18 month sleep regression support thread

[lily528]

Yea that's what I was thinking she's off the wall chatty and hyper more than usual. Def thinking OT. hoping she pulls 12 hr night and do 7-7...maybe do 1:15 nap rather than 1?  6 hr 15 rather than 6 hr?  IF she wakes at 7. What do u think? 

[Mama_Mia]

I am betting that if you put her down at 7 she is going to play and goof around until at least 8, but I hope for your sake I'm wrong.

I think I have to cut M's nap to 30min on normal days. Today for instance...

wu 7:00
down for nap at 1:30 not sleeping until at least 1:45 got him up at 2:30 (45min nap)
bt .. in bed at 7:20 hoping for sleep by 7:30 but didnt go to sleep until at least 8:00

I do NOT like 8:pm bt. I always had my other 4 in bed by 6:30 at this age. But I dont think they ever napped either.

[lily528]

I pd at 7 she protested for like 2 mins...grabbed her bunny...laid down and was OUT. So hoping for a 12 hr night to catch up and then sim for a later nap time I guess?  I dunno the thing is I've been doing 1 pm nap time for months. In these past few weeks even as her days were starting earlier and earlier, going from 8am WU to 6:15am WU we did 1pm nap most times. On occasion I'd pd slightly earlier but she usually didn't do well with it. So on 6:15am days she was getting 6hr 45 min A's in the morning. On days she woke at 8 she was getting only a 5 hr A. For the longest time that worked on 5 hrs.,giving 2+hr naps. It just all went nutty and I don't know which direction to go :/

[*Kara*]

Sounds like a huge jump in A times Melissa

[lily528]

Yea :/ on 6 something mornings at first I did earlier naps but I was trying not to encourage the early waking you know? So I started to push her to 1 and hoped shed start waking reg time. I dunno

So she did it 7-7 2nd night in a row so I'd think that says she was OT right?  Needed the extra sleep?  So scared where to go from here and mess it up :/ I know a 12 hr night is too long to expect a descent nap on a regular basis so here is my REALISTIC hopeful goal...

11 hr night w/ a 2 hr nap. It's just how to get there that I'm lost on. What the right A times are...in order to fit that in a 24hr day I was thinking after doing some research on schedule for her age I found most woke at 7 and napped around 12 and 1 and bed at 8. Coming off a 12 hr catch up night I'm thinking I'd shoot for 1-1:15??? She did do well on the 8 WU 1pm nap for SO long I wonder if the opposite is true and that she needs a shorter 5 hr A?  Why don't they come with a manual?!  Ugh

[clairebear79]

Melissa, what about trying 6hr A / 2hr nap / 5hr A, so up 7am, nap 1-3 & bed 8pm & stick to it like glue for a week.  I hope you can achieve it, but TBH I think a 2hr nap is too much for lots of our LO's at this age, & I also think that if she has one, she simply won't sleep 11hrs at night. 

We are getting an 11hr night with a 1.5hr nap.  DS has done his 1st no nap day today.x

[lily528]

clairebear-  YES! exactly what I'm hoping for...I can even handle 1.5 hrs that's fine and I get what you are saying.  That schedule you just listed is what she WAS doing only waking at 8 rather than 7 but I see how that is a lot of sleep for her age..she what she was doing so I went with it...now I'd be happy with a 7 am waking 1.5-2 hr nap and bt at 8....

It sounds good but i have no idea how to get her to do it :/  naptime is such a scary place these days..never know when she'll FALL asleep or IF she will it's awful

now yesterday she woke at around 7 and when i pd at 1 she took an hour to fall asleep but I wonder if that was the potty issue because she woke less than hour later with poop..so soon as she is done with lunch I will put her on the potty...hope she goes and doesn't take a century like she normally does...and i can have her in and asleep by 1ish...wish me luck


sorry to hear about the no nap today ...it's the worst..going to do ebt?  how does he seem?  what do you think happened?

[clairebear79]

I think you just have to persevere with putting her down & hope she sleeps.  If she doesn't, then you have to try a longer A & see if she will take a nap that way.  And if she still won't nap then EBT is king!

sorry to hear about the no nap today ...it's the worst..going to do ebt?  how does he seem?  what do you think happened?

we had a christening to go to at 12.30 & he wasn't tired enough to nap before we went, as he'd got up at 7am.  We decided to see how he fared & perhaps PD for a late nap, we were only at the other end of our street so no prob to take him home for his nap.  He didn't seem tired at all at 1.30, nor 2, got first eye rub at 3ish but he was playing happily, so we stayed.  4.30pm he was clearly getting tired but we felt it was too late for a nap so we came home & did EBT at 6pm instead.  AM a bit scared as that's 2hrs earlier than usual but I seem to recall a suggestion to do EBT 11hrs after WU time on no nap days, so that's what we did.  He went straight to sleep & so far, no NW's.  Here's hoping he sleeps in til 7am!!!

[lily528]

Ok so

WU 7 (12 hr night def catch up after 2 days of 45 min naps)
Nap 1:05-3:15
BT I guess 8?

[clairebear79]

Are you still not capping her naps hun?  2h 10mins is an awfully long nap at this age.  Give 8pm BT a try but I'd be really surprised if she's tired enough with 5hrs A after that long a nap.  I'll keep my FX'd for you though. 

[*Kara*]

I have to cap at a max of 2 hrs here or nights are short... that said, yesterday was 1 hr 45 and today will be a touch less as we had a crib party before nap and didn't go to sleep until 1:08pm.  She was up at 710am though so I am not at all surprised!

I think I might be the first to ever wonder how to get an earlier wake time   DH gets up for work ~630am so DD sleeping until 7 or a bit later is going to become an issue (we have been lucky with his schedule the last week!). 

But... this kid has an incredibly strong body clock and I do know that there is little I can do to really change her awake/sleep times when she is like this... yeesh.

Melissa - if you locate a manual, let me know

[lily528]

No I'm not a capper :/ after the past week of bad naps and short nights I felt she needed it.

[*Kara*]

I know what you mean Melissa, but at this age, not capping leads to OT in the long run... they nap too long and have a short night... that balance of a short night/long nap always gets us into OT land very quickly!

[lily528]

I dunno I just feel like if she's sleeping then she needs to be. Maybe I'm wrong. Clearly I don't have the perfect situation here so what do I know. I'm hoping to get an 11 hr night tonight. We WERE doing 12 & 2 for the longest time so maybe 11 & 2 IS our downgrade?  We'll see. I just really hate waking. Going to wait this out a bit and see. If it backfires I'll consider capping

[Mama_Mia]

I envy you ladies that get 2hr naps. M hasnt napped for 2 hrs since September when he was 11 months old.

We seem to have hit upon his new schedule for now..

7:am WU
1:30-2:30 Nap.. He actually only sleeps 30-45 min. Depending on how long it took for him to fall asleep
7:30 BT asleep around 8:pm

So he is getting 11hr nights and around 45min nap

I'm not real happy about him going to sleep at 8pm since hubby goes to bed at 9, but there isnt much else I can do.I'll just have to deal with it and hope that when he gives up the nap his BT will be moved earlier..... Here's a question though, what happens when he wont nap until 2:00? Do I just cut his nap shorter so he'll be ready for bed at 7:30?