Contact nap
Also called contact naps, contact napping, contact sleep
A contact nap is a nap a baby takes on a grown-up: on a chest, in arms or in a carrier. Parents say it most about babies who wake the moment they're put down.
How it's said
I'm back at work full time, but still contact nap on weekends.
I look back so fondly on our contact naps.
My own son is a breastfed cosleeper and contact napper who falls asleep listening to music with his dad...
We still did it, we just didn't call it "contact napping". It was just called "letting the baby sleep on you".
I think contact naps are a relatively new thing, so I can understand your mum and MIL being surprised.
Who says it
Not to be confused with
- Nap trap is the parent's side of it: being stuck in place by a nap, often a contact nap. Contact nap names the baby's sleep.
- Co-sleeping is when a parent or carer sleeps with a baby on a bed, sofa or chair. A contact nap is about where the baby naps, on a person, and says nothing about the grown-up sleeping.
- Skin-to-skin means a baby held bare against a parent's bare skin, and maternity staff offer it straight after birth. A contact nap can happen through clothes, in arms or in a carrier.
Where it came from
Contact nap is a young phrase. Google's scan of English books shows only faint traces of it, starting in 2015. Wiktionary defines it as a baby sleeping while held against a caregiver's skin, but parents use it for any nap on a grown-up, on a chest, in arms or in a carrier.
The thing itself is old. Parents whose children are now teenagers say they never heard the term, and that they simply let the baby sleep on them.
The phrase bends easily. Parents say they contact nap, babies contact nap, and a baby who naps this way is a contact napper.