Dropping last nap and NW

[Mama2C]

My DD will be 3 in a month. She is dropping her last nap and is having trouble. While she is a textbook baby, she has always needed a lot of help regulating her sleep.

This was her schedule up until 2 weeks ago:

8:00 Wake up
12:00 Lunch
1-3:00 Nap
8:00 Lights out
She would fall asleep anywhere from half an hour to an hour after lights out.

For over a month she had been resisting nap and bedtime, it became harder and harder to put her down etc.
So two weeks ago we switched to this:

7:30 Wake up
12:00 Lunch
1-1:30: Rest with music
1:30-2: Books with music
7:30 Lights out, falls asleep with lullabies.
She falls asleep within half an hour.

Some days she would fall asleep at rest time at 1 and I would let her sleep for about 45 mins.

For the past 5 days she has not slept at rest time and has no indication of being tired until bedtime.

The past 2 nights though have been really hard. She resists the winddown so instead of taking 30 mins for that we take an hour to give her more time to transition to sleep. But when lights go out there is more resistance ("Mommy I need you to help me" or "Sleep is no fun".). I urge her to listen to music (soothes her). That's the easy part compared to middle of the night. She has been waking 3-4 times the past 3 nights! She wakes up crying, needs to pee, needs comforting etc. Can't put herself back to sleep. Even her soother (sigh!) isn't soothing her. She used to wake up once every 2-3 nights to go pee (my DH and I both have small bladders so we understand the need to pee at night!). Once is okay, but 3-4 times every night is too much.

I am 6 mos pregnant and this is now making me sick to my stomach with all the interrupted sleep.

Do I need to start to insist on naps or put her down to bed at 6? I used to have her schedule down pat but now with this transition I am at a total loss!!

I found that in the month transition from 1-0 naps that on days when she'd nap she would have awful night sleep (NW) and be awfully cranky the next day and on days when she didn't nap she'd have better sleep and be happier the next day. But now that isn't working!

Please help!!

Thanks!

[Peek-a-boo]

Have you considered shortening her night? 

For a while, we kept my DS napping by waking him in the morning after 10.5 hours of sleep (I've seen other mums have success waking after 11 hours of sleep).  This creates enough sleep drive that LO is tired enough to nap.  It may be a bit tricky to implement as it sounds like your DD is OT and not napping.   

One option (this might sound crazy) would be to try some AP in order to get your LO caught up a bit and to get her body back into the swing of taking a nap.  Will she fall asleep in the car?  You might plan a car nap for a day or two, followed by intentionally short nights and see if that gets her back in synch with having a nap. 

Another option, might be to try an earlier bed time. 

I was just going to post a link to the support thread for dropping naps, but I see you've posted there already! 

Hope you pick some helpful ideas! 

[skatty]

I think she needs an earlier bedtime! Since my dd gave up her nap she goes to bed at 5pm!! Any later and we get NWs or EWS or both and also much more restlessness at bedtime, at 5pm she is asleep within 5 mins, put her to bed at 5.30pm and she can take up to an hour, will wake in the night and get up early the next day  Maybe try a 6.30pm bedtime and see what happens?

HTH, Katt