I recently decided that my life would go more smoothly if my baby, Harbour, napped at consistent times each day. Not exactly a earth-shattering revelation, but quite a change for our family.

I noticed that Harbour seems tired around 10:30 each morning, so each day this week I’ve put her down between 10:15 and 10:30. I take her into the bedroom, shut the curtains, turn off the lamp, and nurse her to sleep. In about two minutes, she’s out like a light. Her nap is only about 45 minutes in total, but given that there are people ripping apart my basement this week, its unlikely  she’ll be able to sleep much longer than that. Unless you consider knocking down walls to be “white noise”.

Even with all the clatter, she’s gone to sleep easily each and every time. I’m really surprised, because I NEVER had that experience with my first daughter, River. For years I tried in vain to get River to nap, but she refused to sleep more than 50 minutes at a time and only napped 1) in a baby carrier while I walked around, or 2) in the car seat after an intense bout of screaming. She refused to accept a sleeping or eating schedule, and to this day I swear her biological clock is running on 26 hours a day, not 24.

I remember one friend with a child the same age complaining that her baby only slept two hours in the afternoon, not three hours like in the morning. I remember being stunned – five hours of napping?! FIVE?! Never in her life has River napped for a total five hours in one day – five hours is more likely to cover the whole week.

When River was about a year and a half, I discovered that naps during the day meant much less sleep at night. If she took a nap in the car, then she’d sleep up to three or four hours less that night. I decided that she needed to start skipping naps so that she’ sleep better in the evening and get more sleep overall. It wasn’t easy – she became quite grouchy around supper time, and some of my family strongly disagreed with my decision. It was a relief when she turned two and giving up naps became more acceptable.

Now River is just shy of four and naps are very rare. Lately I’ve been reading up on children with her temperament (emotional, sensitive, bright, intense) and apparently many children like her just need less sleep overall. Often they don’t nap well as infants and give up napping earlier. They also have a hard time falling asleep at night and don’t sleep as long as other children their age.

I would dearly love my daughter to sleep more, but I accepted long ago that its not going to happen. What I can do is make bedtimes as pleasant as possible and also create slow times during the day for relaxing. I also learned that what’s “normal” for most kids may not be what’s “normal”  for my daughter.

We often tell new moms that they shouldn’t compare their child to other children, but how often do we remind them not to compare themselves to other moms? I nearly pulled my hair out trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when River was a baby – now that I have Harbour, I can look back and see that it wasn’t me after all. It was her. And the best mothering move that I made is when I stopped comparing myself to other moms and began to trust my own instincts.