9 mos old fighting pm nap

[pawre]

My LO is one week shy of being 9 months.  She napped well and by the clock before.  She has been on two naps (am and pm) a day for months.  Lately she has been fighting the pm nap.  It took over an hour to finally get her to sleep this afternoon. 

Her nap times are:

8:30-9:30 am
12-12:30-2-2:30 pm (desired!)

Last two nights there's been night wakings.  At first I thought could it be hunger? since she didn't eat much solids?  But now I'm thinking is this some transition thing?  Do I need to take action and do some time tweaking?

I tried cutting down her am nap (although she fights this as well sometimes)  shorter.  But is 30 min nap worth it?  I mean it's not much of a nap, is it?   

Or could she be ready for one nap a day?  How do you know?  My DH comes from a family where everyone cut backed their naps early and hardly slept at all.

thanks for any help!

[pawre]

Sorry forgot to mention, she starts her day at 7am and goes to sleep at 7pm.  Not a problem there. 

I can't watch sleep cues either since for months now she won't show any.  Basically we were by the clock.  I put her down at the nap times and she would go straight to sleep on her own without a fuss. 

[magda1461]

for her age they say A time should be around 2.5 to 3 hours...could you be putting her down too early for her am nap? also ideally babies at this age should be napping at least 1.5-2hrs so only giving her a catnap in the morning isnt really that good as she'd be tired still after it.
one of the sleep mods will ask you to post your routine so we can all have a look.

its great she is sleeping all night from 7 to 7pm though!

so if she woke at 7am you wouldnt put her down till 9.30-10am... then again for pm nap you would attempt to put her down at 2.30-3pm.

[Layla]

Hi, I agree that her A times need to be a little longer. So at 9 months, you would aim at something like this:

7am - wake up
10am - nap (1-1.5hrs)
2pm - nap (1-1.5hrs)
7pm - bedtime

She is too young to go down to 1 nap and I wouldn't cut her morning nap to 30mins. If you notice though that she is still fighting the afternoon nap, even after you have extended her A times, then don't let her sleep any more than 1hr in the morning. I would add 10-15mins to her morning A time every 3 days or so, cause if you jusm straight away to 10am, she will get overtired and might fight the nap altogether. Start with aiming for 8:45, then 9, etc...

Good luck and let us know how it goes
Layla

[pawre]

OK, I have extended the morning A time to longer and her AM nap is a little later.  I figured out that she doesn't need more than an hour and I have been waking her up.  She will then sleep longer in the afternoon.

My issue is that she's been fighting both her AM and PM nap.  Eventually she goes to sleep on her own when I leave her in her cot and for a pretty good amount of time but she's just been kicking up such a fuss compared to before.

If she wakes in the night, would you say she's overtired or hungry?  Well I guess we will never know!  She didn't wake last night but did the night before - sometimes with or without a feed.

Any comments?