why does my 17 month old still yell out at 40 minutes???

[allyson]

My 17 month old has been on one nap for about a month and a 1/2 now and for some reason she still wakes at 40 minutes and sometimes 40 minutes after that. she goes back to sleep but I thought by now she would have grown out of this. I want her one nap of the day to be non fragmented and I do not want to do W2S because she is falling back to sleep and I do not want to interfear with this. and I need the break as well.

all of my friends babies do not do this at all. wondering why my dd does.

also if they get up early in the morning say 6:15am do I keep nap time at 1pm? She usually sleeps until 7am and naps at 1 but what do I do those days she is up early? I don't want to move nap time too much, I want her to get used to that time for her nap. 

thanks for any help

[Florencia]

It looks to me that she's waking after each sleep cycle. If she's handling it well (that is going easily back to sleep) it's likely she'll grow out of it. Although each lo takes their own time so she might do this for a couple of more weeks or maybe a month, who knows? If it doesn't escalate to waking early from the nap or too much intervention on your side, leave her be.

Another reason of waking at the end of sleep cycles might be overtiredness, which leads me to your second question. As much as you want to preserve a nap time, your dd is still young and her daily routine should be lead more by her cues rather than a rigid schedule. That is, if she woke as early as 615 am she's probably to feel (and start showing sings of it) tired around noon. If so, she shouldn't be in bed later than 1215/1230 tops. The majority of young toddlers don't do well on activity periods longer than 6 hours (of course, there's always one or many exceptions) and if you push them too far, overtiredness gets in the mix causing night wakings,s hort naps or interrupted sleep cycles.

HTH!

[allyson]

good message and I appreciate that. That was very much unusual for her to wake early like that. She usually takes 2 hour naps and is happy as a clam. today though her nap was very short 50 minutes!!! which I assume is her being overtired. We put her down at 6:45pm tonight so hopefully she will catch up. I figured she would grow out of it in time. You make me feel better by saying that.

If she has been sleeping great lately and all of the sudden is now overtired why would this happen. we have had no changes at all. I believe she is teething can this effect it? I try so hard to keep her from being overtired.


Now if I put her down at 12:30 instead of 1pm and she wakes early do I move bedtime up?? thanks for your help

[Layla]

Hi, my daughter does something very similar. She'll wake at the 40min or so mark and then move to another part of the cot and fall asleep again. I was worried about her sleep being fragmented as well but she seems to handle it pretty well. She also went through a stage (not too long ago) of waking after an 1hr and not going back to sleep. She did this for about 3 days but then it fixed itself up  . If she takes a short nap or you put her down earlier for the nap and she wakes early, then maybe try moving the bedtime by about 20mins or so

Layla

[allyson]

she woke up a lot last night but that is not common for her at all. I think she is teething or getting a cold so that is why she could not settle for her nap yesterday and was up last night. she was uncomfortable. Once we gave her Tylenol she was better. so there was a reason.

thanks for your relpy

[Florencia]

Of course there's a connection betweeen teething and disrupted sleep. Try and offer the meds 30 mins before bed and nap time and this might help her sleep through. HTH and good luck!