Hi - I hope I am doing this right by hitting "reply" instead of doing a new post. Also, I am not sure which area to post in, but I think our challenges right now mostly boil down to the nap transition!
So, my daughter is 14.5 months and even before 1 year she was showing some signs of the 2 to 1 nap transition but it was inconsistent and everything I read seemed to say hold off as long as you can, but now in the last couple weeks, it has gotten ridiculous! I have been all over the map trying different timing and such. We may hit the target one day but mostly we seem to be missing it!
Here is her schedule:
~7 a.m. WU
7:30 Breastfeed
8:30 Solid Breakfast
10:30 Snack (sometimes just solids, sometimes breastfeed too)
11/11:30/Noon Nap (if it gets too late, I try to get lunch ready before her nap instead of the snack, but then it is usually at 11 a.m. or so)
Wake up is all over the place, usually anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours but lately it has been closer to the lower end of things
12:30 pm (Or when she wakes up) Breastfeed
2 p.m. Lunch (if not done earlier) or Snack
3:30/4:00/4:30 Try to do another nap but lately she has only taken it once
5:30 Breastfeed
6:15 dinner
7 p.m. bedtime
Then she has been waking up through the night to BF again! There had been a few weeks where there were no wake ups after dropping the DF really late in the game, probably around 10 months. Then they started back up again. I realized I had to make some changes because she was nursing to sleep at bedtime, I believed partly because I had been getting her to bed at 8 p,.m. but really it was a habit long before that started. I had to fix all that, which I did, and we had one night with no wake ups, and then they started again!
Of course in the night, I always think she must be hungry so I go pretty quickly to the breast and over the last couple weeks there was at least one wake up, but usually more like two and sometimes even three. The first wake up started to get consistent at around midnight and so the other night when I realized it must just be habit I broke that pattern and she didn't wake up again that night so i figured it really was just habit. Then last night she woke but resettled at midnight, but then woke again at 2 and again at 5:45
Tonight I am pretty sure she has some teeth coming through and I am hoping she can rest more but I am doubtful that will be the case especially since she just woke up at 8 pm after going to sleep at 7 pm. I gave her some medicine and she went right back to sleep though.
I was doing bedtime at 7:30 p.m. before so 7 is on the earlier end, but I have a really hard time getting everything done to get her to bed any sooner! Thus, I am pretty sure we are on an OT roller coaster ride right now. There were a few times when she took a 2 hour nap at around 11:30 a.m. but it has been a while. We were getting about 1 hour 15 minutes or up to 1.5 hours pretty consistently for a while but lately it has only been 45 minutes. The one time I tried to wake her up early in hopes that she would take a second nap, it didn't work at all so she just seemed even more tired. I am reluctant to try that especially since now she is only sleeping for 45 minutes during the day, but if someone has some ideas of what would work best, I would be willing to give it a go. Thank you!