Hi there,
I'm frustrated! Perhaps I can just put this down to the 18mo SR, which was certainly bad with DS and went on for ever
but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing? She goes to the CM on Mon/Wed/Thu and apparently settles for her nap within 5mins every time, the CM will put her down somewhere between 12:15 and 12:30 and she falls asleep quickly and doesn't wake up until the CM wakes her, either at 3 or 2:50, depending on how many other children she's looking after that day, I guess, to get into the car and collect DS from school. On days where she hasn't had to wake her, she's slept for up to 3h and had a wonderful night afterwards
This should happen regularly now on Wed, since DS has an after school club that day so later collection.
However, on the other four days of the week, she's at home, I put her down in the same window (only very recently dropped morning CN, so still trying to find 'optimum' time) and she messes around consistently for up to an hour, sometimes more
just chatting/singing, then when she finally falls asleep, she just does an OT 1.5h, waking up very upset but unable to re-settle, not that she would get the chance to go back to sleep anyway on a school day. She then has a bad OT night, although I can't tell you exactly what's happened the last few days as I've resorted to sleeping in the living room (she sleeps in our room), since DH hardly wakes to go to her and falls straight to sleep again afterwards. She has a cold too so some of the poor sleep could be attributed to that, but doesn't explain the huge discrepancy between naps at home and with the CM.
A bit of background - she's always been on the HSN end, needing shorter than average A times and has always been sensitive to OT so we've had some nasty OT cycles in the past. For naps and nights, she has her white bunny to cuddle and white noise, which we bring to the CM to use. At home the room is pitch black, I know the CM has black out blinds but not sure how dark the room is where she sleeps, but she does sleep in her own room there. Lunch is at a similar time both at home and at the CM's, more variable with the CM, she usually has time to poo and be changed before her nap, sometimes this doesn't happen and then I wonder whether she's been uncomfortable, but generally that's not the case. I think she sleeps in a travel cot at the childminders, whereas it's a permanent cot here, but I wouldn't have thought that would be a problem since she's been able to settle there quickly in the past. I've tended to find that she settles worse when we've been around lots of other people, she just seems to get really energised in social settings and have a harder time turning off. But that hardly explains why she struggles to settle when it's just me and her at home, and it's no better when DS and DH are home too.
As I said she's only just dropped her morning nap, she got really tired when we were travelling over
Christmas so we kept it on a few days over that period, but have pretty much dropped it from the New
Year, and now her routine is roughly:
7am Up
12:15/12:30 Nap (2.5-3h at CM; takes ages to get off at home and does 1.5h)
3pm-ish Up for school run weekdays, may try to resettle for longer at weekend; may sleep until 3:30 on Wed at CM
6:30/7pm BT (usually more like 7pm on CM days; 6:30 on bad nap days as she can pull a 12.5h night; 6pm for 'emergency BT' as we call it - on days where we know that even 6:30 will result in lots of OT NWs and EW)
Nights: fairly good on CM days; on bad nap days she'll wake a few times in the early evening, often have a worse nw around 10/11pm and another a few hours later, often wakes early between 5-6:30 but always get her up at 7am.
When I'm working DH collects her from CM and I'm not able to get home to do her BT (inc bf) until around 6:20 so can get her down by 6:40 at the earliest. I usually work late on Thu so DH does BT, the earliest he can manage is around 6:20.
She seems to do best when she gets 15h TS at the moment; before dropping the nap when she was on a stable routine she'd do 14.5-15h, I'm expecting her to lean more towards 14-14.5h once she's sleeping more consistently, used to one nap and caught up on OT...whenever that may be
Phew she seems to have finally settled now after 45mins craziness
no crying, just playing
Sorry I'm rambling, any ideas on how to get her to settle at home as well as she does at the CM, would be wonderful