do you cap your nap?

[haribo89]

I try to keep my 13 month old on one nap as much as possible,  she appears to be LSN. Only getting 1.5hr nap and 10-10.5 a night. 2 nights ago she slept 11hrs to our surprise, then napped 3!! We woke her at 3hrs because we were worried she wouldn't sleep at night if slept any longer.  Yet 3hrs was still to much by tbe looks of things, last night she had less thsn 9 hours, waking for 1.5 hrs then every 30 min after that, yet shes still woke happy? Could her rubbish night be because of her nap ? Should I cap it at 2 hrs if she does it again?

[haribo89]

I take it back, happiness was short lived. :-( I think it will need to be a 2 nap day to prevent OTness.

[cath~]

L is also LSN and we were capping her nap from around 17months I think (she never really napped longer than 1hr30 before then anyway).

We found that longer naps stole more from her night sleep than she gained from the nap (we didn't get NWs but did get BT resistance -> late BT and EWs if nap was too long.
If we let her nap too long we got short night and got into OT/UT mess.
From 18-30 months we gradually shaved more and more off the nap to keep nights as long as possible (for us BT resistance was the sign we needed to cap the nap a bit more). She dropped it completely at 30 months.

From what I've read on here there seems to be huge variation in whether long naps or capped naps are best and it just seems to depend on the LO (and perhaps also a bit on what the parent prefers eg if they are ok with a later BT).

Once we started capping, we found if L seemed more tired on some days it was better to offer EBT than let her nap longer as that just backfired and we got a shorter night.

You asked if her rubbish night could be due to long nap and yes, I think it could. However , I would also consider if anything else is going on (eg illness or teething) which might have caused her to nap longer in the first place and then poss have trouble sleeping.

[haribo89]

thanks for your input cathn, everything ive read previously claims that you shouldnt cap the nap when on one nap at such a young age but i cant see how it would hurt aslong as its not capped at a very low amount. I doubt that she will do such a long nap again but its good to be prepared, just in case! I thought she must of been ill too, like i said she also done a good 11hr night sleep before it which is a good hour more than normal for her. However she was fine in herself, no fever, didnt seem in pain with her gums. Only slight difference was we spent a lot more time out running around in the park, im wondering if she just has a lot of physical energy and i need to do more physically demanding things with her to tire her out and get her having longer nights, i dont know where she gets it from! lol

[cath~]

thanks for your input cathn, everything ive read previously claims that you shouldnt cap the nap when on one nap at such a young age but i cant see how it would hurt aslong as its not capped at a very low amount.

I think the advice is not to cap it every day at such a young age (although I know of at least one mum on here who had to do that from somewhere around 1 yr, but I think that tends to be an exceptional case) but if you only do it occasionally to prevent monster naps causing nighttime troubles, then that's prob ok. 

If her 'natural' nap length is usually around 1hr30 and this routine is working fine for you then of course I wouldn't cap this.  But 3hrs is a whopper nap so prob ok to cap at say 2hrs if nap gets really long again.  However, you'll of course have to judge how well your LO seems and if it is because there is something up and LO does actually need more sleep then you could do EBT to compensate.  Does that make sense?

Physical exercise helps lots of LOs sleep more so it could have been that.  It can be tricky to have time for so much each day though although the nights can be lovely afterwards