Problems with 3-2 transition

[Jennifer1978]

Hello everyone. First post here but a long time follower of Baby whisperer Used it with my first child and have had my little girl on it now since she was a month old. She is now 7.5 months and we are having trouble with 2 a 2 nap schedule. She is a very very good sleeper and at this point can either do 2 or 3 naps during the day. Always settles easy and as long as her wake times are enough will still do a cat nap without to much fuss but I have noticed a pattern and its causing some trouble. I have her wake times settled at 3 hours 15 minutes for first wake time and 3 hours 30 minutes before second nap. First nap is about 1.5 hours. Second nap can be anywhere from 45 minutes-2 hours. If its 45 minutes I do a third nap if it streches then we do 2 naps for the day. The problem I am having though is if she does 2 naps the first half of her night sleep is really restless. Tossing and turning for first few hours and then she will settle well and extending her night sleep overall and getting an extra half to an hour of sleep. On the days her naps run short and I have to do three we are plagued with early wakeups ranging from a half hour to 45 minutes early. Total sleep on a 3 nap day runs about 13 hours 45 minutes while total sleep on a 2 nap day runs 14.5-15.5 hours. Any ideas on what can be done because we seem stuck at this point. Is she mature enough for 2 naps or do I hold on to 3 and deal with early wakeups in the hopes as her wake time stretches a bit more she will settle better the first half of the night?

[creations]

Hello and welcome to BW forums

Most 6 month old move to 2 naps so I'd say you are ready to just go to 2.
If you are finding that there is extra time in the day on 2 naps then you may need to extend the A time a bit so that you don't end up with a long time before BT in the evening.  But it looks like she could do with a bit longer before nap 2 anyway if they length is unpredictable.  A 45 min nap is usually UT (under tired) so increasing the A time should help you get a more consistent longer nap which will avoid the need for a third nap.

It's okay if the first A is shorter than the second if that's what she does well on.  You might find though that if there is early waking then increasing the first A by maybe 10 mins could help to discourage earlier waking in the morning.

Watch out for the length of the last A time before BT, if this is too long or too short it can lead to the restlessness you have described in the early part of the sleep.  If needed do EBT (early bed time).

hope this helps.
Let us know how you get on

[Jennifer1978]

Thank you Creations that has helped me a lot. The last 3 days I have been able to get 2 really good naps out of her. My schedule has looked like this
Awake 7
Nap at 10
Awake littel after 12
Nap 3:30 (3.5 hours after nap) for a little over 2 hours
Bedtime 7:30

The issue I am having now are incredably restless nights. Just terrible overnight for the quality of sleep we were getting before. No early awakes in the morning as long as she eats wells over night. I actually trialed a catnap of 15 minutes one night just to see what happened and while it was hard for her to fall asleep the restlessness completely disappeared. So it seems at this point she really cant do much more than about 1 hour 40 minutes before bed without problems. This is typical of her pattern since she was born. Firat awake for her wil be average then it increases for each nap after except that last window which has always been short for her age. I tried rolling her bedtime back a half hour to shprten it and she wakes up earlier so its a longer day and bedtime will just keep rolling back if you allow it. Any ideas on what I can do? Last week I tried increasing first awake time by 15 minutes and she shorted her nap and didnt make even 3 hours for second awake because she was really tired.

[creations]

Hi, sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
How are things now?
I think with the nap transition things do just take time to settle back down so hopefully that bit of time has shown some improvement.

If she needs a little CN then I'd give it. My LO always needed a short A time before BT and he would have run on 23hr days if I'd let him (ie going to bed earlier each day but then waking earlier). There isn't a great deal you can do other than the CN if she'll accept it and it may make BT later for a while but as she gets a bit older these timings will be easier because she'll be able to do the extra 15 min or so somewhere in the day without it disrupting her sleep.  FWIW I found out my DS has a condition which just does make him really tired by the end of the day, he has hyper mobility and a type of dyspraxia which means that he appears totally able and normal to everyone but everything he does including sitting, standing, walking, takes more physical and mental energy than they do for other people so it tires him out.  Sometimes we just don't know why they are extra alert or extra tired, we just have to make the routine the best we can for the individual LO we have, there may be a reason or there may not or we might never know.  The good thing is that you really know what suits your LO - which is brilliant