Long night wakings...

[newmama12]

Little Miss J just turned 3 last month. She has been waking at night, multiple times, for the past 6 months.  I would always go to her, cover her back up, and she would go to sleep again. It was easy and there was no real crying involved. DH (and now her pedi) thinks I should be leaving her to cry and get back to sleep on her own. We've been doing that and it's going fine, but she's still waking.

However, my biggest concern is that around 2:00-2:30am, she is waking and staying awake for 1-2 hours!  Not good! She still wakes at her normal 6:45/7am time, but is super tired and begging for a nap by noon. And she'll nap 2-3 hours if I let her! I've been waking her after 2 hours to try and maintain a normal bedtime.

My question.....should I cut out her nap or shorten it to, maybe, 1.5 hours?! Like 1-2:30pm? Bedtime would be around 7:30-7:45 and wake (I'm hoping) around 7am? My goal would be to have her sleep more at night and less during the day. Since she's up at night, she's trying to make it up during the day now. Any other suggestions?

[momtonb&ab]

i think you might see that her long night wakings relate to letting her fend for herself in the night - if you go to her does she settle faster?  tracy suggested that letting lo's cry on their own broke their trust, therefore what you might be experiencing here is a bit of that.

could you try using a wi/wo with her to see if you can shorten the night wakings or completely eliminate them?  i think you will need to sort that out first because until then she will need to get the make up sleep in the day.

could you post a normal day's routine to give us an idea what is going on all across the board?  and how long have you been leaving her on her own when she wakes in the night?  is she crying that whole time?  i suspect she is needing you and the very best thing you could do for her is to go to her when she cries. 

[newmama12]

This is a pretty normal routine for us:

Wake: 6:45am
Nap: 1-3pm
Bed: 8pm
Asleep: 8:45 or so

This is what is happening during the night...
Around 11:00/11:30pm she wakes crying and talking. I think she is having a nightmare here. I go in, cover her back up, soothe her and she goes back to sleep, relatively quickly. She'll wake again around 2:30 and it's more fussing. Sometimes she'll cry for a few minutes, but it's not hysterical crying, at all. I've been leaving her fuss/whine and, eventually, she goes back to sleep. Sometimes quickly, other times it still takes a very long time and seems as if she's wide awake whether I go to her or not. I can here her talking or moving around, so I know she's awake. Sometimes, I worry, so I go in and check her (even if she isn't crying) in hopes that she'll go back to sleep sooner. Then sometimes she'll wake around 4:30/5 and do the same thing. Just whine a bit and go back to sleep. She doesn't really stay awake for a long time at this hour. Just around the 2am hour (and it's not every night, but definitely a few times a week). Weird.

So, all in all, she's not hysterically crying like she needs comforting. Well, maybe just after the first waking b/c I truly think she's having a nightmare there b/c of the way she's crying. After that, it's more like habit waking.

 

[babybarr]

You may need to cut her nap back a bit too - have you tried that previously?

[Mom to M&M]

I'd definitely cut the nap to 1.5 hours tops and see what that does...