hard to push bedtime back much earlier as we also have 2 older kids.
Goodluck, and keep me posted!

 

Well, we finally seem to have gotten back to normal. Most days, anyway. The girls finally started to nap again...then we went out of town for the weekend and we are back to crazy times again. But I am just glad that they did eventually get back on track and are napping most days...phew! For those of you going through this too, I would just say have patience and give it time. They will come around!!!

Well, we finally seem to have gotten back to normal. Most days, anyway. The girls finally started to nap again...then we went out of town for the weekend and we are back to crazy times again. But I am just glad that they did eventually get back on track and are napping most days...phew! For those of you going through this too, I would just say have patience and give it time. They will come around!!!

 

Good to hear!

Part of me doesn't wan to get rid of theirs yet though! It's part of their 'babyness' and I don't want them to grow up just yet.

 

I also envision myself writing this EXACT.SAME.POST in a couple months when we plan to take the paci plunge (although it'll be my DH who'll stress out about it ;-)!
I'd also stick to your guns.
Like everything else, it'll work itself out. I know these things can be stressful in the moment, but remind yourself that in the scheme of things, it's a minor, temporary adjustment that may just take a little time.

Now, in a couple of months, remind me that I said this ;-)!

 

Glad to know its working out for you!

My friend had a great idea with her kiddos. She took away the pacis at bed time and let them keep them for naps. The way she saw it, they wouldn't be napping forever so would eventually give them up on their own. After two years old they were only allowed to have them in the crib/bed anyway so it worked out great!