Inconsistent 14 month old

[lilac83]

Lately M's sleep has varied largely from day to day. Some days she'll only sleep about 11.5 hours total in 24 and other days she'll sleep up to 13.5! It seems like it cycles, with 2-3 shorter days, then a long catch up day followed by a few average days. The problem is her mood by the 2nd and 3rd shorter days is awful. I have no idea how to break out of this cycle. Yesterday was a catch up day. She slept 2.5 hours at nap, 11.5 hours at night but now today it's 1:15pm and she has yet to fall asleep (been playing in her crib for over an hour!).

I don't even know if there's a way to get her a more consistent amount of sleep per day but I thought I'd throw this question out there and see if anyone else has any experience or advice with this.

Here's what an average day looks like:

6:30 - wake up
12:00 - nap
1:30 - wake
7:30 - asleep for night

A less than average day usually subtracts about 30 minutes from night sleep (up earlier) and 30 minutes from nap.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Sorry you got missed Robin! Are any of those time set times? We have set nap & bedtimes but a bit more fluid wake up times. However our day rarely goes over 12 hours!

[lilac83]

Hi Heidi, thanks for replying.

She has set nap and bedtime but I never wake her up. Nap she gets laid down at noon and bedtime she gets laid down at 7:20. Something is up though (best guess molars since the tips of 3 are cutting) because for the last almost week it's been taking her 30-45 minutes to fall asleep at nap and about 30 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime. There's absolutely no connection to what gets her to sleep well. I tried 5hr A time for awhile a month ago and thought maybe I was getting somewhere as she took two 2 hour naps that week, but then she went back to a 45 minute nap and a bunch of 1hr 20min. She seems to average about 12 hrs total sleep, 10.75/11 at night and 1.25/1 during the day. The thing is, I don't think she's OT. She doesn't fall asleep in the car, isn't exceptionally crabby most days (after a few low sleep days she does get crabby) and hasn't been rubbing her eyes and yawning. I know you have said that E is low sleep needs. What does her routine look like nowadays? I'm just hoping to find something stable where M can fall asleep in 15 minutes and get a consistent amount of sleep so she can stop the low sleep days, may not happen though.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

E is really low sleep needs...our routone for quite some time has been this:

7:00 ish wake up (varies, I don't wake her anymore as she was doing 6:45 am regularly)
1:00 nap for an hour
8:00 bedtime

So a total of 12 hours, sometimes less if she wakes early in the am. Totally out the window the last few days as she has a bad cold. I am in her room with the light on and she still has not stirred from her nap, going on 2.5 hours now! We also find she neds tons of physical activity to get a really good nights sleep. She has complete tantrums if we try to put her to bed UT.

[lilac83]

That routine is really close to what M is doing. Luckily M doesn't throw tantrums, she just plays around in bed until she falls asleep in the most awkward position possible . I'm hesitant to push her nap later since she's already averaging about 6 hours A time by the time she falls asleep. I've tried putting her to bed earlier at night but she either plays up until normal bedtime or falls asleep but then wakes earlier the next morning, still only getting about 11 hours of sleep. After a few times of that I gave up and kept bedtime around 7:30. I guess the thing that throws me off are the random catch up days she has, all of a sudden she'll do 13+ hours of sleep in a day which makes me think maybe she's not getting enough overall and her routine does need some tweaking.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Lol at weird positions, Masyn sleeps like that too! Elliotte not so much. Hmm not really anywhere to go with tweaking, perhaps the extra sleep days are just her way of dealing with it. Masyn used to chat a lot (ok she still does!) when falling asleep. I think if I remember right she used to take 15-20 min to settle herself down.