New Mothers, if you never read anything ever again...

...must read this!

Naps will be your ticket to sanity. Nap start and end times are extremely important. Baby MUST nap!

Around 2 months of age, I started noticing that Olive would get cranky 90 minutes after she woke up from her naps. 3 weeks after religiously following the clock and putting her down every 90 minutes, a friend gave me a book about the N.A.P.S. program, which proved my time theory right. Bottom line in the book: note the time your baby wakes from a nap and 90 minutes later, put them down for another nap. Because of the sleeping patterns, this works. Want to know what happens when your baby doesn't go down for a nap...disaster for mommy. The baby is more cranky and it is much harder to get the baby to go to sleep if you pass that 90 minutes. What happens is that the baby will enter a new cycle of alertness.

Before I learned to read her cues and pay attention to the clock, that monster of mine would cry even though she was fed, clean and held. If those three things are checked off as done and the baby is crying like crazying...chances are that they're just tired. The baby may not act like they're tired because they may cry even more when you put them down, but give it a couple of minutes. You'll find a crazy, crying baby will be a quite, sleeping one soon enough. The key!...is to start rocking and putting the baby to sleep 10-15 minutes before the nap time. That way, you're not doing play time to nap time in 60 seconds. They need time to wind down and get ready for sleep...just like us. This same logic applies to when you're ready to put baby down to sleep for the night.

Putting a baby to sleep either for naps or bedtime can be pretty rough. Most important thing to do is be consistent, stick with it and remember that it may not be comfortable with whatever method you choose to put your little one down. It WILL pay off in the end. Good luck