Yes, another toddler not sleeping enough

[lilyandmollysmom]

My daughter who will be three next month is a horrible sleeper. She takes an hour to go to bed, will usually get up once or twice and then is in our room at 5:30.
First of all, I feel bad that every night I have to yell at her to get back in bed. I try to be patient but after the 10th time, i'm yelling. I hate doing that. Plus I feel really bad for her because she only gets 10 hours TOTAL (including nap) of sleep a day. That just doesn't seem enough.
I just don't know what to do. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Her schedule:
5:30 am wakeup
Sometime between 12:30 and 1:30 nap for 1 1/2 to 2 hours
8:00 pm in bed (takes about an hour to get her to sleep)
Thanks.

[stheo]

sounds like she is WAy OT... 10 hours of sleep prob isnt enough for her... I would try to move her nap up since 7 hours of A time is probably a lot for a 3 year old.... will she go to sleep any earlier.. does she go to sleep by herself or is someone in there with her?

[lilyandmollysmom]

What I do for naptimes is have her go down as soon as her younger sister goes down. No-one is in the room with her. She goes does wonderful for her nap. No problems. Not sure why bedtime is such an issue. Last night was rough.
Put down for bed at 8, asleep finally at 9, woke up at 2, again at 4:30 (her sister woke her up this time), again at 5:30 (I got her back to sleep...a miracle!) then up for good at 6:30.

[knackered]

I agree with pp - it sounds like she's OT. Could you put her down for her nap earlier? If she's waking at 5.30 - could you have her asleep by 11.30 say? Would she go down this early. Then give her a 2 hour nap and have in bed asleep for 7.30 latest. I know this is early but it sounds like she needs to catch up on some sleep. Once she's settling better you can slowly move bed time later if you want.

What do you think?
Anna x

[lilyandmollysmom]

That definitely makes sense. I am going to try it tomorrow. Thanks.

[lilyandmollysmom]

Last night was rough. Put to bed at 7:30, up until 8:40, woke up at 2 am, again at 4 and then up for good at 5:15. I am going to do the 11:30 nap today. I'll continue to update this and let people know of my success/failure with this.

[lilyandmollysmom]

So we put Molly down at 11:30 for a nap but she didn't go to sleep until noon. She slept 1 1/2 hours. The good news is that last night, it only took her 30 minutes to go to bed. But she still got up at midnight, 3 am (her sister woke her up by screaming in the other room) and then up for good at 5:45 am.
How long do you think it will take before her sleep evens itself out?

[lilyandmollysmom]

Update:
Up at 5:45 am, down for nap at 11:45, slept 1 hour, down for bed at 7:30 (only 30 min to go to sleep), woke up at midnight and then up for good at 5:30.
What's with this midnight thing? Anyways, so far it hasn't been working but i'll give it a couple more days. After that, i'm going to see if she's ready to get rid of her nap. Yikes!

[lilyandmollysmom]

Thanks so much for your suggestions Stacy. Unfortunately, there's no way I can put Molly down at 6:30. My husband comes home at that time and there's way too much noise with the dogs barking.
Last night she slept through until 4:30 but was quite awake at that time. I got her back to sleep for another hour until 6:00. I'll keep working on it.