One woman's perspective of (twin) parenting (and other thoughts about things)
As I write this, it is 1.36pm and the Smols have been napping for nearly two hours. This is now NORMAL.
And it’s been a long old time coming.
Waaaaay back at the end of last year, when the Smols were about 13 months old, Smol T started being Really Hard Work when it came to naps. We have been blessed with two pretty good sleepers, and the transition from three naps to two (whenever on earth that was - some point in the distant past) was relatively pain free, so this all came as a bit of a shock. Morning naps became a battle to get them to sleep - it’s like they weren’t tired enough - but then when they were both finally asleep, the morning naps were getting longer and longer, thus pushing out the whole day and creating a conundrum around how to fit the second nap in whilst leaving enough wake time before bed so they’d actually sleep overnight.
It was horrid.
‘Ah hah’, I thought to myself, ‘it must be Time For One Nap’.
I read up about it, including all the articles that say how important it is to make sure they aren’t just having a sleep regression (which can look a lot like wanting to drop the second nap) because if you transition too early, it’ll be Really Horrendous.
Oh, how I laughed. These people did not know my children, who were clearly not having a sleep regression (the fact that it’s really hard to pay attention to these things with twins didn’t cross my mind here, natch). They are obviously just way ahead of their time because they are geniuses, so One Nap it shall be!
Friends, this was the Wrong Decision.
I mean, on one hand, Smol J (ever the sleep addict) settled into one nap pretty smoothly after a few days (we just went cold turkey on timings as we have done for everything else, largely with great success I might add) so I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do after all… On the other hand, however, Smol T had no such luck. Their naps were rarely longer than an hour, which meant I struggled for ages with whether to get Smol J up as well (spoilers: I eventually realised that J is my secret weapon and will sleep happily in most situations, regardless of how short the wake window has been, so I eventually just let them do their own thing), and we fell very quickly - and deeply - into a Really Bad Routine. Overnight sleep was poor quality, hence early wake ups, hence overtired by when naptime was supposed to start, hence short naps, hence overtired for bedtime, hence overnight sleep was poor quality, hence…and rinse and repeat. Essentially, all the wake windows were always too long and Smol T was permanently overtired. Sometimes it would feel like we were cracking it (like this glorious day), but then we’d have a day or two of respite before we were back to the bad stuff.
Horrendous.
This was (*checks diary*) four months ago.
Four months of an unsettled, never-quite-in-the-groove sleep (or lack of) routine.
Four months of a very emotional Smol T, who just needed more sleep but couldn’t work out how to get it.
Four months during which we have also had The First Big Cold (followed by a month of post-viral cough, which seamlessly morphed into COVID), a few new teeth and learning to walk. All things which generally require More Sleep.
It’s been…testing.
A couple of weeks ago, however, something just clicked, and Smol T was suddenly OK with being resettled if they woke after an hour, often going on to have another 90 minutes or more. Might this finally be it, I dreamt to myself?
And then right on cue, one day last week, the Smols had their fourth settling in session at nursery, which was going to involve a nap. I was, clearly, petrified. Was this going to undo all Smol T’s recent success? Were either of them EVER GOING TO SLEEP AGAIN?
Turns out, it might have been the final push they needed. They slept appallingly at nursery because they aren’t at all used to noise when they sleep (can we talk about this obsession with black out curtains and white noise machines and a complete lack of distraction and how this prepares children In No Way for the realities of a childcare setting?!) but then, they slept for AGES that night and from that point on, we have been enjoying late morning wake ups (the difference between 5.30am and 7am is really quite something) followed by long lunchtime naps (Smol T has even stopped needing a mid-nap settling intervention!) and, friends, I think this might be heaven.
Apropos of nothing at all, by the way, a brief side note: when Smol T started working out the long nap, they were around 16 months old. Which the internet will tell you is the average age for a toddler moving to one nap. Total coincidence. Nothing to see here.
Now, some of you may be wondering why I didn’t just cut my losses and switch back to two naps. It’s an entirely fair question, but aside from my own personal issues regarding sunk cost fallacies, I’m not sure I’d have done anything differently, even if I knew it was going to take this long. Because Smol J really seemed to be enjoying the opportunity for a good long snooze - and, as routine changes have largely been a case of making Smol J wait until Smol T was ready, it felt nice to prioritise J for once :) However, what I have realised is that the decision to move to one nap as early as we did certainly goes a long way to explaining why sleep has been so much of a battle over this last period. And why we have all been so heckin’ tired.
So, there you have it, a cautionary tale indeed. Remember that anti-drugs drive in schools in the 90s that was all “JUST SAY NO!”? That. But for doing the 2-to-1 nap transition early.
Lxx