To wake or not to wake...

[Jocasta]

This may not be the right place for this so feel free to move it!

Sophie has been a fantastic independent sleeper since birth - plonk her down wide awake and she'd drift off peacefully.  She's been able to get up the stairs since about eight months and a few times she took herself to her bedroom (with me at hand - don't worry, I'm not letting my baby wander up the stairs alone lol!), so I put her in her cot and off she went.

Just before turning nine months, she started teething. She cut her first tooth on her nine month birthday but the teething shot the independent sleep to hell!  She was alright as long as she'd had paracetamol (gels and granules do nothing for her, but I hate giving medication too often).  Well, the teething is no longer an issue but in the last fortnight her sleep has gone from bad to horrendous.  Her naps are fine but the nightwakings are worse than when she was a newborn!!!

I've tried tweaking her daytime sleep etc but nothing is working - tomorrow I intend to start pu/pd to see if this helps - apparently this is a REALLY comon problem with this age group!  Lots of people have advised restricting her day time sleep to preserve her night time sleep.  This goes against every fibre of my being lol!  My MIL has a saying "sleep induces sleep" and I so agree!  Despite this, I have tried it and reducing her day time sleep just makes the whole night time situation sooooo much worse!

This has turned out to be an extremely long winded way of asking my question - Do you think that you should restrict a baby's sleep to preserve later naps/night sleep?  I'm not after any advice, just really curious to see what the general belief is!

[Bryony]

Jo - that's an interesting poll!

How much daytime sleep is she getting?  I agree with your MIL to some extent - but I suspect there's only so many hours in a 24 hr period that she's going to sleep... so you may want to wake her if she's getting a LOT of daytime sleep otherwise.  My problem however is the opposite - we're still having 45 min naps.....!

Bryony x

[Jocasta]

It's not particularly consistent.  I think she averages at about three hours.  Some days it's as little as one (pretty rare) and other days she'll sleep as much as five hours!!!    Surprisingly enough, when she's had two really long naps, our nighttime sleep tends to be a little better lol! 

[Peek-a-boo]

I'm the other way around--I routinely wake LO in the morning to preserve nap time as he'll shift all his sleep to the night time and then refuse to nap if I'm not careful.   

[Colin Macs Mom]

It's true that good day sleep equals good night sleep. The only problem with that is in situations like yours Jo    When things were REALLY bad with Colin I would often just let him sleep when he could and not wake him. That was my way of avoiding total OT and also keeping us sane. He always went right back to normal once the issue was resolved.

[Peek-a-boo]

I had to wake DS from his nap today too--I though of you Jo.  I haaaaate waking him, but it was 4:45 and he'd slept for two hours  and it was getting way too close to bed time. 

[Aly Mac]

I hate doing it too Jo.  But have done so today, and will again tomorrow!!  I'm cutting the am nap, so she goes down better for her pm nap.  Her nights are fine, but nap2 is taking an hour to settle then she sleeps for 1.5hrs.

I do it, when I have tried everything else and failed.  give it a go for a few days, and if it doesn't work, at least you'll know, and if it does great!! Just remember to give it a few days of doing it. It may not work first go.  My experience with NW, has always been OT, so an early bedtime is what I do for that one, but every bub is different.

I think we could have a support thread for this at the moment, as we have so many 10mnth olds having problems with either naps, no naps, nw, ew!!  Just think, they won't be 10mnths forever!!!!

[Layla]

I didn't have to wake Isabella much from her naps until she turned 12months.. which is when we had to cut the morning nap & then yes, I woke her from every single morning nap that went beyond 45mins & then later 30mins. With Jasmine I have been waking her up from her morning nap since she was 10months old. Some days I would let her sleep all she wanted & she didn't have too much trouble going to bed for the night but rather would wake up ridiculously early !!!

[Phillip]

our 8 month old sleeps very well.  he gets lots of day sleep.  my wife and i would never wake him - i don't know what we'd do if he stopped sleeping so well at night though...

[Jocasta]

Well that's quite amusing!  I guess everyone has a fairly strong opinion on it!

[**Clare**]

I dont like waking babies I have only just started to wake Harvey and he's almost 2 and a half!!  Up until 6 months ago he slept from 2 - 3 hours and 11- 12 hours straight at night.  But Ive never been a fan of waking babies!! I have a horrid memory of my IRL friend keeping her little boy up during the ay so he'd go to bed at 6 all because there was another baby on the scene! He was 22 months and his poor little face come 3 o'clock, it was awful, like a torture.  So desperate to sleep, he couldnt concentrate and learn, was too tired to even eat, it is not a nice memory! Not comparing this to the thread by the way! It just came into mind!!

So no, personally I would never wake a sleeping baby! Sleep went haywire when Harvey turned 2 and I have on occasion woke him to try to help with that!