Afternoon nap hot mess (7mo old)

[Cathykamara]

Hiya

So dd is really easy to put down for her first nap and I've worked out the ooptimum first A time as 2h45 . She then sleeps without a peep for 1hr45.

But second nap always goes belly side up! I've tried putting her down at 3hr instead, just shy of 3hr, just above 3hr.. She fights all. Is this a sign of OT?? I thought second awake time is usually longer than first? Anyway it takes so long to get her to nod off that she's definitely OT by the time she does and has a very disturbed sleep, anywhere between 30min-1hr15. She also coughs a lot in her sleep but only ever during this nap - when OT!

Can anyone help?

For reference our schedule looks a bit like -

A: between 6-7am, plays in cot
E: 7am
S: 9am
A: 10.30am
E: 11am
S: 1.30pm but takes ages to nod off...
A: anytime after 2pm
E: 3pm (Tiny catnap around 4.30 if second nap was awful, or super ENT at 5.30pm)

Thanks!!

[kayra]

Hi, that's a nice first nap, I can't imagine she'd be ot at 3hrs after a good nap, have you tried a 3.15 a time? Is your experience that she she will fight so much when she's ot or ut? I know it's sometimes hard to figure out but I think the fighting generally happens when ut and then they make themselves ot b/ of the fighting, so it might be an idea to try and push that a time a bit. Or even push the morning nap out a tiny bit to gain you time for the afternoon to allow you 2 naps if she does do a good 2nd nap.
Hope that helps!

[Cathykamara]

Hi thanks so much for replying!
She's never really coped well with an over 3h A time unless she's had a 2hr nap before it.. So I'm not sure. You may be right though, I guess I need to try cutting and extending both ways again til I find the right time. She's a very touchy baby and so hard to put down for second nap / bedtime in general it's all a bit of a minefield, so makes it really difficult to gauge where I'm going wrong... Any tips for unwinding a sensitive LO would also be much appreciated! Thanks

[kayra]

Yes they do see, always more ready for the first nap but other ones are harder!
If she's sensitive maybe she needs a really long windddown, so after say 2.45 A time, do really quite things with her, hold her as much as possible, dimmed light...then put her down by 3:10..? when we were transitioning to 2 naps we were still on a 3-3.5hr easy so for a while I ended up feeding them to sleep for their 2nd nap, and because ii had pushed that A time out they fell asleep on the bottle it's not particularly encouraged but it saved my sanity for a while until they handled longer A times and we were on a proper 4hr easy. So if she's hard to put down coukd that be a possibility?
Like you said you probabky need to try cutting or adding to see what works..all the best

[Cathykamara]

Thanks! Feeding to sleep sadly doesn't work for this little one but I've pushed out both A times and things are slowly improving..

[kayra]

Glad to hear there's improvement
It only works for us if they're really really tired..