10 mo napping advice

[roimata9]

hi everyone,
I'm having some issues fitting two naps into my 10mo's day - but there's no way he's ready just for one!
I have an older child who is at preschool in the mornings so I've been encouraging him to have a long am nap and a short pm nap as often we are home in the morning and out in the afternoon.
He is getting harder and harder to get to sleep in the afternoons, so his pm nap is getting later and later. Strangely he only manages a short A time in the morning, but his A time in between naps can be reaaaaaalllllly long
Generally he wakes between 6 and 6:30, and has his first nap at 9am for 1.5 - 2 hours (I wake him after two hours. So his first A time is only 2.5-3 hours and he'll be up between 10:30 and 11. I try to put him down for his pm nap after 3.5 hours A time, but he doesn't go down well. Yesterday for example he woke at 10:30 and didn't get to sleep for his pm nap until 4 - so an A time of 5.5 hours!!!!!
I then feel like I need to wake him after around 40 minutes to preserve his bedtime, but feel like he needs more day sleep than he is getting.
Any tips?

[lily_layne]

If he's doing 1.5-2h+40min that's actually a decent amount of day sleep for a 10 month old. So you could keep on with what you're doing - basically a long am nap and pm CN. I had similar silliness with DS at 10 months and I opted to cap the am nap so that he would sleep at the same time as his sister in the pm. I capped the nap around 45m-1h to start and did the next nap 3/3.5 hrs later.

He is in the early stages of the 2-1. Here's a good link:
From 2 to 1 nap transition (10-12m and older)

[sunflower321]

Yeah I would be pretty happy with what you're doing. Long morning and short afternoon nap sounds normal enough.

[roimata9]

An interesting update.
He's been sleeping really badly at night and I went to see a sleep expert who said it sounded like allergies/intolerances. He had problems when he was tiny when I had high histamine foods, and lots of the things he was eating were high histamine. So I've put him on a low histamine diet, his night sleep has gotten HEAPS better, and the last three days he's fallen asleep for his PM nap after a shorter A time!
Today he woke at 7am, slept from 9:30-10:45 and then 2:30 (and is still asleep now at 3:15)
Yesterday he woke at 6:30, napped from 9-10:30 then second nap was at 2.
So I think he must have been uncomfortable or had a sore tummy or something.

[lily_layne]

It sure sounds like he was uncomfortable. That's great you were able to figure it out. I'm just curious (and since it may help others on here) what are some examples of low and high histamine foods?

[roimata9]

Sure! Histamines are tricky! It's best to get a list to guide you, but basically most fresh foods are low histamine. Anything that is aged, cured, fermented, smoked, long cooked or reheated develops histamines. Many people get allergy type symptoms from them and often people with seasonal allergies find they improve with a low histamine diet as it reduces the overall allergy load. Some fresh foods are high though like eggs, avocado, banana.

[lily_layne]

That's really interesting? Does using a slow cooker (cooking for 8-9 hours) increase histamines? My DD has seasonal allergies and I wonder if it would help to be mindful of what she eats.

[roimata9]

Yes slow cooking increases histamines. I tend to use my pressure cooker instead now, and if I'm wanting to store things I make in that, I put them into the freezer as soon as they are luke warm.

[roimata9]

This is the most helpful list I've found:
http://www.mastzellaktivierung.info/downloads/foodlist/21_FoodList_EN_alphabetic_withCateg.pdf

[lily_layne]

Thanks!