How do you enforce the gro clock

[Eva's Mummy]

No sorry honey on a Mon wed, thu she goes to the childminder in the morning then has her nursery session in the afternoon so no nap.  Then she catches up the days she's at home which are a tue, Fri , Sat, sun xx

[trimbler]

Oh yes sorry that's what I thought at first - it was your comment about DD2 that confused me as I thought you were talking about DD1 - sorry! How's it going?

[Eva's Mummy]

5am  told her it was still night time she had to go back to sleep. This basically went an every 10mins until 6 when I put her twinkle lights on and gave her some books and that bought me 20 mins.

This morning she said she was crying cos she is scared of the dark. She's never said this before, and when she goes to sleep she doesn't want me leaving any lights on. So not sure if its just another excuse.

So today was a CM/nursery day. Its been 5:00 - 18:40 she shattered but we will see what the morning brings. I guess this will take a while to fix.

[trimbler]

Oh dear that sounds tiring Keep posting what happens and perhaps that will help us both to see patterns... What time did she go to bed the night before waking at 5am?

That's interesting that she mentioned being afraid of the dark, perhaps that's something to discuss with her during the daytime? Doesn't the gro clock give out a fair amount of light? It would be interesting if you could get a bit more out of her as to what she's worried about. It's quite common at this age I think - certainly my DS, who always needed pitch black to sleep, decided around this age that he needed a night light , which is partly why we bought our gro clock, actually!

[Eva's Mummy]

The morning she woke at 5 she went to bed at 19:40. Yesterday was a nnd so it was 5:00 - 18:40 and wu was 5:55.

That's actually a good point about the gro clock  cos we gave the light turned right off cos she never liked it.  Maybe it's time to try in back on.
I'm just shattered right now
 It's so hard to get your brain in gear with lack of sleep.

This morning she's lying on the sofa sating she's tired at 7:30

[Eva's Mummy]

Well all bets are off just now. She had a urine infection.

[Eva's Mummy]

Trying to get to grips with this so I'm going to log to see how it looks if that's ok.


WU 5:30    Nap 13:25-14:55(1hr 30mins)   BT 19:20
WU 6:10    BT 18:40                                                   
WU 6:30    BT 18:35                                                   ONS 11hrs 50mins
WU 5:50    Nap 13:20-15:10(1hr 50mins)    BT 19:25   ONS 11hrs 15mins
WU 6:20    Nap 13:20-15:00(1hr 40mins)    BT 19:45   ONS 10hrs 55mins   
WU 6:15    Nap 13:20-14:50(1hr 30mins)    BT19:35    ONS 10hrs 30mins   
WU 5:00    BT 18:40                                                   ONS 9hrs 25mins     
WU 5:55    Nap 13:40-15:20(1hr 40mins)     BT19:55   ONS 11hrs 15mins
WU 5:35    BT 18:45                                                   ONS 9hrs 40mins     

[trimbler]

Oh dear poor thing hope she's better soon

(((Hugs))) all those early starts must be getting to you, they'd certainly be making me tired! Thanks for that log, I'm sorry I don't think I'm alert enough right now to take it all in but will certainly have a proper look next time I'm on, it's often really useful to see it laid out like that so I'll let you know if anything comes to mind...

[clazzat]

TBH, I think you might need to push bedtime later to get a later wake up.  Apart from the couple of short nights, she is averaging about 12h sleep (or more) which is at the upper end of what you would expect for a 3 year old - 10-12h.  On the days when she naps, she probably needs a longer A before she is tired enough to stay asleep past 5.30.

[trimbler]

Oh dear I've just written loads and deleted it all, basically I agree with clazzat I came to the conclusion that she probably needs at least 12h A time, so just what clazzat said but the other way around but I think she'll need to be able to catch up a bit after really short nights or two consecutive nursery days - just as you did on that first of three napping days you posted above, that seemed to work well, whereas on the last napping day you posted she probably needed more of a catch up (ie longer nap or earlier BT) but she didn't get that and may have then done an OT short night, wdyt?

Since she seems to handle 12.5h NNDs pretty well, I do wonder whether more like 12.5h would work better for napping days too, but with a 1.5h nap that doesn't make for a very long night, so I'm wondering if things might work better if you shortened that nap further...wdyt? Do you always wake her? I'm thinking something along the lines of a 13h day with a 1h nap to start with, perhaps set BT at 7am and then if her WU gets later ever then BT could gradually be pushed later too? You don't necessarily have to jump straight there, you could try a 1h15 nap first if that feels safer.

Just bear in mind as I said that after two NNDs or a very short night you may want to either let her nap a little longer (but not too long) or give her EBT, I'd probably be inclined to do the former given that she doesn't seem to do particularly long nights - unless of course she doesn't end up napping longer in which case go for a slightly earlier BT.

Sorry I know I'm rambling, does that sound like a workable plan to you at all?

[Eva's Mummy]

sirry its taken so long to get back, we have all been ill here.

Well she is driving me crazy.

Sat BT 19:40 - Nap 1hr BT 19:40 ONS 10hrs 10mins 
Sun WU 5:50 - Nap 1hr BT 19:16 ONS 10hrs 14mins
Mon WU 5:30 - Nap 14:25 - 15:10 45 mins BT 19:35 ONS 10hrs 35mins
Tue WU 6:10 - NO NAP BT 18:55 ONS 10hrs 35 mins
Wed WU 5:30

On monday she refused her nap but i sat her in my bed watching curious geroge and she fell asleep at 14:25

I dont know if she is getting OT or UT?

[clazzat]

Unless you have a really strong reason for believing that she is OT, that looks like ut to me. It is always really hard to tell, but unless she has been very HSN until now, she is getting plenty of sleep in 24 hours so I think that the nap is taking away from her night sleep.

Iiwm, I would probably aim to have more nnds with catch up naps 2-3 times a week. One thing that I found when we were in this cycle was that when I did allow them to nap, I needed to leave them to sleep for as long as they wanted (even when that went way over what I was comfortable with - 3 hours once!) with bt as usual and that kind of reset them so that everything fell back into place again.

Hth!

[Eva's Mummy]

Thanks

I dont have a reason for thinking its OT apart from the fact she is tired in the evening.

She goes to nursery 3 afternoons a week, but can go the 5 i only didnt send her because she still needed those days to nap. So i might start sending her the 5 days and letting her nap at the weekend. Do you think and earlier nap or later nap makes a difference? x

[trimbler]

Oh dear sorry don't want to disagree with clazzat so just think of this as an alternative suggestion and see what you think fits best , ok? I just noticed that she seems to be getting less sleep overall now, and wondered if you could try perhaps setting BT at 7pm for the 1h nap days (not 7am as I see I wrote earlier -duh!), just because she was doing more like 11h nights before with 1.5h naps, and now everything seems to be getting shorter. Keep the 12.5h NNDs if you can, or perhaps 12h if the second consecutive NND, seemed to work for her before?

How is she acting in the mornings now when she wakes?

[Eva's Mummy]

so im confused, i dont really know how this nap dropping goes. But yesterday was another NND

WU 5:30 BT 18:30

and this morning she woke at 4:30!!! this is unheard of for her.

I did however manage to get her back to sleep after 30 mins she was very tired and she woke then at 6:50 

So would you say this means she is OT?

Usually when she wakes in the morning she is not bad, but i refuse to take her downstarirs so she just sits in our room on the bed watching cbeebies witha a drink of milk until 6:30 when we start getting ready so its hard to tell.