It's so bad

[Emami]

How do you try and settle her at night?

Mostly leave her to it. If she starts crying it's usually because she's got stuck sideways, although she's not doing this as much as she was.  So I'll go in and reposition her and leave, then she's usually quiet for a while and I'll think she's going back to sleep but she doesn't.  She shouts a bit and ends up crying so at that point I go in and bounce /jiggle her butt a bit.  She immediately goes still and quiet but as soon as I stop her head pops up, so I end up doing it until she's all the way back asleep. The whole process usually takes about 1.5hrs.  The rest of the time she is an independent sleeper, but she never resettles at night.

She is generally getting around 2hrs of sleep in naps, mostly a 1.5hr and a half hr.  She is perfectly happy with that and doesn't seem tired during the day.  At the moment I would say a typical day goes like this:
WU 7:30 (following a long NW)
Nap 11-12:30
Nap 4-4:30
BT 7:30
Would you push the first A time?  I don't think I can do longer before bed after a 30min nap.  I'm hoping she gets to one nap soon but I don't think she could handle it yet.  There have been a couple of times that she's done a 2hr+ first nap and not woken until after 1pm.  With DD1 I wouldn't have bothered with a pm CN and just done EBT, but that doesn't work for Annabel so I forced the CN.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Hmm since she settles well herself otherwise but not at night it really makes me think she is ut. Perhaps more morning A time and a wee bit shorter first nap, with an eye to slowly bringing the catnap back so they eventually become one?  Lol or do like me and just jump cold turkey into things (DD3 started refusing her catnap so we just dropped it).

[Emami]

Yep, I think it may end up being a cold turkey jump whether by choice or not because I can see her refusing the pm nap in the not to distant future. With DD1 I mostly did short am long pm, but I think with Annabel if I capped the first nap too much I'd just end up with two bad naps.

I have fully accepted that she is not like her sister (I guess it would be greedy to have two kids who sleep 12hr nights and 2hr naps ), but having experienced a HSN baby I am having a hard time realising how little sleep a LSN baby can get by on. It just doesn't seem like enough to me!  It's made me tend to think she must be OT rather than UT, but I have probably been in denial lol.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Oh I know! DD3 is 5 years younger than DD2 and 7 years younger than DD1 and gets the same or less sleep than they do in 24 hours and that is all she needs. So crazy! Was really odd trying to mesh the LSN with BW as the older two were more average and suited normal A times. It just felt wrong having her drop naps super early!

[michaeljacknnugg]

Trust me, it becomes a bonus once you get your head around it. I'm hoping for another lsn one so that we can get through the nap stage quickly.

Maybe keep her going just a touch longer than you think she can handle, and see how she does. And if you look at your logs and add up her total sleep in any one 24hr period, does that give you a different perspective on how much she needs? At the nap-dropping stage, when I couldn't see the wood for the trees (too tired) I ended up taking my log to work and plugging it into a spreadsheet to make a graph. Sad I know, but it quickly convinced me that he only needed 11hrs of sleep a day and those hours were best as a block i.e. at night.

[Emami]

Oh I don't mind her being LSN at all, I just can't seem to get the sleep consolidated to get the longest nights I can.  With DD1 I loved nap time and wasn't thrilled when the 1-0 came, with Annabel I can't wait until she's done napping! It's such a pain!

Last night we got to an 8pm BT and I was feeling quite optimistic that if she did 10.5/11hrs we'd get to a 6:30/7 WU.  But no, she woke up at 5:45! I got her back to sleep at 6:45, and the she woke up again at 7 Usually after she resettles she'll do at least another hour. But since she was resting at least during that time I'm thinking I'll do nap at 10? If I count WU from 5:45 that's definitely longer than I think she can handle, but it's not too too short from 7am either.

This is the thing that still makes me question her being UT though - her night WU is often after 9.5/10hrs and comes in the early hours of the morning, which is usually OT right?

[michaeljacknnugg]

I don't think it ever was for us. Just the way he was iyswim.

[Emami]

Ok. I'm going to stop second guessing it all and go with the theory that she's LSN and UT.  She did nap longer yesterday so I guess that accounts for the shorter night - thinking about it she still got just about 13hrs total.

So I know it was a while ago for you Helen, but do you remember what M was doing at around 8/9 months? And Heidi, how did E's day look when she was this age and you pushed her to one nap? Did you still stick to the 8pm BT?

Annabel just about made it to 10 this morning for her nap and it was the most tired I've seen her. She was getting cranky and rubbing her eyes which she doesn't usually, so I guess I've been putting her down before she needs it, and possibly means she could do a one nap day here and there depending on WU time.

[michaeljacknnugg]

All I know is that he was on 2 naps at that point, but with a lot of very EWs. He dropped to 1 nap around 13mo I think, because he was regularly up between 5 and 5.30. He's still an early bird now but thankfully makes it past 6 most days!

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

8 pm has been E's bedtime since birth really, she cam programmed that way lol. It works with the big sisters bedtime so never shifted it and the very few times I have tried ebt she stays awake until 8 anyways. When we went to one nap she was getting up at 7/7:30, nap at 12:30 (longest she ever did was 2 hrs nap, quickly cut back to 1.5 hours) and bed at 8.

[Emami]

Thanks both of you x