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No offense and no judgment as it is a personal decision, but 4mo olds are practically newborn human blobs who are experiencing all kinds of senses for the very first time and trying to comprehend that environment. The entirety of their existence has been coddling with their mom and to be left for 9-10 hrs in an environment that is safe etc but is not the emotional and physical security of their mom is a paradigm shift in their life. I’m not surprised they are freaking out and the carers are untooled to substitute maternal bonding.
In terms of solutions given your current circumstances, essentially wait it out and do your best to create an artificial sleeping environment (e.g. lighting, room temp, ambient noise). 4mo is too young to teach them a coping/adaptation technique or routine (like a nap following a bottle feed or whatever) like you would an older child so you need to trick them into thinking it’s time to nap by altering their environment. Alternatively (and ideally), Is there any flexibility in the mom’s employment pattern to allow more of a transition? Or a work from home model for some days?
Judgy and sexist. Why not flex Dad’s “employment pattern?” I’m a dad and took 2+ months off with each of my kids when mom when back to work. Took them about a week to adjust to me.
we had a similar issue. to the best extent you can mimic the napping environment you provide at home. because there are other kids and noise I would recommend leaving lights on and regular noise etc at home too to get used to it. we were able to make it work after a few weeks of that.
OP - don’t sweat it. Kids can’t really lock on a schedule at that age. With our first, we lost sleep over all of the hard transitions. With 3 now, we’ve mostly learned than it just takes them time and there will always be lots of variability. My oldest started daycare and 4 months; the others closer to 6 months. All is well. Keep the dialogue going, learn tricks from daycare, and teach them yours. We figured this stuff out with sabercats at the mouth of the cave. The wrong setting on the noise machine won’t interrupt your kid’s development
Babies are physiologically tuned with their moms. They know the cadence of a maternal heartbeat from spending 9mo living next to one. It is familiar. Moms hormones changes in response to babies needs, and optimize the make-up of breast milk to provide the right antibodies etc for babies - dads do not.
At such young ages we are not effective substitutes (yeah, I’m a dad too). We can be great in being there to help mom, but it’s with older babies who are not just reacting to external stimuli but can engage with their environment where dads can be much more additive.
Yes, moms are special. No, we can’t use that as a cop out. I have good friends who “don’t know how” to put the baby down, swaddle, give a bottle, give a bath. Whether the kid is 4 months or 2 years, it’s appalling. Figure that shit it out like it’s your job.
Mom being > Dad != Dad’s being bad substitutes
Frankly a patient, alert Dad is a much better option for the kid coming in relief of a totally drained mom.
-> more sleep at Home? :)