Things I do Differently as a Second-Time Mom

The other week I turned to Joe and said, “I think we need to move his (our toddler’s) nap schedule to just 1 nap”. He’s now 16 months and had been rejecting his second nap every so often and, quite honestly, I’m not a fan of the 2 nap schedule - it makes me feel somewhat “landlocked” during the weekend and never allows me ample time to dive into my non-kid related to-do list during their naps. He asked if I remembered when we did this with our older son and it led me down memory lane of how different my behavior was as a first-time mom. I remember being so obsessed and tightly wound over certain things the first year and a half of my entry into motherhood and sleep was definitely one of the top triggers for me. My body truly couldn’t tell the difference between being chased by a bear and our son being 5 minutes behind his nap schedule. Not only was I obsessed over the nap schedule, but I was constantly worried about the next steps or what was coming next and never actually felt present with where we were. I was gradually shifting his naps every few weeks so that the transition to one nap would be as seamless as possible because I was terrified of any other potential outcome.

With our second, though? Well he had been on the same general nap start time for the first nap of his day for a longggg time. There were no gradual shifts happening. Joe and I agreed that we’d try to push it a bit later for while we were in Florida for the long weekend and then just attempt the 1-nap life when we got home. The conversation in and of itself was eye-opening to me because it all just seemed so… simple? There wasn’t a follow up of hours online googling things or back and forth on the “best” way to do things or anxiety over “what if this all goes to shit.” We just simply said, “okay, let’s just do that” and moved on with our lives. Something the first-time mom version of me could’ve never done. And you know what happened? It worked. He followed our lead and, for the past week, has been living the best 1-nap life. Because kids are more resilient than we give them credit for and, quite honestly, many of the things we turn into huge sagas are really not as big of a deal as we’re making them out to be. Anxiety has a wild way of convincing us that our brain is telling us the truth instead of realizing it blows a lot of things out of proportion.