20 months and still a terrible napper!

[sopbrew]

Hi

My little girl has always struggled with day time sleeping. She rarely takes a nap with out waking at 40mins or on the hour. I have tried everything i can to sort this bet nothing i do corrects the wake up mid nap. Most times she will go back off to sleep after waking then usually goes into a very deep sleep and i have to wake her, other times she wakes after an hour and wont go back off. Today we went swimming so thought she would be really tired but only had one hour. She sleeps 11.5 hrs at night, do you think having one hour naps is ok? I would love to be able to feel relaxed when putting her down and not worry about her waking up too soon.

Thanks

Sophie

[*Becky*]

could you post her routine. I too have a poor napper so know how you feel.
My lo has done between 12.5-13 hours total sleep since he was about 1 so I think the amount of sleep she is getting is fine. I find mood is the best judge of that one - is she happy generally?
Becky x

[Tweakster]

Agreed.  We have a short night/good nap and nothing we do changes it.  If she's not melting down at every turn with that amount of day sleep then her sleep totals are probably serving her well.

My kid is 21 mths and does 12-12.5 on average, 13 on a really super fantastic day - but those are rare.

[sopbrew]

Thats good to hear. Our average day loooks like this

Wake 6.45

Sleep 12.45 ish

Bed 7.00

Her mood is fine while she is up and awake but she does cry when she wakes during her nap and takes a little while to get back in to a good mood once up.

Sophie

[Tweakster]

Hi there, the day looks ok but have you tried her with an earlier nap?  Or an earlier bedtime to see if you can get her doing more at night?  That's only if you think she could do with more sleep.  There are ways to try to get it into her if you think it might help.  But if she's ok and going to bed ok and having no NW, then I would leave it as it is.

We've tried everything, shortening the nap, letting him have a super long nap, moving bedtime around...we always end up with 10-10.5 hrs max at night.  So we keep the long nap for now knowing that it will one day disappear altogether lol  We can't change the time of our nap during the week because he's at daycare but we have played with it on weekends.  Only to find that it's best to stick with the set time of 12 p.m.

[*Becky*]

I find with DS that a 15 min earlier bedtime once or twice a week can work wonders i.e. 12 hour nights when his norm is 11!
Agree with Wendy, might be worth trying a slightly shorter A time for either am or pm.
bx