How do naps at daycare work?

[Anonymous]

My son started daycare at 7 months in 2021 and I was so worried about this. He was also the youngest and only kid in the class who needed 2 naps/day. On day 1 they sent a pic of him fast asleep at his personal/designated nap time. They pat his but to help him fall asleep but it wasn't too hard. He actually went down to 1 nap during the week way to early (like 8 or 9 months?) and I was so freaked out it would ruin his sleep and make him sleep badly at night. He was fine.

TLR - you might have a rough week or two where your kid adjusts, but I promise you, it will be fine. Try not to overthink it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are doing your child a great disservice by not helping them transition well during nap. Take care obviously won’t be able to breast-feed them. So you should try from now until they start daycare for your child to get used to either not being rocked or nursed to sleep. take care will obviously have to handle it but it will be tough for your child.

+1. Start the daycare routine now. Ask the providers how and when they put the babies down for a nap and start doing it before she starts. Yes, daycare can handle it but why stress your baby more than you have to.

+2 It's much harder on baby and the providers if you don't do some form of sleep training at home, preferably before daycare starts if you still can, but at least on weekends once daycare starts. It often isn't possible for a daycare to rock/feed a baby to sleep (maybe some will do it, but most just don't have enough staff to do this), so doing this at home is going to make it a more difficult transition for everyone. My son started daycare at 5 months and for the few weeks before he started, we trained by cutting out the rocking/feeding to sleep (which we'd previously been doing) and I put him down awake. That way the start of daycare wasn't a total disaster with naps. I would check on him after ten minutes of crying (but not pick him up). He definitely cried for the first week, which was tough, but then he adjusted. I felt like so much was already changing for him, I didn't want the naps to be another thing that was totally different. Our daycare does some rocking when really needed, but they can't always do it as a general practice for every baby/every nap.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are doing your child a great disservice by not helping them transition well during nap. Take care obviously won’t be able to breast-feed them. So you should try from now until they start daycare for your child to get used to either not being rocked or nursed to sleep. take care will obviously have to handle it but it will be tough for your child.

+1. Start the daycare routine now. Ask the providers how and when they put the babies down for a nap and start doing it before she starts. Yes, daycare can handle it but why stress your baby more than you have to.

+2 It's much harder on baby and the providers if you don't do some form of sleep training at home, preferably before daycare starts if you still can, but at least on weekends once daycare starts. It often isn't possible for a daycare to rock/feed a baby to sleep (maybe some will do it, but most just don't have enough staff to do this), so doing this at home is going to make it a more difficult transition for everyone. My son started daycare at 5 months and for the few weeks before he started, we trained by cutting out the rocking/feeding to sleep (which we'd previously been doing) and I put him down awake. That way the start of daycare wasn't a total disaster with naps. I would check on him after ten minutes of crying (but not pick him up). He definitely cried for the first week, which was tough, but then he adjusted. I felt like so much was already changing for him, I didn't want the naps to be another thing that was totally different. Our daycare does some rocking when really needed, but they can't always do it as a general practice for every baby/every nap.

Good luck!

+3 I wish someone had told me this

[Anonymous]

The babies adjust. There will probably be a few days of crying, but they know they can’t nurse, unlike when they’re with you, and eventually get used to falling asleep on their own. My nurse to sleep baby fell asleep in a swing initially and then eventually to someone patting his back.

[Anonymous]

it's more important to stop breast feeding and switch to bottle before daycare start. You should be more worried about baby not eating, that's worse than not sleeping. There are bunch of babies always who wont eat out of bottle because they are being nursed and never on the bottle, so poor things dont eat, dont sleep and are a mess at the end of day.

[Anonymous]

They are pros! I held both kids for naps for first 6 months during maternity leave. It took a bit of adjusting but they were both great nappers at daycare. The daycare providers REALLY want to make it work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are pros! I held both kids for naps for first 6 months during maternity leave. It took a bit of adjusting but they were both great nappers at daycare. The daycare providers REALLY want to make it work.

PP here. And I didn't do anything to help with the transition. I just wanted to make the most of those last few weeks of leave