how do you take naps if you have other little ones who just aren't sleepy?

[Beppie]

i am not getting the sleep i need at night w/ my 4 week old... but lately my 2- and 4-year olds are resisting their afternoon nap. i cannot do without my afternoon nap! any ideas how to go about this? what do you do when you feel exhausted but you have other little ones in the house who are not tired?

[Juliacat]

I usually cry.

[elisheva]

Naps? I'm with Juliacat. I cry and then I drive on because there ain't no one to do this job but me.

In warmer weather I would put everyone in the car and drive till they were asleep then I would park in the driveway and knit or read (but I'm sure a saner person would nap).

I'm impressed that your 4 y.o. still naps. My 3 y.o. doesn't nap (well, he would, but then wouldn't go to bed till 11).

Any possibility of getting a mother's helper to come play with the olders while you nap with the babe?

[karika]

you could try creating a completely safe space. like no way anything will fall over on them, no way they can get out, with their toys and a mattress on floor for you. close the door with all of you in room and catnap as best you can... having someone come to watch them would be ideal, as you sleep on couch near them playing maybe. I used the safe room when dd1 was small (she stopped napping at 2) because i worked nights sometimes and needed to sleep a bit. Sometimes 3 min here and 8 min there is better than nothing...

[ExuberantDaffodil]

I used to do the safe place thing when my son was younger and I had to catch a bit of sleep or lose major amounts of sanity. I would actually go to his room and shut the door and lay down with a pillow on the floor in front of the door. I could snooze for a half hour to hour, and he would just play around in his room. A few times I did wake up to baby wipes all over the floor and other such messes, but the extra sleep made it possible for me to function.

now that he is older (and absolutely will not nap) and the baby is here, I put us all in my room, put on a cartoon with the volume low, and the baby and I nap. I used to be pretty much anti-TV, but my sanity was at stake.

[greenthumb3]

My mother's helper's name is TV.

That and you could give this a try, it worked some days better than others for us.

Have an afternoon quiet time. Read a book or two with the kids, then set them up with a movie or on the computer on pbskids.com or whatnot and you lay down with the baby. I got really good at sleeping with "one ear open".(like if something happened, I could intervene, like, you know, if someone cried and it was obvious they needed Mom, otherwise, I napped) I figured whatever needed cleanig up after that nap was worth it, and I did have a bag of flour get knocked over, but, hey! Flour is cheap and gets cleaned up, and it is worth feeling saner after 30 minutes sleep.

Do what you need to do to get through this, it gets better!

[kcparker]

We are lucky enough to have a daycare that DS goes to when DH is teaching, and we have been sending him to that even though the semester is over. I decided that in the 'it takes a village to raise a child,' the daycare, where DS takes naps, is part of our village now...