fixed A or fixed "to bed" time for a 10 mo.

[ele]

My DD is almost 10. She has been always waking in the morning and napping for different lengths of time. I tried putting her on a stricter routine, but she just would one day sleep 30 min nap, next day the same nap would be 1.5 hrs. It is still the same now.
So I had always watched her A time to keep her well rested. The only thing that's is fixed is bed time, by 7. ( earlier if tired). She wakes up between 5:30 and 7 am (usually around 6).
I recently tried to put her on fixed "to bed" for naps time. So it would be 9 and 1 pm with minor adjustments. I wanted to do it for convenience to both of us, so we can have predictable out time and eating time, we can enroll in some classes for her. But it ends up sometimes nonsensical: I don't feel right putting her to bed at 9 if she woke up at 7, nor if she woke at 5:30. This fixed routine didn't really change how she naps (so she doesn't set into a pattern).
I wanted to ask anyone who had been in a similar position and what was the experience. Also I just can't find anything about the "anatomy" of sleep, what is best for babies: fixed time or making sure they have good activitry time.
If I persevere with fixed time can she adjust/fall into pattern? Or how does it change with age?
I am not caught up in what works for me better, but what is optimal for her. On one hand fixed time will make her go to bed too early sometimes, but fixed activity means she always goes to sleep for her naps at a different time. Usually she naps fine, so it is not a concern right now.
I imagine when she is older she can be in bed once, say around 12:30 so then the problem seems to be solved. But I really want to provide optimal environment for her, first year is influential all the way to the grown up age, and she may not reduce her naps to one for a very long time so I don't want to wait.

[nevinsmama]

Hi there. Many Mamas do go with the "Set Naps" method, but it still needs to be within the realm of a reasonable amount of A time within an age appropriate routine.

Here is some info that may help.
Sample routines for your age range
chronological EASY samples, 10-12 months
There is a sticky page somewhere on here on Set Naps but I can't find it for the life of me! I willl keep digging. In the meantime, I would bear in mind that a "typical" A time for a 10 month old is around 4 hours. As you mentioned, laying down at 9 after a 7am wake up doesn't seem right and I would not look for a 10 month old to be sufficiently tired for a good restorative nap after that amount of time.
Hope this helps and I will keep digging for that sticky...

[ele]

Thank you for the reply, I hope you can find that link you mention.
We actually are now getting the 10 month old second nap refusal (she is 10 this Friday to be exact). So I will do just that, increase gradually A. Hopefully this will solve the issue.

[ele]

Also, I would love to have set naps times, but is it something that can be applied for the lo who wakes up in the morning and from naps always at different times? This is exactly my question whether one can do it for the baby, is it good for her and how to do it. I have tried to set her on "routines" or schedules since early on, but she doesn't develop a pattern of sleep that I can work around.

[nevinsmama]

This is from our Toddler Sleep section, but at  10 months and 2 naps, I find it applicable as well. Set naps for toddlers: Why, How and When

Is LO at all reasonable to being woken at the same time every day or do you prefer letting her wake? I think you could still do "set within reason" say working around a "typical" A time but with 30 minutes wiggle room if you really want it set a a certain time for logistical reasons.

I personally didn't do set naps until we were on 1 nap a day, but as far as it being "good" for them? I think whatever  gives them sufficient A time to get a restorative 2 cycle nap is the most reasonable answer for that...hope this helps!

That said, if LO settles in to a consistent clock time and is happy on waking and it works for you, then go for it. I would give it a GOOD week to see if it is the way you want to go.

[ele]

I'd like to wake her up at 7 . We used to do it when she was little and slept in, but now she wakes up anything between 5:30 and 7 (more often closer to 6 than 7) and I just hope that eventually she'll settle into anything on a later side rather than wake her up say at 6 and set a precedent for that time. I try to not feed her before 6:30 but she would still wake up earlier. Any time she sleeps a bit later I am so happy to sleep in.
Just to confirm, you also had your lo on fixed A time until much later?

[nevinsmama]

Yes, I did, ( maybe around 15 months?)  but another set of eyes here has a LO closer to yours and is going to jump in with some advice on this as well. 

[trimbler]

Hey, I'm not sure if Maryn meant me, but I have another set of eyes and a LO closer in age to yours than hers, so here I am

Well, we've gone for kind of set naps from around 10/11mo, actually earlier with the first nap for DD, due to school runs. So both of mine would wake at variable times, but I kind of trained them to hang out in the cot for a bit until our 'official' WU time, so although they'd be awake, it would still be down time. We then fixed the timing of the first nap so that it was the same every day, regardless of the actual WU time - ie when we/CM got back from school. By about 10mo we needed to cap the first nap for DS so that he only did one sleep cycle, ie 45mins, otherwise we couldn't seem to get a decent pm nap out of him whatever we did. DD still had a longer first nap at that age. But the nice thing was that once we were into nap capping in the morning, we could pretty much rely on a consistent am nap, and start to fix the pm nap too. BT would depend on how the pm nap went - and still does, for DD. Does that make sense at all? Not that you have to do it this way, I know that the short am, long pm nap approach doesn't work for all LOs, but we had to do it to work around everything else, and whilst it hasn't worked perfectly, it's helped me to have some sort of structure to the day

So an example sleep routine for DS around 10mo would have been something like:

0630 Up (may have actually woken earlier)
0930 - 1010 Nap (capped - we had to gradually reduce this over time)
1-3 Nap (not always this long, 2h was our ideal and I'd try to resettle if he woke earlier as he seemed to need a nice long one)
7ish BT (depending on how the day went)

If you want to start the day at 7 then just shift the whole thing by  half an hour Of course yours may need different A times etc, this is only to give you an idea. If you post a recent day we can put our heads together and  think about what sort of A times might work for you, you may already have an idea...

[ele]

Thank you!

Our routine looks somewhat like this.
6 am WU 6:30 BF
7:30 breakfast
9 am nap till 10/10:30
10/10:30 BF
12:30 lunch
13:00/13:30 nap till 14/14:30/15 then BF
17:00 dinner
18:30 BF
19 bed ( bedtime adjusted if shorter nap)

I am beginning to gradually move the A time by 15 min (3:15 total A) since we are JUST beginning to refuse second nap. Yesterday she didn't go to sleep till 15:00 although she was in bed by 13: 40. Ughhhh. So today I will try to cap first nap to 1 hr and bring second A time back to 3 hrs.

[nevinsmama]

Hey, I'm not sure if Maryn meant me, but I have another set of eyes and a LO closer in age to yours than hers, so here I am 

Yes, and thank you! Great advice.

[lily_layne]

I haven't read all the posts but thought I'd pop on as I have a similar-aged LO. I have been doing set naps since 6 months and all was good until 10 months when he started being silly with his pm nap. Thanks to advice from the ladies here, I capped the am nap and pulled the pm nap earlier. Our day (at 11 months) looks like this:
WU: Between 615 and 7
S: 930/945-10/1015
S: 1/115-3/330
BT: 7 (earlier if the pm nap ended before 3)

At 10 months, capping the first nap at 45 minutes may work better than 30.