Please help with 18m 2-1 nap

[croft]

Hi,

My lo is 18 months and after a few months of teething (molars & eye) we are slowly gettting sleep throughs again. He is now refusing to nap on some days, usually he refuses the pm nap, but now it is the am nap. I am having trouble reading his tired cues and not sure whether to start pushing his am nap or cut it out all together. He has had a rough patch of NW and is over tired I think, so I am careful. What has been happening is he wakes at 5-5.30am!!! I often can't get him back to sleep so I get him up and put him down at 8.30, he usually naps for 45-1 hour. I try later for another nap at 1.30 and some days he falls asleep in 20 minutes (4 hr A time) and other days takes 5 hours or not at all. I try for a cat nap, maybe in the car sometimes, but it is usually around 4.30 by then. Then comes bed and he is hyper and takes over 1 hour to get to sleep!

On the days he has refused a pm nap he has been up for 8-9 hours straight and will go to sleep okay, others not!

He has only been averaging a total of 11 hours a day lately and I am wondering how to do this transition, especially with early wake ups and get him to sleep more?

Appreciate any advice please!

5.00-5.30 wake up
6.00 milk
8.00 breakfast
8.30 try for nap.
9-10.00 nap
10.00 snack
12.30 lunch
1.30 try for nap.
2-3.00 nap
3.00 snack
5.00 dinner
6.00 bath
6.30 milk
6.45 bed
7-8 asleep (if lucky)

[Layla]

I would probably start weaning the morning nap & shortening it to about 45mins with the afternoon nap offered about 3.5hrs later & bedtime about 4-4.5hrs later
Keep the morning nap at 9am!

So something like this:
5-5:30 - wakes up
9-9:45 - morning nap
1:30-3pm - afternoon nap
7pm - bedtime

Then in about 3 days or so shorten the morning nap to 30mins & again bump up the afternoon nap.
So something like this:
9-9:30 - morning nap
12.30-2ish - afternoon nap
6:30 - bedtime

Hopefully he will start sleeping in a little later since you have an earlier bedtime. If he is still refusing the afternoon nap on the 30min am nap then rather than doing the am nap, keep him up until about 11am & shoot for 1 nap days. Take him out of the house for lots of stimulation, do an earlier lunch or a big snack & let him sleep up to 2-2.5hrs for that 1 nap. You would probably have to do a much earlier bedtime... no more than 5hrs from the time the nap ends. So with us if the nap started at 11 & finished at 12.30, I did bedtime of 5.30! An earlier bedtime helped us all the time with transitions & that doesn't mean that he will be waking up for the day at 4am either!

Some shorten the morning nap even more like to 20mins or even 10 but I found with both of my girls I didn't have a need to do that. We just stuck to a nap time (which for us was no later than 11am to start with as they both wake around 6am) & went from there. Then within a couple of weeks we stretched the 1 nap until it was close to 11.30 & now with Jasmine she's getting closer to midday.

hth & let me know if you have any other q's
Layla

[croft]

Oh thankyou so much...I will do as you say and let you know! I find it so hard with my LO, he is so more alert than others his age!

[croft]

Layla,

Just a silly question, but do you mean asleep by 9am, or put him down at 9am? He usually take 20-30 minutes to fall asleep.

Thanks
Sharron

[Layla]

I usually aimed at to start with 9 so put in the cot about 10mins before. But if he's taking 20mins to fall asleep you could try to put down around 8:50 & hopefully he will fall asleep by about 9:15-9:20 & you would then wake him up at 10-10:05.

[croft]

Layla,

Thankyou for your advice, we had a great month on one nap, but all of a sudden he is taking an hour to go to bed. I thought at first it may be teething, but no sign so far. So then I thought to put him to bed later, but he still takes an hour of restlessness to fall asleep. Also his early wakes are back again.

I am wondering if I need to tweak his routine again. Or maybe we are falling into the OT cycle again?

We were soldiering along on...

7 am - wake (this was heaven)
11.30-1.30 nap
7/7.30 bed

He was sleeping through the night and averaging 13 hours sleep (2 hour naps!), he was so much better.

But lately...NW and

6 am - wake
11-1 nap (sometimes 1 1/2 hours)
7.30/8 bed

What worries me at the moment with moving his nap closer to midday, is he may not go down until after 8pm? He doesn't seem to want to sleep much before 6 hours A time in the afternoon?

Thankyou for you help once again and appreciate you thoughts again!!
Sharron