just OT??????

[enzosmom]

13 mo old dd is being forced to one nap a day due to 2 older brothers school schedules, drop off/pick ups.  she usually goes to bed around 7pm, wakes at 7:30am.  since our last school pick up is at 1:10, her afternoon naps starts around 1:30/1:45, even though she is desperately tired before then.  when we first started the new school schedule in sept she was taking a solid 3 hour nap and i thought adjusting quite nicely to an early one nap a day routine.  however, now, she is down to 1 hour nap a day, sometimes barely 2 hrs, waking up crying so i know she is not ready to be awake.  if i try the WI/WO it will calm her down until i leave the room then starts crying uncontrollably.  she is such a good baby that its just better for me to get her up, then to leave her crying, even though i know she is missing valuable sleep.  she rolls with the older kids just fine even though i know she needs more sleep.  advice on how to either extend that nap or do i need to give her a 45 min nap in the AM(that's all we have time for due to school schedules)?  is that just going backwards?  thanks for any suggestions!!!!  you'd think on my 3rd kid i'd have this all in the bag! sarah

[becky1969]

With a 13 month old, I'd absolutely try for a short AM nap (30-45 min max) and then a longer PM nap.  I think that would work very nicely! It's the route we usually advise for the 2-1 nap transition.  You're running into the typical problem of moving to 1 nap too early -- they do OK at first, but then get into an OT spiral that makes baby and mama no fun! 

Give the short nap a try -- start with 45 minutes, and see how it goes.  If she refuses a PM nap, then shorten to 30 minutes.  I'd probably try to give her 3-3.5 hours A time between waking from AM nap and going down for PM nap.

[enzosmom]

thanks becky!