Is it really like this having a child?

[Handsomesquidward]

A friend of mine has a toddler now and since he's been born, she won't even leave the local village without months of planning in advance because the entire day revolves around his nap at the exact time.
Zero spontaneity anymore, they have decided not to go abroad for the next few years either.
Everything planned very meticulously, they will only have a night out once every 5 months or something as they will only trust their parents to babysit.

I don't have children and this method obviously works for her, it just feels so restrictive. I cannot imagine living life that way, surely this isn't how it has to be?

Yes to the naps: a poor nap not only means no sleep that night but can mean no sleep for the foreseeable future (we went on holiday and winged in once and she went from sleeping through the night to not sleeping longer than an hour). Glad we've outgrown that now.

No to the holidays, you can work around that. We've always booked really nice hotel rooms so that we can make nap times good for us too to just chill in a lovely room. We even went on a 2 week holiday without our toddler when she was 2.

We otherwise experience the opposite. The only thing worse than being out and about with a toddler is being home with a toddler so we're out of the house every opportunity we have. Extreme spontaneousness, I'd say, because the kid goes nuts if she has to stay still too long

@spiderplantmum Every toddler has a nap but do you leave somewhere early to give dc a nap at home or will they sleep in a pushchair? Would you not see a friend due to a sleep regime you adhere to 100%? Most people in the real world build in some flexibility.

For us, we all went out for the day and accepted a nap might be in the car seat at the wrong time. Didn’t lead to a sleepless night, just a late bedtime!

@TizerorFizz I'm afraid so! She gave up napping at 2 thankfully because we simply would say no to things which crossed her nap time and yes, we would leave things if it was getting close to nap time. It was sad because people stop inviting you out once they know that you have to be home between 8am and 10am and 1pm and 3pm. When she was a bridesmaid last year we brought a travel cot to the venue and had her nap in the hotel room throughout the day while one of us sat with her. I think everyone is different with these things, I get that but ours was very sensitive to bad napping conditions and would happily stay up half the night if a bad nap had happened. As working parents, this was not an option for us! It was super annoying at the time but I'm glad we did it now because she's such a great sleeper and I do think it's because we "protected" her sleep times (that's what we used to say when people were like "oh can't she just nap in the pram/car/ on your lap?", we said that we "protected" her napping conditions for all of our sakes!).

Ah, that's another thing. We can count on one hand the number of times our dd has slept in the car, I can think of 4 times in 2.5 years. She was a car screamer from birth and while that's mellowed a bit now (only 25% of the time does she scream about being in the car) she RARELY slept in the car. We once went on a 12 hour car ride on holiday when she was just over 1 (also took a ferry half way) and she didn't sleep a single wink the entire time. It was hell and she basically spent the whole first night of our holiday waking every 1.5 hours. Luckily because we got the naps back on track the next day she slept through the night the rest of the time.

BUT we're thinking about a second and are VERY aware that this was probably a first child privilege and the second will just have to learn to nap wherever because life can't stop every few hours for the older child because the younger needs to nap quietly at home. I suppose some people get this with the first and just carry on with life but we didn't manage!

Everyone has a different experience. I didn’t force mine into a routine but I did follow the one she set, but she rarely napped at home. I was out and about a lot so she slept on me or in the car. I didn’t let her routine stop what we were doing. We didn’t have a holiday the year she was born.