Not even 8 mos--do I need to shorten her first nap?

[fujbeck]

Gracie will be 8 months in one week. I have been struggling with her routine for the past few weeks, and some tweaks have been worked out. Right now my main problem is her afternoon nap. For a while I was just trying to put her down at different times, and generally if she took a short nap in the morning she would take 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon and if she took a good nap in the morning (1.5 hours) then her afternoon nap would usually not happen at all. The past couple of days I decided to stick it out with PU/PD for however long it took to get her down. I have started after she has been up for about 2 hours and 40 min and it will take just a little over an hour of PU/PD before she will go down and only take 1/2 hour nap. The first day she cried really hard most of the time and today she didn't cry as hard but it still took just as long. I am wondering if I just need to cut her first nap short all the time as it doesn't seem like it should take so long to get her down. She goes down in less than 10 min for her morning nap usually with little to no crying. Opinions & advice??

Here is her routine:

7 am wake up and BF
8 breakfast solids
9:30-11 nap
11:15 BF
no lunch yet
1:40 attempt afternoon nap
2:45-3:15 nap
3:15 BF
5:30 dinner solids
6:30 bath
6:45 BF
7:15 bed
Wakes 1-2x to BF at night. Struggles a lot in the morning around 5:30 am (sometimes gets up at that time).

[deckchariot]

my dd is almost exactly the same age as Gracie and we had similar problems a couple weeks ago, and I moved her afternoon A time to 3 hrs, and that totally "fixed" her naps - now she takes 1.5 - 2 in the am and the same in the pm.   Any reason you've not added lunch solids yet?  Here's her routine:

7:30 - awake and bf
8:30 - solids breakfast
10 - nap
11:30/12 - awake and bf
12:30/1 - solids lunch
2:30/3 - nap
4/4:30 - awake and bf
5/5:30 - finger food snack
6 - solids dinner
6:45 - bath
7/7:15 - bf
7:15/7:30 - bed

she goes all night long.  It's possible with a longer A time and more food, she may nap better and go longer at night.  When I extended Abby's A times, I didn't even need pu/pd, she just extended her naps on her own.

HTH
michelle

[fujbeck]

Thanks Michelle. I haven't added lunch yet b/c she seems to have a lot of food allergies and hasn't tolerated most foods I've tried. She's only eating 3 foods right now. 

I'm going to try to put her down a bit later tomorrow for her afternoon nap and see if that helps.

Thanks.

[deckchariot]

the allergies thing makes sense on delaying solids....let me know how extending her afternoon A time goes... good luck!

[fujbeck]

Well, I pushed back the time I put her down for her afternoon nap by 10 min, and she is going down pretty easily now, but the nap is still only 35 minutes about 90% of the time. If I am lucky I will get 45 min or 1 hour if I am REALLY lucky. Any ideas about what I might still be doing wrong? I try and hold her down every time when she jolts but she still wakes up and pu/pd does not work to get her back to sleep.

[deckchariot]

the good news is that she's going down more easily!  How long is her afternoon A time now?  It's possible that a 10  min extension isn't enough.  I ended up adding a full half hour to Abby's afternoon A time before her nap lengthened out.  How many days have you tried the 10 min extension?  I'd do 3 days at least, then add another 10 min to that and see what happens.  Hang in there!

[fujbeck]

I've been doing the 10 min extension for several days now, it makes her A time about 3 hours between naps. Maybe I will have to try another 10 min.

[deckchariot]

hmm.....is her morning A time also 3 hrs?  I'm stumped on this one.....My dd has about 2.75 hrs A time in the am and 3 in the pm, with 2 1.5 - 2 hr naps in between....Since the A time extension, have both her am and pm nap been short?  Are you still doing a catnap?  Maybe post your "new" routine and let's look at that....

[fujbeck]

Here's how her routine is looking:

7 am wake and BF
8:15 am solids
9:30-11 nap
11:15 BF
12:45 pm solids (just tried adding this today)
2-2:35 pm nap
3:00 BF
5:30 pm solids
6:00 bath
6:30 BF
7:00 Bed
Usually BF 2x in the middle of the night (would like this to change  )

[deckchariot]

so it looks like her morning nap is ok (1 1/2 hrs, right?).  Now the afternoon nap - do you put her down at 2 or 2:30 - or does she sleep only from 2 to 2:30?  If it's the latter, that's a problem (which is I'm guessing what's happening)...If she's up from her first nap at 11, I'd say start her winddown at 2, if you get a 30  min nap, start earlier, if you get a 45 min nap, start later.  Has that been what you've been doing?  When she wakes early from that nap, is she usually happy or grumpy?  And when she wakes early and doesn't go back to sleep, how does she do til bedtime?

In terms of the bf at night, I'm surprised she's still waking twice - are you sure it's hunger or is she just in the habit now?

anybody else have some suggestions?