Naps have been crazy since she started walking!

[J & J's Mom]

DD is going to be one in a couple of weeks and has been a BW baby pretty much since birth.  She's been taking 2 naps per day since exactly 7 months when she made the switch from 3 to 2 naps in just one day.  She started walking at 10.5 months and since then both her morning and afternoon naps have been sooo unpredictable and often short.

Here is our day:

Up at 6:45/7 am
4 oz milk in sippy
8am breakfast
10:00 up for her nap - usually takes her a good 30 minutes to fall asleep even though she seems to act tired all morning.  She yawns a lot and rubs her eyes.  This nap can be as short as a 1/2 hour and lately hasn't been longer than 45 minutes.  Before walking this nap would usually be 45-60 minutes.
11:00 6 oz bottle
12:00 lunch
2:30/3:00 bottle, depending on when she starts to show signs of being tired.
3:15 or so up for 2nd nap.  Sometimes she can take forever to fall asleep for this one, too.  And lately this nap is not more than 1 hour and before walking it was 1hr 15 or 1 hr 30.
7:00 bath, bottle and bed by 7:30.  She typically goes right to sleep with no fooling around.

The only time she can be fussy is in the morning before her first nap.  After that nap she seems refreshed and makes it without a problem to the next one.  When she started walking the naps were so bad I actually tried one nap for a few days.  She seemed fine with it but after a few days she went back to the 2 naps.  It can get difficult, too, because DS has preschool tues and thurs and we have to pick him up at 11:30.

Could she be ready to start the 2-1 transition?  Short naps are frustrating, especially since she is so much more active now that she's walking around.

[becky1969]

Well, I can't say 2-1 transition really applies here.  If it did, then PM nap should be going gangbusters due to that short AM nap.  But it's not.

You've got a wonky situation b/c she's acting tired all morning.  She's STTN, right?  If she wasn't acting tired I'd say that she needs her A time to extend in the AM and that her nap is UT.  But acting tired makes me wonder if she's OT for that AM nap.  Walking can definitely tire a LO out! Esp. one who starts walking as young as yours did!  Is there any sign of molars by the way?

As crazy as this sounds, I might try a 9:30 AM nap and see what happens.  Alternatively, have you ever tried pushing nap to 10:30 or is that just impossible with her being super tired by that time?

There's also a long A time after AM nap, which would make me feel like nap#2 is def. OT.  I'd move Nap #2 closer to #1 esp. since she's short-napping in the AM.  During the 2-1 switch we generally advise putting 3 hours of A time between the 2 naps, and you've got, gosh, 4-4.5?  that's REALLY long for her age with only 30 min of nap under her belt.

So, try this:

9:30 nap #1 (let's assume still only 30 min)

10:00 awake

1:00 nap #2 (no later than 1:30) and hopefully this will be 1.5 hours

2:30 wake

bed 6:30


Now, if you think a 9:30 is crazy and that it's more likely that scenario #2 works (where she's UT for nap#1 and needs to extend) then I'd do:

10:30 nap (we'll assume 30 min)

11:00 awake

2 pm nap (hope for 1.5 hours)

3:30 awake

7:30 bed  since that seems to work for you with that awake time.


I have to say that for her AGE, scenario #2 makes sense.  Especially if you've had her on the same routine for more than a month.  I might try that 10:30 nap time first and see what happens.  But molars and teeth can really wear a kid out, so I'm not ruling out the needing an earlier nap scenario!

Guess final answer: use your judgement as to which routine change to try first.  Leave her at that routine for 3 days and then we can examine her behavior and make changes based on what you've observed.

[J & J's Mom]

Sounds like a plan!  Yesterday she did 40 min in the morning and about an hour in the afternoon.  I think I'll try #1 first and see how that goes, especially since I know her am nap won't run into picking up my son at school.

I'll keep you posted!  Thanks for the advice .

Cindy

[J & J's Mom]

Re-thinking now... maybe I'll go with #2.  Like you said, for her age it makes more sense now that I think about it.  And the problem we were having before, too, was an earlier nap meant earlier wake-up.  She was napping around 9:45ish and she was starting to wake earlier and earlier.  I moved the nap back and that seems to solve that problem but the naps got shorter.   She is waking up a bit later but not napping well in the morning.  I'm afraid that by moving her am nap to 9:30 she'll go back to the earlier wakeups... what do you think?

I think pushing the nap back may have actually started this nap change.  Might have been around the same time she started walking which may have just been more coincidental than anything.  Or it added to the problem.  It was when she was going down around 9:45 or 10 that she was taking longer morning naps.

[J & J's Mom]

Oh, and yes... STTN no problem.  Solid from 7:30 to 6:45ish.

[becky1969]

If she started sleeping longer in the AM when you pushed it out, sounds like she's just ready for a bit more A time then. 

what we're really looking for right now is 1.5 hours for both naps.  However, she may be one of those kids is starting to transition, so then we want to see 1 hour AM and 1.5 hour PM.  How far off from that are you right now?  WHen I first read your intro, I thought you were getting a 45 PM which is too short no matter what.  But if your PM is already 1.5 hours, then you may be where you need to be!  Then we just need AM nap to get to the hour range.

[J & J's Mom]

It's the opposite - she started taking shorter naps in the morning when I pushed it out.

This morning she was up at about 6:45.  She started getting sleepy between 9:15 and 9:30ish.  I brought her up at 9:35, did the WD and she was asleep by 9:50.  And she slept til 10:50 .

So that's an hour for the am nap.  We'll see how the afternoon nap goes!  Should I try bringing her up around 2 or just wait for signs that she's ready?

[becky1969]

I'd definitely watch for cues, but give a *real* strong look at that 2 pm thing.  She had a nice hour nap AM so she may be able to make it to 2:30 today.  Experiment a bit! But v. happy with the hour nap! Yay!

[J & J's Mom]

Grrr...

Brought her up at about 2:20ish.  She really didn't seem all that tired, but I thought maybe she'd have plenty of time to get another good nap in.  It is 3:15 now and she's STILL not sleeping.  I was tempted to go up and give her a bottle - maybe she's hungry?  That's why I started doing the 3rd bottle of the day before her 2nd nap.  I had hoped it would keep her tummy full so at least I'd know that it wasn't hunger keeping her awake or waking her up early.

At a year old is hunger even an issue?  She had a decent lunch around noontime and then I gave her a tiny snack before I brought her up for her nap. 

She has always tended to have a much shorter am "A" time.  Since she was a newborn, really.  Would 4 hours between naps necessarily be a bad thing?  Part of the reason why I started allowing more "A" time between the two naps was because this was happening before, too.  I'd bring her up around 2:15 and she would often take more than an hour to finally go to sleep.  FRUSTRATING.  It seemed to make more sense just to keep her up a little longer. 

I *think* she might be down now.  It's 3:20, so it literally took her an hour to fall asleep.  She doesn't cry or anything... I have one of those video monitors so I can see her just fooling around in there.  She has a stuffed bear that she hugs and she sucks her finger... and she just rolls around, gets up and walks... plays with her music thing.  Sheesh.  It would be cute if it wasn't so infuriating .

We'll see how long she sleeps and go from there.  If it takes her that long to fall asleep it can't possibly be OT, right?

[J & J's Mom]

40 minutes .

[becky1969]

No, 4 hours between naps if fine.  If that's what she handles, then that's what we do!    You may find as she shortens AM nap again (making the 2-1 transition) that you *may* have to shorten A time between naps.  But worry about *that* when we get there.

I doubt hunger is an issue.  Sounds like you fed her plenty.  At 1 their appetite goes WAY down, as does their growth rate.  So a lunch at 12 then snack by 2 is plenty of food. 

Don't get frustrated! We're just in the experimentation stage.  We're just a couple of days away from finding the 'sweet spot' for PM nap.  Sounds like AM nap is already sorted! So yay us! 

[J & J's Mom]

So here was today (Happy Mother's Day to us!!)

She was up EARLY.  Before 6:30.  Not sure what THAT was all about.  She was having a hard time last night around 9:30 and was up for a little bit.  She has terrible excema on her feet/ankles and it really flared up and was itching her like crazy.  A little cortizone cream and she was fine but being up for a bit at that hour might have messed with her clock.

Brought her up for her first nap around 9:45 but she didn't konk out til 10:05 and slept for only 45 minutes.  She was not cranky at all after that, though, and had her next nap was fantastic.  She went down at 3:15 and woke after 1.5 hours.  Perfect!

A couple of things... when she woke from the short nap yesterday afternoon she sucked down 6 oz in less than 3 minutes!  Today she had the bottle before her nap and slept better.  She also had a longer "A" time before going down (4.5 hrs almost!).  Could have been either or both that helped.

I'm hoping now she isn't up early again tomorrow.  We'll see! 

Happy Mothers Day and thanks so much for your help!  It's always something isn't it?

[J & J's Mom]

Well, she WAS up early again.  Before 6:30 and I'm not sure what time.  She is so quiet when she gets up I wouldn't even know she was awake if it weren't for the video monitor.  I woke up just before 6:30 and turned on the monitor and she was sitting up.  Even when she wakes before 7 I leave her alone til then.  I am always hoping she'll go back to sleep .  She never does!

She actually had a really good morning and didn't really seem cranky or tired until naptime.  I brought her up at about 10 and it took her until 10:45 to fall asleep.  She slept til 12!  That was great, but I knew we were in trouble for this afternoon with such a long, late morning nap.

She was GREAT this afternoon... good mood, happy, defintely caught up on sleep.  I gave her a bottle around 3:15 and brought her up.  She was in bed about 3:45 but she's only just falled asleep - it's 4:30.

Seems to me there just isn't enough time in the day anymore for two naps.  Taking a good morning nap is great but it doesn't seem to leave her time to get tired for #2.  And it almost always takes her some time to get to sleep... she never seems tired enough to just konk out like she used to.

[becky1969]

That's very normal for this age: a good morning nap will wipe out the need for 2nd nap, or 2nd nap is SO late as to interfere with bedtime.

That's why we usually advise at this stage to limit that AM nap.  How you limit is up to you.  Some start by limiting to an hour, some by limiting to 45 min.  You can experiment as you like.  Then, shortening goes on as long as 2 naps are nec.  What will happen is her A time will slowly lengthen so AM nap will get closer and closer to 11:30.  Once she can make it to 11:30, it's not a huge leap to a noon nap time.  As her A time lengthens, you may also find you need to slowly shorten AM nap.  By the time we were done with the shorty AM nap it was no more than 20 minutes in length.  And by the time we got to that stage we were having 2-3 1 nap days/week.

So sounds like it's time to shorten AM! You guys are PERFECTLY on track.  She's behaving as expected! So, just shorten AM nap and then PM nap should go better. The reason we work hard to preserve PM is that it lessens the chance that child is OT at bedtime, which is the leading cause of NWs/EWs.  Once the child starts having EWs (and that usually means 5 am or earlier) then you really have to work hard to get to 1 nap because 5 am to noon is a looooong A time. Not even sure my 3 yr old could do that! 

[J & J's Mom]

5am!  Good GREIF Charlie Brown!  I'd NEVER survive a 5am wake up .  6:30 doesn't look so bad anymore!

Her second nap went to 5:40ish, so another hour and 10 minutes.  Two good naps but now it's almost bedtime!

Shortening the am nap makes COMPLETE sense.  I'll let you know what happens tomorrow!