45 min/25 min naps & starting to EW...adjust A? 2-1 help?

[mommykay410]

Hi,

My LO will be 1 in two weeks and has been sleeping through the night consistently from ~8-7 for about 3 weeks now.  There have been a couple nights in the past week when she woke up around 12 and would not go back to sleep for 1.5-2 hours.  And the past few days she has only been sleeping for 45-50 minutes for her morning nap, which is normally at least an hour, and 25 minutes for her afternoon nap.  Now she also seems to be waking earlier in the morning and getting less and less sleep.  I'm sure some of it is related to teething, and I'm sure some of it is related to the 2-1 transition...just not sure what I should do to extend her naps so she can get more sleep.  She has been at 4+ hr A time for awhile now.  Right now she is definitely OT from only sleeping a little over an hour yesterday and a little over 9 hours last night.      I am going back to work next week after being off for the past year, and would really like to make sure this is sorted out before then.  She already has severe separation anxiety (even cries when dad tried to pick her up if I am around) so that is not helping.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Here is her EASY from the yesterday:
6:50 WU
7:25 nurse
8:30 breakfast
10:35 snack
11:00 - 11:50 nap
12:30 lunch and milk in sippy
3:00 snack
4:10-4:35 nap
5:15 dinner and milk in sippy
7:20 nurse and fell asleep ~7:40
8:05 down in crib - 11:50 woke up crying because of gas
12:05 nurse one side
1:20-6:30 sleep

[lauradj]

It does sound to me like she might be ready for one nap.  Have you found our 2-1 thread?  It's been a lifesaver for lots of moms, it lets you know you're not alone amidst all the craziness!  Tracy has a plan to move your child from 2-1 naps in about a week but I know many of us have taken longer and others just went cold turkey.  If your LO can make it to 11, why don't you try to push it to 11:30 and then let her have an uncapped nap until she wakes?  I would probably suggest you feed her lunch before her nap so nothing interrupts that, hopefully, long nap. 
In our particular case, DS1 was down to 1 nap at 12 months but we had horrible EW's as we transitioned because we kept moving bed time around depending on how long he napped.  We found once we went back to his usual bed time, everything ironed out quickly.  DS2 is 12.5 months and still on two naps but it is very plain he needs that sleep or night time is a disaster!

[mommykay410]

Thank you for your reply!  I kept her up for 4hr 15min today before her morning nap instead of 4hs, so she fell asleep at 10:45 and slept for an hour and 10 mins, so that was back to normal.  I don't cap her first nap unless she sleeps past 12:30, which is only if she had a rough night and I let her sleep in later.  Her afternoon nap today though was only 20 minutes from 4:25-4:45 and she did not wake up happy and is rubbing her eyes and cranky already at 5:30.  I can take the catnap in the pm as long as she has at least an hour am nap.  I will see if the little bit longer A time helps again, as that is what I've needed to do in the past when she starting waking early from her first nap.  I really don't want to move right to one nap at the moment with me going back to work next week because she will be even more of a mess than she is already going to be.  But I can keep pushing her A time and see if she eventually sleeps long enough for one nap.  I do keep her bedtime pretty consistent, nursing her around 7:30 and having her down in her crib by 8.  Where can I find Tracy's plan for 2-1?  I will check out the 2-1 thread as well.  If I were to give her lunch before her first nap, should I not give her a morning snack at all then?  There wouldn't be enough time to give her breakfast, snack, and lunch all before her nap. 

[lauradj]

The timing of lunch etc. is really up to you.  I think I tried to do quite a big snack with DS1 in the morning and I gave him his lunch when he woke from his nap.  At some point, I think when he was able to stay up until noon, I started feeding him his lunch before his nap.  Is your LO heading into day care?  It might be helpful to find out what their napping routine is and try to sync your routine with theirs.  It can help make for a smoother transition.

[mommykay410]

She will be staying at home with my father-in-law until June when I am off for the summer, then going to daycare in August when I start teaching again.  I will definitely be transitioning her to daycare's schedule over the summer, at which point she will have to be on one nap.  For now I can transition her slowly.  Last night was better...she cried around 12 but went back to sleep on her own, and woke up at 6:40 this morning.  The 4h15min morning A time extension seems to have done the nap trick for right now, so hopefully it was just an issue for a few days.

[lauradj]

That's great news, and what a wonderful opportunity for your DD and FIL to spend some quality time together.  They are both very fortunate. 

[mommykay410]

Well we had one good day, and she hasn't woken up in the middle of the night the past two nights.  But yesterday she did not take her afternoon nap at all because she woke up later in the morning so she didn't go down for it until after 5 and wouldn't fall asleep.  I tried to get her down for bed earlier then, but she fell asleep while nursing at bedtime and didn't go into her crib til 8 then anyways.  Today she only took a 30 minute morning nap and is currently fighting sleep for her afternoon nap as I type this, so I'll be heading up to pat/rock shortly    I'm guessing I should push her A time again to 4h30min instead of 4h15min?  I'm still not sure we'll be able to go completely to one nap because she only sleeps for an hour for her morning nap, which would be from 11/11:30-12/12:30 and then she'd have a really long A time to bed, which she struggles with in the evening.  EBT has never really worked in my favor because she can't seem to sleep longer than 11h30min max at night, and it's usually closer to 10h30min total night sleep.  If she wakes up earlier than 6:45am it messes us all up.  Thoughts? 

[lauradj]

I agree with you, keep pushing out that morning A time in 15min increments until you can get her to noon and then ditch the afternoon nap all together.  There might be a week or so of adjustment where things go a little sideways and then she'll find her groove.  To me it really does sound like she's ready for 1 nap, but the process of getting her there takes time.

[mommykay410]

Ok, I will shoot for 4.5 hrs tomorrow morning and hopefully that works.  I ended up having to rock her to sleep just now, which took a half hour and she only slept for 10 minutes on me because she woke crying as soon as I tried to lay her in her crib.     So that's a total of 40 minutes daytime sleep today...ugh. 

[mommykay410]

I forgot to ask...should I let her sleep as long as she wants for her morning nap as I push her A time, or should I cap it so there is possibly enough time to try for an afternoon nap?

[lauradj]

I always cap the morning nap at 45mins but the afternoon one I let DS sleep until he's ready to wake.  Sometimes he naps for 2.5-3hrs but usually it's about 2hrs. With DS1 I did the long morning nap and the capped afternoon nap.  Whichever works best for you 

[mommykay410]

Ok, I think I will let her sleep long for am and cap pm if she ends up taking it.  That's pretty much what I've been doing.  Yesterday with 4.5 A time she napped for 1hr25min in the morning but then didn't end up taking a second nap since it was already 5:00 when I laid her down.  If I cap her first nap, there's a good chance she still won't end up taking her afternoon one and then will be majorly lacking on day sleep.  I wish she would nap for 2+hours!  But she's been doing 1 hour in the morning and 1/2 hour in the afternoon, so I can't really expect her to nap too much longer than that total, otherwise I'm sure night sleep will be compromised.

[lauradj]

Honestly, that's exactly how it went with DS1.  It drove me nuts and eventually I just had to drop the CN in the afternoon because it was messing up bed time.  That may be why he transitioned faster than DS2...

[mommykay410]

If I can get her to sleep longer in the morning, I am definitely going to drop the afternoon nap because I spend more time trying to get her to sleep than she sleeps for it, and she gets herself so worked up trying to go down for that one too.  Today she only napped for 50 minutes in the morning though and wouldn't take an afternoon nap, so she was up from 12:10 til bedtime, which she fell asleep 5 minutes into nursing at 7:15.  I don't want to rush to push her A time any further just yet though because today it seemed like she was going to fall asleep in her highchair while she was eating snack an hour before naptime.  I'm worried what she will end up doing with nap tomorrow since it's my first day back at work and the first time my MIL will be putting her down for nap.   

[lauradj]

Don't rush it hon, it took me a month to transition my first.  Let her hang out at this A time for a bit and maybe move her 15minutes further next week, or maybe wait another week.  I found that, for whatever reason, once my son was able to stay awake until 11:30am, he was able to stay awake until 12:30/1, if that makes sense.  I guess that was his personal hurdle?  He'd crash hard at 12:30 but up until then he was happy as Larry.