I have posted on this forum many times about my now 13 month old who is very low sleep needs as I'm always trying to get him to sleep more. Well, he's outdone himself now and has been refusing naps at any time of the day for a week and the last 2 days he's had no day sleep at all
He's actually handling it extremely well, is happy, playing independently and going to bed fine at night and sleeping around 11 - 11.25 hours. But surely that can't last?! In fact I'm just lying here now wondering if he's going to go back to sleep again after waking from a 10hr 45 night, so perhaps he's started shortening his nights already.
A bit about him. He's definitely has lower than average sleep needs. Until about 1yr old he averaged 12hrs sleep in 24. Sometimes we'd get 12.5 hours but every week we'd get 2hr long nws at around 3am and most nights he'd cry out at least once but resettle himself so on average he had less. After his birthday we toughened up on WIWO at night, and he simultaneously started sleeping better at night and shortening his naps in the day. I'm not sure which came first. He seemed to drop his overall sleep needs a bit more too and now does 11.5hrs in 24 It's sort of spiralled from there. Naps continued to shorten til they got down to 45-50 minutes, then he started fighting them and now he's had 2 days at nursery where they've tried every trick they know to get him to sleep and he just won't.
What confuses me is that he doesn't NORMALLY fight naps if he's OT. He usually just passes out once he's in bed. But he must be getting OT by now?! He's an independent sleeper as well, but has twice almost fallen asleep on my husband this week, but then refused to sleep in the cot. He's had one day when he had a broken but long sleep in the car but otherwise it's been one very short nap a day all week which we've had to fight for, or which he's had in the car.
How on earth do I deal with this? He usually wakes any time between 5.45 and 6.30, depending on when BT was. 11hrs is about the most he'll do at night so I try not to pd before 6.45, but normally BT is 7.30. His nap used to be set at 12.15 cos anything earlier gave short naps but this week I've tried everything from 10am to 2.30pm.
Is it possible he's trying to drop his nap??!! It sounds crazy to me, though I have heard of babies doing that before from his age, so not impossible. A friend at work had a very HSN son and then her daughter stopped napping just after her first birthday, and instead would just take a short nap every now and again on the go or during quiet time. Apparently my brother and I stopped napping very early too. OR is he hugely OT and just handling it very well?! If so, how do I fix it?!
