8 mon weird routine and sleep issues!

[eeleahc]

DD2 is sleep trained with assistance from good ol' paci she is also EBF and takes 3 meals a day (oatmeal with veggie/fruit mix for dinner)

Current EASY:

8am WU, BF, meal 1 hour later
not tired until 11:30-11:45.. I have to wake her up typically at 1pm or she will sleep too far past 1pm... which pushes her next nap waaay too late!
1pm BF, meal 1 hour later
not tired until 5:15pm! I have to wake her again by 6pm in order to keep bedtime before 9:30pm! BF at 6pm.
Supper is at 7:30 and then i feed her one side (light feed) before bed at 9pm. She doesn't actually fall asleep tho til closer to 9:30. She rolls around.

She seems to like almost 4 hour A times now and it's making it hard to keep bedtime a decent time. I also have her habitually waking for the dreamfeed at 11:30. Past 5 nights she is also waking 1:30 and 6:00! I feed her both times, and then she sleeps till 8am in which I have to wake her or she will keep sleeping. I'm so exhausted to do PUPD at her night feedings because i can feed her in 5 min and she's back to sleep. So I just cave cuz I'm so tired!

But I'm noticing her daytime sleep is getting less and less bc I have to keep caping her naps in order to not have her in bed at 10pm!

I read I could cap her first nap to 45 min, and then get her second nap earlier in the day. Although, she can easily stay up 4.5 A time in the morning. Could she be ready for a 1 nap?

Thoughts?

[jessmum46]

She's be very young for one nap but she could certainly be lower sleep needs and therefore in need of a little adjustment in her routine.  Is she pretty happy all day, doesn't seem tired in her awake times?

You can slowly increase towards 4-4.5h A time without jumping to one nap.  To illustrate I think by 9/10 months my lower sleep needs DD was on

WU
4h A
1h15-1h30 nap
4-4.5h A
30-45 mins nap (woke her)
2-2.5h A

Your LO isn't far off that now, so you have the option of capping her short nap even shorter to 30/20/15/10 mins (as long as she isn't refusing) or alternatively as you say switching things round to only allow here a short nap in the morning (30/45 mins) and bringing her second nap earlier.  It didn't work very well for my LSN DD as she wouldn't go down for a morning nap before she was properly tired - ideally you do a short A time, short nap, short A time, long nap, long A time on that kind of routine e.g.

WU 8
Nap 11-11.30 (30 mins)
Nap 1.30/2 for 1.5-2h
BT 8.30/9

What do you think you'd like to try?

[eeleahc]

Thanks so much for your input! Ya she seems pretty happy all day, so perhaps she is low sleep needs. I think I'll cap her first nap to 12:40 (so may be 1 hr or so) and then put her to bed for another 30-45 min nap in the afternoon. SHe's pretty easy going, so even if i stretch her A time she can def go 4.5 hours for sure. but I try to keep it around the 3.5/4 hour mark. After even a 30 min nap, she can still stay awake for 3 hours easily! So it makes it hard to plan sometimes bc she is so easy going... but I'm not complaining haha... my first daughter was way harder to make flexible!

[jessmum46]

That's great she's so adaptable   Just as a note of caution - many people find it better to cap one, not both naps to prevent too much OT setting in.  You may be best to allow her the 1.5h in the morning, and cut the second nap shorter.  So as morning nap gets pushed later, second nap also goes a bit later but you cut it shorter and shorter to prevent BT getting too late.  So perhaps she can do 3h after a 45 mins nap, 2.5h after 30 mins, 2h after 20 mins etc etc. 

[eeleahc]

ok thanks for the heads up! Today we had a play group so she ended up only sleeping 30 min in my carrier on the way home and woke up at 12:25. She wasn't even showing signs of tiredness at 3:45 but I winded her down and she was sleeping 3:55. I'm going to let her sleep no later than 5:30 to make up for earlier nap. I also remember there being info that the first nap of the day is the most restorative.

a 20 min nap is considered ok if i needed to cap it at that in the info? That would mean her total daytime sleep would be around 2 hours. She typically sleeps 10.5-11 hours a night.

[jessmum46]

I found a 20 min nap to help us around transition times where a full nap was too much but no nap wasn't enough x

[eeleahc]

I'm trying to get her off the dream feed (11:20pm), but she's so used to it, that when I skip it, she wakes up at 1 am and then again at 5 am! whereas if i dream feed her, she is only up once a night (5 or 6 am and i feed and she's back to sleep till

this past few days, I'm woken her up by 1pm, and then took longer to wind her down and try to get her to sleep by 5:10, and wake her up by 5:50 or 5:55, she's generally sleeping by 9:15.

[jessmum46]

Perhaps post on the feeding boards for help with the dreamfeed?  Sorry I'm not much use with it - never did it with mine!

How's the new routine suiting her?

[eeleahc]

Current update! She's almost 10 mon now. Still really struggling with the 2nd nap. Today's:

8 am wake up
12-1:30 nap (got her to bed a little later than usual, but lately she's not tired till 11:45. Usually I wake her up by 1:00 in order for her to be tired for 5:30. But today i thought i would let her sleep. I still had to wake her at 1:30!)
Started wind down at 5:20 and she didn't fall asleep until 6pm (kicking and screaming). I woke her at 6:25.
Hoping I can get her down for her 9:30 bedtime but I have a feeling she won't be tired until at least 9:45 or later.

I have to wake her up for both naps so I run into trouble. I guess I could wake her by 7:30 and then cap her last nap to 15 min? I would still have to wake her for 1:00pm. Although sleeping in until 8 is great... especially since she's not sleeping through the night yet.

Thoughts?

[jessmum46]

She sounds like my DD at a similar age....we hit the 2-1 full-on not long after!  Some ideas - can you AP the afternoon nap, maybe a car ride or stroller nap?  Literally it only needs to be a short catnap now to get through to bedtime.  Have you actually tried earlier in the day, say around 4.30 ish?  Didn't work for us but for others LO will actually go down a bit easier at that time rather than waiting a full A time, which puts the nap (imo) at too late an hour of the day for them to want it.  The alternative is switching to a short am, long pm routine - have you considered that?

[eeleahc]

Thanks for the reply!

I have tried shorter in the morning and longer in the evening. What happened was that she still wanted 4.5 hours A time, so I still had to wake her up at the 1hr mark for 2nd nap (6:00). THEN she was so rested, that bedtime was still super late.

I feel bad waking her from both naps (she's sound asleep for both when I go in). I was thinking maybe I should try to get her to sleep like 12:45-3 or 3:30? If I could get her to nap for 2.5-3 hours, then I could get her to sleep by 7:30 or 8. She usually sleeping in until 8 or sometimes I have to wake her up by 8:15. I feel like she's so young for one nap a day though!

tonite I got her to sleep from 5:45-6:15. She was rubbing eyes and yawning at 7:50.. but now she is happily playing and will do so until 9:40 when I CHOOSE to wind her down for bed. Otherwise she would keep playing happily til 10 probably!

further thoughts?

[jessmum46]

You could push towards one long nap, sure. And just throw in a catnap in the afternoons as and when the lunchtime one is short. If she is lower sleep needs generally she may manage ok, just don't be scared to go back to 2 sometimes if OT starts creeping in

[eeleahc]

so today i did as u said and tried putting her down at 4:30 and.... she fell asleep for 45 min!!! I also put her down at 11:30 today and she woke on her own at 1:00 perfectly! so maybe i was just misjudging her sleep signals?? she's such a content baby that she's so hard to read! thanks for your help once again! I hope this is my new norm!

[jessmum46]

ooh that would be nice if it works!!  Fingers crossed

[eeleahc]

Just an update.. I ended up putting her on one nap at 11.5 months. She was really struggling with that second nap. So far she is doing ok. Some days tho she only sleeps 1:15-2:30. I'm trying to get her to sleep 2 hours in the afternoon. But I think it was the right move! Just so much earlier to one nap than my first child!

[jessmum46]

Glad you found a solution hopefully the nap will lengthen out a bit as she settles into it properly x