Is nanny confusing my baby or am I just looking for someone to blame my frustration on?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you considered, just rocking your baby to sleep? I mean if it works and it gets him to sleep why not just do that. He'll outgrow those pretty quick anyways before you know it you'll have a kid in school.

Yes, we rocked our baby to sleep every night before we sleep trained, and he was up every 2 hours needing to be rocked to sleep again and ever so gently transferred and if he woke we started over. I suppose we could experiment now that he is sleeping through the night for the most part and see if he can be rocked to sleep and still connect sleep cycles through the night now that he seems to know how to. I cannot go back to waking every 2 hours and being up for 30 minutes at a time to get him back down on a near nightly basis though. That's the whole reason we threw in the towel and sleep trained.

[Anonymous]

I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you considered, just rocking your baby to sleep? I mean if it works and it gets him to sleep why not just do that. He'll outgrow those pretty quick anyways before you know it you'll have a kid in school.

Yes, we rocked our baby to sleep every night before we sleep trained, and he was up every 2 hours needing to be rocked to sleep again and ever so gently transferred and if he woke we started over. I suppose we could experiment now that he is sleeping through the night for the most part and see if he can be rocked to sleep and still connect sleep cycles through the night now that he seems to know how to. I cannot go back to waking every 2 hours and being up for 30 minutes at a time to get him back down on a near nightly basis though. That's the whole reason we threw in the towel and sleep trained.

+1 We also sleep trained for this reason. It wasn't that we weren't willing to cuddle our baby. It was that it was messing up her sleep throughout the night, and she and we were exhausted. Honestly, sleep training has spared her a lot of tears because she no longer wakes up crying in the night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

[Anonymous]

How old is your nanny? I would honestly defer to her unless she's not that experienced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I agree with the PP, OP. I work in child care. We do not "sleep train". We are not allowed to let babies cry uncomforted even for short periods. We do LOTS of things differently than parents do.

Even between my husband and I, we put our kids to sleep differently. I was a rocker, he was a put them down and leave kind of guy. Children, even babies, are extremely adaptable and able to figure out different set of expectations from different people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I agree with the PP, OP. I work in child care. We do not "sleep train". We are not allowed to let babies cry uncomforted even for short periods. We do LOTS of things differently than parents do.

Even between my husband and I, we put our kids to sleep differently. I was a rocker, he was a put them down and leave kind of guy. Children, even babies, are extremely adaptable and able to figure out different set of expectations from different people.

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I agree with the PP, OP. I work in child care. We do not "sleep train". We are not allowed to let babies cry uncomforted even for short periods. We do LOTS of things differently than parents do.

Even between my husband and I, we put our kids to sleep differently. I was a rocker, he was a put them down and leave kind of guy. Children, even babies, are extremely adaptable and able to figure out different set of expectations from different people.

Thanks, this is very helpful. Especially that you and your husband had different approaches with success. So much sleep training feels very rigid and inflexible and we are doing the best we can with the information we have to help our baby get good sleep and see the benefits. But the rigidity of many approaches is hard to navigate when you're not the one responsible for many of your child's sleeps. I do hope you're right and he's adaptable to different approaches from nanny and mom/dad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I agree with the PP, OP. I work in child care. We do not "sleep train". We are not allowed to let babies cry uncomforted even for short periods. We do LOTS of things differently than parents do.

Even between my husband and I, we put our kids to sleep differently. I was a rocker, he was a put them down and leave kind of guy. Children, even babies, are extremely adaptable and able to figure out different set of expectations from different people.

+2

I nursed my son to sleep for most naps and bedtime until 2.5. I did no rocking, bouncing, etc after about 4 months except during regressions or teething. Dad doesnt have breastmilk and was able to put him down. Our daycare provider walked or rocked him. Even at 3 we stay with him until he falls asleep. I sing and Dad just lays with him. He goes to childcare and naps on a cot with 10 other kids in the room. Kids are very adaptable but you are leaving your nanny to interpret whats acceptable while youre in the home. Is 5 min ok- Is 10? When he is sick or teething is less allowable? Youre not giving her autonomy and undermining her IMO. Sometimes new caregivers need to provide more support and can slowly wean off of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I nursed my kids to sleep for bed and weekend naps until they were toddlers and they never had issues napping at daycare. Daycare did not allow them to go to sleep with a bottle.

This is exactly what I mean when I've read babies are adaptable to different caregivers. Surely she is not affecting his night sleep and I'm just looking to blame someone for his difficult nights this week. But I do wonder if the totally different environment at daycare helps dissociate any sleep associations from home. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I agree with the PP, OP. I work in child care. We do not "sleep train". We are not allowed to let babies cry uncomforted even for short periods. We do LOTS of things differently than parents do.

Even between my husband and I, we put our kids to sleep differently. I was a rocker, he was a put them down and leave kind of guy. Children, even babies, are extremely adaptable and able to figure out different set of expectations from different people.

+2

I nursed my son to sleep for most naps and bedtime until 2.5. I did no rocking, bouncing, etc after about 4 months except during regressions or teething. Dad doesnt have breastmilk and was able to put him down. Our daycare provider walked or rocked him. Even at 3 we stay with him until he falls asleep. I sing and Dad just lays with him. He goes to childcare and naps on a cot with 10 other kids in the room. Kids are very adaptable but you are leaving your nanny to interpret whats acceptable while youre in the home. Is 5 min ok- Is 10? When he is sick or teething is less allowable? Youre not giving her autonomy and undermining her IMO. Sometimes new caregivers need to provide more support and can slowly wean off of it.

Thanks, you may be right that she doesn't feel autonomous in making judgment calls since we are home. We have given her very clear "give him x minutes before checking in and try for x amount of time before getting him to nap however you can" but she may not feel like she can make those nuanced decisions if he gets escalated, since we are home, resulting in just not letting him fuss at all. FWIW she has been with us for months and he is very securely attached to her, so I don't think it's a new caregiver needing to provide more support at this point. It's a style thing and probably, you're right, an autonomy thing given COVID telework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't your nanny the one who has the most experience with your child's naps? Why don't you trust her judgment on what your child needs during the day? Since she is presumably handling this 5 days a week and you're only handling it 2 days a week.

Also, it's possible he's started to have problems at night again because he's underslept because you're forcing him to soothe himself to sleep at naps (and it sounds like he's missing out on a lot of daytime sleep because of that). Maybe your nanny can tell he's under-rested and just wants to make sure he takes good naps, vs. sticking to the sleep training schedule.

I really respectfully disagree with this sentiment that often comes up on DCUM. Yes she has experience with more babies than I do, but every parent is different and part of her job is also to implement things the parent wants. And every baby is different so what may have worked for a previous kid, may not work for mine - if it's affecting his settling at bedtime, it doesn't work for us. I don't know if it is, which is why I posed the question.

It is possible that nights are being affected by day sleep but he's actually getting great naps (3 hours on average between the two naps), both before and after she started rocking him to sleep again. It's possible that he's still adjusting to having dropped the 3rd nap though, and it has nothing to do with confusion between caregivers style though.

I wasn't talking about how she has "experience with more babies." I'm talking about how she has more daytime experience with YOUR child than you do. I just think you should take her opinion into account since she's the one with your son for 70% of his naps.

[Anonymous]

DS would fall asleep on his own at nighttime. Needed rocking during the day.
I would not be blaming the nanny, perhaps what you requested does not work despite her efforts?
I think it if is not working, would you rather have a crazy tired baby in the evening?
What should she do if he is not falling asleep with your routine?
How come he had no trouble falling asleep at night even when the nanny was rocking him to sleep?

[Anonymous]

Is your ds not feeling well, perhaps? Or something is bothering him? Has he been sleeping longer in the morning or is his nap too late? At that age, my kids needed 3 naps. It was when they were tried that it was murder getting them to take a nap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS would fall asleep on his own at nighttime. Needed rocking during the day.
I would not be blaming the nanny, perhaps what you requested does not work despite her efforts?
I think it if is not working, would you rather have a crazy tired baby in the evening?
What should she do if he is not falling asleep with your routine?
How come he had no trouble falling asleep at night even when the nanny was rocking him to sleep?

I’ve read it’s two parts of the brain. And many suggest doing nights first and then teaching naps. But once you do both and they catch on, I have no idea how reverting back to helping them fall asleep for one affects the other. That’s sort of my whole quandary right now- do I make a big deal or do I let it go and figure it’s probably something else going on at bedtime this week, and completely coincidental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't your nanny the one who has the most experience with your child's naps? Why don't you trust her judgment on what your child needs during the day? Since she is presumably handling this 5 days a week and you're only handling it 2 days a week.

Also, it's possible he's started to have problems at night again because he's underslept because you're forcing him to soothe himself to sleep at naps (and it sounds like he's missing out on a lot of daytime sleep because of that). Maybe your nanny can tell he's under-rested and just wants to make sure he takes good naps, vs. sticking to the sleep training schedule.

I really respectfully disagree with this sentiment that often comes up on DCUM. Yes she has experience with more babies than I do, but every parent is different and part of her job is also to implement things the parent wants. And every baby is different so what may have worked for a previous kid, may not work for mine - if it's affecting his settling at bedtime, it doesn't work for us. I don't know if it is, which is why I posed the question.

It is possible that nights are being affected by day sleep but he's actually getting great naps (3 hours on average between the two naps), both before and after she started rocking him to sleep again. It's possible that he's still adjusting to having dropped the 3rd nap though, and it has nothing to do with confusion between caregivers style though.

I wasn't talking about how she has "experience with more babies." I'm talking about how she has more daytime experience with YOUR child than you do. I just think you should take her opinion into account since she's the one with your son for 70% of his naps.

You’re right, I totally misread that. We do take her opinion into account but at the end of the day, I’m home and hear what’s going on- it’s not like he’s crying hysterically and fighting naps all of a sudden, she’s just reverted back to rocking at the slightest fuss and not giving him a chance. So I am sure that’s the way she is most comfortable caring for him, but I do wonder if it’s confusing to him.