Don't know if this is EW?

[Keep Smiling!]

Hi,

My little girl is 9.5 months old and has been waking early for the past few weeks. She generally wakes up about 5.30am/5.45am and is awake almost 3 hours before she has her first nap. She doesn't have her bottle until 6.45am and her breakfast an hour later. Sometimes she sleeps 45 mins here but lately it has been around 1.5 hrs. She then has her lunch at midday and is awake about 3.5 hours before her afternoon nap. This nap can be 45 mins but usually if you give her the dummy back she will go back to sleep (which i tend yo do otgereise she can be awake 5 plus hours before bed) or sometimes she will sleep without waking. I have been waking her at 3pm (this can mean she has had 1.5 hrs or sometimes a bit less or bit longer) because she needs to be awake around 4 hours before bedtime.

She then has her bedtime bottle around 7pm and straight to bed. She wakes a couple of times in the night (usually just for her dummy) then wakes at 5.30am/5.45am and we start again. Is this classed as an early waking as she has between 10-10.5 hrs a night? Is there anything I can do to get her to wake a bit later? I didn't know if I should be waking her from her naps or leaving her to wake naturally? At the moment she needs her first nap about 8.30am which isn't ideal because when I return to work she will have just got to nursery. Any advice?

[Keep Smiling!]

Can anyone help? I woke her after 1hr 20m nap this morning as we had an appt and she has just gone down for her afternoon nap. Don't know whether I should just leave her to wake naturally after naps tomorrow or try getting her up?

[clazzat]

Could you post your whole easy so that we can see what's going on? Her nights are a bit short,  so I think that you can classify it as ew - you are aiming for a minimum of 11h overnight and preferably 11.5/12. We'll see if we can help you to tweak to make things better.

[Keep Smiling!]

Thank you so much, this is our EASY from the last 2 days:

5.45am wake up (but stayed in cot till 6am chatting)
6.45am 9oz
7.45am breakfast
8.30am-10am nap (had to wake at 10am as we were going to playgroup)
12pm lunch
1.20pm-2.45pm nap (had to wake at 2.45pm as I was collecting friends LO from school)
5pm tea
6.45pm 7oz
7pm bed
Woke at 1am and 3.45am for dummy (was up for half an hour at 3.45 as she has a cough and kept coughing)

6am wake up
6.45am 9oz
7.45am breakfast
8.50am- 10.15am nap (had to wake at 10.15am for appt)
12pm lunch
1.45pm-2.50pm nap (woke naturally - well coughing!)
5pm tea
6.45pm 6oz
7pm bed

She is usually up about 5.30am (today was a bit of a sleep in) and the past few days I have been waking her from naps after 1.5hrs, I don't know if this is right or not? On average she does have 10-10.5 hrs a night with a few wake ups.

Thank you for any advice you can offer!

[clazzat]

Do you notice any difference on days when her naps are different? The reason I ask is that by 9/10 months a lot of los are starting to work on the 2-1 transition (not that it happens at this point, just that the groundwork starts) and sometimes a short/long nap combo works better than 2 naps the same length. For various reasons, my children have always had a short am/long pm combination, but some find that it works better the other way around. If that was something you wanted to try, the long nap would be 2h, or maybe a bit more, and the short nap would be up to an hour (ds is on 30 minutes and has been since about 8 months, but I'm not sure he's the best model as his sleep is lousy! ).

Other than that, in my experience there are 3 main reasons for ew: teeth, ot and first a time being too short. In the first day you posted, it looks like her first a time was only 2h45 - is that typical? I think that by 9 months most are up to about 3h a time, if not a bit more.

Ot - do you know whether she is low sleep needs or high sleep needs? My dd1 would probably have been ot on the amount of sleep your dd is getting, but she is ridiculously high sleep needs! Dd2 would likely have ended up ot from the length of a to bed time - she is touchy, and therefore we had a lot of issues when her afternoon was too long.

Finally, teeth - this was a big culprit for dd2, and I think is one of the big problems with ds at the moment. Is your dd teething?

As for waking from naps, I always did/do (when I have the option!) as I find the day works so much better if I do. I have found that waking them gets the day into a predictable pattern and it sets their body clocks which makes life easier - it might help you when you get back to work if her body clock is set.

Hope some of this helps - I have just realised that I have rambled on with loads of possibilities!

[Keep Smiling!]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful advice. I haven't really noticed if her naps affect her night time sleep as we have only been getting good naps for about a month now but I will start to keep a little record in case there is a pattern.

I wondered about her nap length, I may try a long am nap and a shorter pm nap, at the moment she goes into her cot at night awake with her mobile on and goes straight to sleep (possibly because she is so tired) so don't want to mess that up by her sleeping too late in the afternoon. I found that if I put her down too early at night, she rolled and chatted and then got OT and couldn't fall asleep. I do worry that if I only let her have a short nap in the afternoon then it may be a long time until bedtime. I suppose this is something I will have to play around with. How long should I try a change before I can expect to see a difference?

She has been teething and her top 2 have just come through but don't think they're bothering her too much at the mo although I could try giving her some nurofen before bed. She isn't waking up in pain though?

I may try leaving her tomorrow and letting her sleep as long as she wants for her naps and see if that makes any difference, how much sleep should she be having at 9.5 months? Then I can try the long/short nap combo the next day. I will also up her a time to 3 hrs as she currently does 2hr 45/50mins so it's not too big a jump.

I'm not sure if she is high or low needs, up until about 8.5 months she was a really poor sleeper and would be awake many times for anywhere up to 1.5 hours and would only have long naps on me, so I realise we are lucky at the mo, I'm just worried about when I go back to work and can't nap when she does!

Thank again for your advice x

[clazzat]

Here is a link to some sample routines - I think they include typical a times and total sleep for the various ages, so hopefully that will give you a bit of guidance. http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=164253.0

If you are going to try to change anything, you should give it a minimum of 3 days, and possibly about 5 to see a difference.

I never felt that mine were in pain at the ews, but there was such a clear link between teething and ews that I was sure that was the cause, yk? Maybe you could try giving some calpol at one of her nws and see if that helps - I did always find that I had to avoid the ew rather than hope to give meds at 5.30 and hope they went back to sleep.

[Keep Smiling!]

We had a brilliant night last night! She went to sleep at 7pm, woke at 11pm for dummy then slept till 6.30am!! Unheard of here! Should I try to stick to the same routine as yesterday? She only had an hour nap in the afternoon and was awake by 3pm. I woke her after 1.25 hrs yesterday morning because we had an appointment but I was going to let her wake naturally at this nap and wake her for the afternoon one?

[Keep Smiling!]

Or should I just let her wake up naturally as she did yesterday? I'm sure last night was a one off but it was lovely!

[clazzat]

Woohoo for the great night! Sometimes all it takes is posting to ask for advice!

I might be inclined to try to recreate what worked yesterday, but I do tend to over-manage things. If you think it would be better to let her wake naturally again then you could give that a go and see what happens. Good luck!

[Keep Smiling!]

Thank you so much!

Think I'll let her wake naturally this morning and then see where that leaves me. As she was up later all her naps will be later so will probably need to wake her at her afternoon nap with a slightly later bedtim if she carries on the pattern from last few days. I'll let you know how we get on!

[Keep Smiling!]

Well here is our EASY from today:

6.30am wake up
6.50am 9oz
9.25am-11am nap 1 (had to wake or other naps would be too late)
12pm lunch
2.10pm-3.10pm nap 2 (had to wake again)
5pm tea
6.50pm 6oz
7.10pm bed (didn't go to sleep)

She rolled and chatted for 30 mins and I eventually had to give her a cuddle and put her back down (and I hope she is going asleep, still waiting outside her room to see!) so everything was pretty much the same as yesterday except she was only up 4hrs when I put her down rather than 4hrs 10m. I can hear her rolling now I have a feeling this is a bad sign for tonight but will update you in the morning!

[clazzat]

Fingers crossed!

[Keep Smiling!]

She did really well! She slept from 7.40pm till 5.15am without a peep. Then woke up chatting, I gave her the dummy (and planned to leave her in her cot until 6am) but she fell back asleep (or was just extremely quiet!) until 6.25am! So going to try the same today, I have just put her in her cot and she's having a little murmur, hopefully she'll have a good nap this morning!

Thank you again for your quick advice!

[clazzat]

That's awesome! Hope it carries on like that.