Well, now that we're past the night waking part of the 2 to 1 nap transition, (fingers crossed) we've hit another bump. To solve the nightwaking we had been putting dd down around 6:30 to 6:45 and she would sleep through to 5:45 which was great as before switching to the earlier bedtime she had been waking up for about 2 hours at night. Naps were at 12 and went from about 1 hour 30 mins to 1 hour 50 minutes. Yeah!!
I thought we had things licked and the only thing I needed to do now was try to shift the bed and naptime a bit to a better time.
BUT... :(the last 3 nights she has had a hard time going down at 6:30. I start the winddown as usual at 6 which she resisted to varying degrees. I put her in the crib around 6:30. She cries as soon as I put her in put the crib then will chatter to herself which she does even if she is exhausted. The first night she eventually settled herself and fell asleep at 8. The next night she was REALLy overtired so I stood with my hand on her to help her settle which she did at 6:45. Last night I stayed with her too but same problem she didn't fall asleep until 8 again. Each day she wakes at 5:30 or 5:45 regardless. Her naps are the same. It's kind of interesting because when she was having nightwakings they would typically occur about 9 or 9 1/2 hours after she went to sleep but with the early bedtime the night wakeup wasn't close to her normal wake time so she would go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Now she's waking up about 9 1/2 hours after going down but because she wakes at her regular time I can't get her back down. we tried leaving her if she wasn't crying or sending dh in but she hasn't gone back to sleep . I go in at 6:30 to say"it's morning time" and bf her as the signal to start the day.
What do I do now??
Do I try to push the nap back or should I move it earlier?? On the one hand I'd like to push it back to 12:30 or so in the hopes of shifting her whole schedule to a better time. I work fulltime and it's really hard as it is to get home to winddown at 6. but on the other hand she is up for 6 hours in the am before her nap which seems like a lot although it doesn't appear to be effecting her ability to nap. I have run into problems in the past though where her nap was too late in relation to her wakeup time, and she has a hard time settling at night because on the one hand she is tired from being up 12+ hours but on the other she's not that tired because of the late nap. I thought I had figured out that she needed about 5 hours between waking up from her nap and bedtime but this doesn't seem to work anymore. So do I shift the nap? And in which direction??
One more thing this morning when I bf'ed dd she seemed like she might go back to sleep but I didn't let her because I thought this might reinforce the early waking and really just restart the whole night waking thing--except now shifted 11/2 later! But should I have let her sleep so she won't get overtired?? This 2 to1 transition is a tricky one!!
