11 month old nap issues

[ArielG]

My DD is 11 months and she's a little touchy with sleep but is a great napper if I catch her just in time.

For about a month, she was on a fantastic schedule and now we're all over the page and it seems to be an issue with nap #2.  When things were good, she'd nap 1.5 hours 2x per day...it looked like this:

7am Wake
10am Nap
11:30am Wake
2:30pm Nap
4:00pm Wake
7:30pm Sleep for the night

She stared needing a longer A in the morning so we pushed to 3.5 hours which always gives us at least 1.5 hours for nap #1 and sometimes more. She goes down really easily for her first nap. The problem is with nap #2. We started pushing it out to 3.5 hours but then things got screwy somehow and now she's waking earlier and also refusing nap #2 whether I try to put her down at 3.5 hours or before or after...I can't tell if she's UT or OT and I've tried to just put her down but she sometimes plays in her crib (making her 2nd A over 4 hours) until she falls asleep and then I have to wake her to preserve her bedtime because she just doesn't sleep in if she goes down later.

I'm confused! I'm hoping another set of eyes can see what I'm missing.

Also, I've tried capping the AM nap to make her more ready for the PM nap but she gets OT so easily and it's hard for me to read her after a short AM because she'll give tired cues during her whole 2nd A. Capping the PM seems to make her a little OT at night as well and I have to try extra hard to get her down...BF to sleep (which I also posted about) which has now become a habit!

[Layla]

Hi Ariel,

Sounds like the 2-1 nap transition. I've attached a few links which will explain it better and what your options are 10/ 11mo sleep gone wonky? Read this first! (2-1 switch) and From 2 to 1 nap transition (10-12m and older)

We went down the short am/long pm path and we had to cut the morning nap down to 45mins to start with and I would offer the pm nap about 3-3.5hrs later. Most of the time the pm nap was around 1.5-2hrs long and when they started resisting the pm nap again, I cut the morning nap again to 30mins and offered the pm nap around 2.5-3hrs later. It was a rough couple of months but when we found what worked for us, we kept it up until the girls were a little older and were able to handle the longer A time (around 4.5hrs).

Let me know if you have any questions 

[ArielG]

Layla,

I do have questions! 

How long did it take your LO to start to adjust? DDs NW has increased (never used to wake at night). She's lost out on an hour of daytime sleep since she's still not ready to go down in the afternoon without some major assistance.

I capped the am nap to 1 hour for 4 days and, when it didn't help her afternoon nap, I capped it to 45 minutes but she's still awake anywhere from 30-45 minutes when I put her down for her afternoon nap. It's confusing because she used to only be able to handle 3.75 hours after a good nap and now, with a capped nap, she's up closer to 4+! She gets pretty cranky after nap #2 so it seems like she's either not getting enough sleep or maybe just adjusting?? In any case, she's been taking forever to finally get to sleep at night, which usually means she's a bit OT.

On the plus side, she's been waking a little later in the morning, which I've been trying to get her to do for ages...I think we're on our way to breaking the habitual EW (I hope I don't jinx it...)

How's it going for you? Are you on 1 nap yet?

[Layla]

Glad to hear the EW's are fixed - might have had something to do with the morning nap being long but sorry to hear you're still struggling with the afternoon nap .

What is your A time after the capped morning nap? I wonder if whether she needs a shorter A time? Maybe you could try 3hrs after 45min morning nap to see if that will help? If after you've tried that and its not helping, you might have to push towards 1 nap and in that case you would let her sleep longer in the morning whilst pushing the morning nap until its closer to the middle of the day and offer short CN to tie her over to bedtime or do a very early bedtime if she's refusing the CN or the CN will be too close to bedtime.

I can't remember exactly how long it took to adjust and we did have some shocking days - where we had 2 very short naps, 5am EWs and 5pm bedtimes during the transition . Dd1 finally went down to 1 nap around 15/16 months and dd2 around 18 months. Dd3 is only 6mo so we're not there yet. We've just passed the 3-2 nap transition and things were going really really well except she took a very short pm nap yesterday and because she was ot by bedtime, she woke at 4:45 this morning and wouldn't go back to sleep after she was fed

There is also a support thread for the 2-1 nap transition Support Thread for 2-1 Nap Transition cont'd pt 6

[ArielG]

Hi again, Layla!

I hope your DD's EWs didn't persist! It's got to be hard with 2 other little ones to take care of!

So. We've been really busy here (I took on a work project). But since I last posted, I kept on with a short am nap and a longer pm nap. It went relatively well..more often than not I'd have to rock or nurse to sleep for nap 2, which I never had to do before. I kept a log and tried so many different things (shorter and longer 2nd As, etc) but was never able to make something work twice. Every day was totally different.

The last few days, she's done something new! She's started struggling with me as soon as we walked into her room for nap 2! So I would do things like read to her or snuggle with her or walk her around and then try again and she would still struggle. For the last 3 days I've BFed her to sleep because I was afraid she'd get OT with no pm nap on such a short AM nap.

And then, this morning, we did our normal routine and she fought the AM nap! Up until today, the AM nap has always been so easy. She goes down about 3.5 hours after she gets up and goes down without any props.

By the time she went down this morning, it was 11am (!) and I ended up BFing her to sleep. I have no idea what is going on. Her night sleep has been fantastic, even if the days have been not so great. She's been going down for 11+ hours solid without a peep so I hesitate to think she's OT though her day sleep has ranged from 1.5-2.5 hours total over the past week.

I'm going to post a general EAS and maybe you can help me figure this out..

6-6:30 Wake
7am BF
8:30 Breakfast
9:30/10am Nap
10:15/10:45 BF (snack)
11:30/12 Lunch
1:30/2:00 Nap (sometimes not until 3pm)
3:00 Snack
5:00 Dinner
6:30 BF
7:00 Bed

[Layla]

Hi Ariel,

Our EWs have also been resolved (touch wood)... we're on 2 solid naps for now and fingers crossed things seem to be going well

If she's resisting the pm nap on a 45 min am nap then i would cut the am nap to 30mins and try pm nap anywhere from 2.5-3hrs later (to start with try 2.75 ).

The girls did the same thing sometimes with regards to not taking a morning nap and that would be our 1 nap day. So in general, I used to offer a morning nap and if not asleep by say 10ish, I would pick up from cot and offer a snack or 1/2 lunch and the back in the cot at 11am for 1 nap. I would let her sleep and not wake her and do an early bedtime, depending on when that nap would end :-)

Good to hear the routine is working in general. Be careful with ditching the am nap altogether...like i said, some mornings we also had morning nap refusal but the next they'd go back to their old routine. I used to always continue offering the am nap and at least it would be their way of winding down if they didn't sleep and when we had morning nap continuously, we went to 1 nap (started around 11am) and then slowly pushed it to 11.30-12pm).

I hope that works out for you

[Layla]

How did you go yesterday with that nap and at night?

[ArielG]

Hi Layla,

So that day I posted last was really rough but her night was OK. The next day she was really fussy and clingy and I happened to look into her mouth and saw that she had a horrible canker sore on her soft palate. Wow. It must have been painful because she was pretty unhappy for a couple of days but is better now.

We've been working on the short am nap (we're at 45 minutes) and the longer pm and she now is into the routine!! Naps have been wonderful though it took her some time do get used to the short nap. Here's what we're doing more or less:

6:30am A
10:00 S
10:45 A
1:30/:45 S
3:00/3:15 A
7/7:15 S

I used to offer a morning nap and if not asleep by say 10ish, I would pick up from cot and offer a snack or 1/2 lunch and the back in the cot at 11am for 1 nap. I would let her sleep and not wake her and do an early bedtime, depending on when that nap would end

This is great advice! I usually am thrown when naps are off and feel like I don't know what to do next...I'll just follow this next time

How are your 2 naps going? Still solid?