OT Monster -17 month help

[Deb123]

My LO is 17 months and by using GW ( and a lot of help here before thanks! ) I can get her to sleep without any problem at nap and bedtime.

However problem is that an hour and a half after bed she wakes and is hysterical if she's OT. I cant get her back to sleep can take two-three hours before she will sleep again. I know the OT is a routine problem, because when I moved her to one nap too early she was doing it, when I put her back on two naps she slept fine.

However now she is somewhere inbetween two and one naps if she has two naps she is not tired at bed and if she has one she is OT and wakes up.
I've tried cutting back the morning nap instead and going for one afternoon nap but she then refused to sleep for the rest of the day, hysterical at bedtime. She is spirited so the more tired she is the more wound up she gets.

Routine I'm trying with one nap to start out-

8-12
12-2.30 nap
Bed 6-6.30

It worked like a dream for one day then the next day went to pot and I cant get her back on it. Tried two naps yesterday she wouldnt sleep until 10

So clearly I have a routine problem so any advice there helpful

The other problem is what do I do when she wakes up OT, she is hysterical. What we do until now is take her out of the cot and let her wander around the room until she calms down enough to go back to bed, sometimes she really wakes up and starts playing ( spirited!) and wont go back to sleep for hours.

Any advice ??

Thanks
Deborah

[clazzat]

Can I just clarify - is she sleeping 13.5h at night?  Or is that what you would like to see if she is on one nap?  I don't think it is really realistic to expect her to sleep that long at night (we aim for a 12h day/12h night), so it doesn't surprise me hugely that the routine didn't work.  I think you also need to be at 5h+ of A time before she is really ready for 1 nap.

The routine that worked for us at this age was a first nap of 20-30 mins to get through the morning and then a longer lunchtime nap:

Wake 7am
Nap 1 9.30-10
Nap 2 12.30-2.30
Bed 6.30/6.45pm

You might find this is a more realistic way to go.

[Deb123]

Hi

Thanks for the reply

No I dont expect that but I thought to start out she would need extra sleep - an extra early bedtime I thought was the way you started it?


If I get her to take a short nap in the morning she will get OT and not sleep for the rest of the day then again at bedtime will wake again after an hour or two
She gets really revved up if OT. She can only do 4-4.5 hours A+ at the moment but that makes the day too shortfor two naps if you know what I mean.

Her routine was until recently

7-9
9-11 nap
3-4 nap

Bedtime 8-8.30 - but still didnt seem tired at 8( often bed at 9 or so) so I thought it time for one nap. She's also not getting enough sleep at night (imo) that's why so tired in the morning that she wants to sleep after 2 hours

Thanks

[clazzat]

It seems that you have tried to go from a 2h first A to a 4h first A in one go - that's probably why she got so OT.  If you are trying to push out A times then you should do it in no more than 30 min increments.  Your first step should probably be to aim for her first nap to start at 9.15 (or 9.30 if you think she can handle it) and finish at 11, and then maybe cut another 15 mins or so off her second nap (so maybe waking her at 3.45 instead of 4) so that she has a longer A to bed.

The 2-1 process is really long and drawn out - you won't be able to go straight from 2 long naps to 1 in a couple of days.  You are likely to find that you have a few months of shaving time off her naps here and there before you get to a point where you can drop one of them altogether.

[Deb123]

Hi

I think she can only handle the 2 hour in the morning because she is not sleeping enough at night.
If I let her sleep in until 8 or even 9 then she can handle the 4 hours until 12 that was why I thought of the original routine iykwim
I dont let her sleep in normally because then its really,really late before she goes to bed in the evening.

I see what you mean about shaving time off the naps, I am nervous about it because she reacts so badly to OT, I've tried waking her early before and she was like a bear and wouldnt sleep at all after.


If i am to do the one nap, should i let her have two naps for a couple of days first so she can catch up ??

Today was a total disaster, I tried the following:-

8-12
12 -12.45 nap only slept for 40 mins ( doesnt do this unless really bad OT)
Bedtime 6
7.30 awake,hysterical OT
Bed 10.00 after a lot of crying

Do you think it was because she didnt have enough A+ time in the day or because she was OT or both?? I know the last activity time was  too long I should have gone for the 2nd nap at 4 then a later bedtime I guess??

[clazzat]

The problem is that she is not ready for one nap - she needs to be able to do at least 5 h A before she will cope with one nap.

Your options are a short morning nap and a longer second nap or a long first nap and a short pm nap to get her to bedtime.  This transition phase is really tricky but unfortunately you can't just jump straight to one nap.

[Deb123]

Hi

Totally understand what your saying and I think its a strong possibility.

What is making me think that she is on the border of ready is that if she has two full nights sleep ( with two morning naps and two shorter naps in the afternoon ) is that she then starts on the third day refusing the second nap altogether.

What I'm thinking - course maybe not right- is that for the last 6 weeks her sleep is all over the place because of this and that if she was rested she could do the 4 1/2 - 5 and be on one nap.

I do totally agree that its pushing the morning A+ from 2 hours to 4 too quickly that is causing a problem.

Thanks for your help
Deborah

[clazzat]

What you can try to do while she goes through the transition is alternate - so 2 good days with 2 naps and a full night, then push the nap later on the 3rd day and aim for one nap.  Then start the cycle again.

It is really common that they just can't get the right amount of sleep during this phase.  One thing that it is worth bearing in mind is that by this age it is worth keeping a track of weekly sleep as well as daily sleep - so you can sometimes get away with having 1 or 2 days in a week where she doesn't have enough sleep if she is having more on other days.

[Deb123]

Thats an excellent suggestion about cycling the naps didnt think of that one. Very helpful- because 2 days a week she goes to a toddler group so she skips the morning nap then so was trying to work out how to get it into the schedule.
How long do you think it will take before she can do one nap, she's just gone 17 months?


Thanks

[clazzat]

It's impossible to tell how long it will take to get to one nap - some babies do the transition over a few weeks, others take months.  dd1 was still having a morning nap at 19 months, I think, but dd2 was about 17 months when she dropped it.  I'm afraid you just have to bear with it and see how she goes - you'll probably find that she makes it quite clear when she really doesn't need 2 naps any more, so try to watch her cues.

[mylittlelovelies]

hi,
it looks like you've had great advice...seems exactly what i would have said. My DD2 is 15.5 months and she is almost always having just one nap (my children seem to have lower than average sleep needs...darn it!)...but she was doing lots of classic 2-1 signs...taking ages to fall asleep or refusing naps altogether, day running really long etc. It got to the point that she wouldn't fall asleep for her morning nap unless she'd been up for 3.5-4 hours minimum...at which point i could only let her sleep for 20 mins anyway or she'd refuse the afternoon nap. Plus the day was stretching out too much so it was time for the switch to one nap. But she only had to cope with an extra hour of time awake and she was on the 5hrs A time that clazzat is referring to.

I could have put her on one nap earlier....with a routine like you posted at the top...4hrs A in the morning...LONG nap..then 3.5-4hrs in the afternoon....but if you add up her A time, thats only 7.5-8hrs total A time for the day...which means if you do the math we are expecting her to sleep for 16.5hrs in 24hrs....thats like a newborn!!

so i think clazzat is right...your LO won't be able to manage being on 1 nap every day until she can handle a total of about 10hrs A time divided between morning and afternoon. So the day with only 7.5/8hrs A time would only work as a once off like you described...but then she would need a couple of 2 nap days with lots of A time again or things would start to go haywire. You could do the short 1 nap day every now and then (eg when you have to go out in the morning and she can't have a morning nap....just do 1 nap and early bedtime) but that isn't a sustainable routine as it just doesn't have enough A time in

in the meantime the short AM and long PM nap worked really well for us. woI knew it was time to drop the morning nap altogether when it was only 15mins long and still messed  up the rest of the day.

good luck working it all out! its a messy business!!!

[clazzat]

so i think clazzat is right...your LO won't be able to manage being on 1 nap every day until she can handle a total of about 10hrs A time divided between morning and afternoon.

This is a good point - as they get older you do have to think about the total A time for the day as well.  As it happens, my dd2 needs a much longer A in the morning than the afternoon - she has been doing 6-6.5h in the morning and 4-4.5h in the afternoon - but she has the right total A for the day.

[Deb123]

So today she did, the below I put her back on the old routine:-

Wake 7

Nap 10-12

Nap 3-4 ( woke her she was not happy ! )

Bedtime 8.30

Tried to put her to bed at 7.30 but she was having none of it and lots of complaints eventually fell asleep at 8.30.
Kept sleeping through   which means she's not overtired( She always wakes again if she's OT). However previous night she only got 9 hours as she wouldnt sleep until 10 ( OT )
So if you go by the totals for the day it was 10.5 A+ plus she was missing some sleep from last night ?

Clajy - have had a disastrous time if I shorten the morning nap she gets totally OT and wont sleep at all for the rest of the day.
Also the routine I posted  at the top wasnt the full plan just to start off to prevent her getting OT in the beginning, I read lots about needing a super early bedtime at first.

Think the cycling is the way to go, although I would prefer an earlier bedtime than 8.30 think its a bit late, any suggestions there apart from shortening the morning nap as I dont dare do that?

Thanks both for your input, its very helpful

[mylittlelovelies]

sounds like you know her pretty well in terms of what she can handle...and if shortening the nap makes her cranky then it might be better just having a later bedtime. could do a 6:30am start (a little earlier) and then bedtime would  be 8ish...just while she's still having both naps...you could easily go back to a later start when shes ready for 1 nap.

also, the fact that she can have a 2hr morning sleep and still go back to bed after only another 3hrs makes  me think she definitely needs to keep her naps a bit longer. My DD is almost 16 months, and if she wakes really early in the morning we occasionally do a 2 nap day (90% of the time 1 nap) but when we do, she has a 3hr A time after a 20 min morning nap. Yesterday I let her have 45mins in the morning, and when i put her to bed 3.5hrs later she just sang and chatted to herself and threw everything out of her cot...thats her undertired! So compared with my DD, your LO def seems to be able to fall asleep after much shorter A times so will prob keep her morning nap for a bit longer.

only other thought i had...would she go to sleep any earlier for the morning nap? For example, i have friends who at a similar stage would do a short morning nap really early...say 9/9:30ish...as soon as you can do it and have them still fall asleep. That way, even if you wake her after say 40 mins (for us it was 20mins at a younger age! but sounds like your daughter needs more than that!) she has probably had enough sleep in proportion to her fairly short first A time IYKWIM?? If 3hrs is a full A time for her (it is your first and second A times and produces good naps, so seems to be her ideal A time) then you might try a shorter A time in the morning so she will still be refreshed by a short AM nap.

let me know what you think!

Oh...other idea to get an earlier bedtime is to make the afternoon nap more of a cat nap. You said she had an hour yesterday, and that obviously refreshed her (even if she was initially not happy!) for 4+hrs A time (8:30bedtime). If you woke her after 40 mins, she might only be able to handle 2.5/3hrs A time and you'd have her in bed at 7/7:30. If you did decide to do the long AM / short PM nap scenario as you outlined above, then that second nap prob needs to be a true cat nap...waking her at 60mins was still probably too long and made bedtime late. Also, you may find she's more happy to be woken at 40mins as it is a natural sleep cycle length..her body is naturally in lighter sleep and would wake up more readily. At an hour she is in the middle of the next sleep cycle..hence the crankiness!!

good luck!!

[Deb123]

Hi Clajy

Some great suggestions there.
She is only able to do 3 hours A+ time at the moment as shes really tired from not sleeping well for a few nights. What typically happens is that after 2 days of this the next day i.e tomorrow she will have the morning nap as usual and then refuse the afternoon and/or the A+ becomes 4 hours at lunch/evening so it looks something like this:

Awake 7
10-12 nap
4-5 nap
5-9/9.30

then everything is totally thrown off, as she's going to bed too late. That's why I think the cycling is a great idea will do one nap tomorrow -she's going to the toddler group anyway in the morning and see how it goes.

Great suggestions on making it only a catnap in the afternoon as well will give that a shot

Oh and the A+ in the morning is always short she is just NOT a morning person kinda like her mom