anyone want to chat about the 2-1 nap switch?

[MommaHolmes]

Hey OliverRowland  (so is that your LOs name or yours?)

Having read your posts whilst lurking, I think we're on v similar tracks. I'm just doing 1 nap days when he wakes late enough to make it until 11am to go down for his first nap. He seems to nap better generally if I keep the am A time the same whatever, at the moment it's 4.5hrs but am contemplating pushing him to 5 hrs in the next couple of days. This week this has meant 3 1-nap days out of 7.

Unfortunately we have got OT signs ALL the time in the form of NW and EW - his sleep cues are a nightmare to read since he struggles to sleep when he looks sleepy but often goes down really well when he seems happy and wide awake!

As for reducing the am nap, I had the same problem when I tried reducing Ollie to 15 mins - it obviously didn't sit well with him and he needed exactly the same A time before going down for second nap so have decided to just stick at 20 mins as I know this works. Hopefully as I extend the morning A time there will be less and less days where two naps are needed.

Kristi - I'd try putting him to bed after 2.5hrs and see how you go - seems like the middle way. You've just got to experiment cos all our LOs are different at the end of the day! I find that if I can get some/all of Ollie's lunch down him before his nap (if he's just having one) then he seems to sleep better.
Oh, and yes I do sound organised (or is that obsessive!) with all my plans and spreadsheets and things but TBH, it has been quite therapeutic. I was spending so much time thinking about it, trying to add up A time/sleep etc and 'solve' this puzzle that I needed to write things down just to free up a bit of brain space. Of course, now I've signed up to this website and am going to spend ages talking about it instead 

Quick postscript about Ollie's day - I woke him at 2:30pm in the end, so he had 2hr 20min nap...  However, he seems to be running a bit of a temperature so I don't think we've necessarily scored any great victories as yet.

Cheers all!

[babyre33]

Need some help here.  I started extending the A time by 15 min and worked great for nap #1, but nap #2 was on ly 30 min, I was able to put her back down for another 6 min, but that was it.  I'm working on getting her bedtime and wake time later since she decided 5 o'clock was a decent waking hr  two days ago.  So now we're doing a 6:30 bedtime, but really it should probably be 6:15.  but that's the same bedtime as yesterday and she woke a half hour later today.

The bad second nap could be partlly due to the fact I let her sleep 50 min for the first nap (but we had plenty of time in the day for this), and we were in the car a lot before her second nap (unavoidable).  So, 2 questions:

What should I attempt for tomorrow? and

Is 6:30 a bad idea to push the bedtime back 15 min since she only slept woke at 3:15 with only 30 min of sleep?

[M and N's Mom]

Is 6:30 a bad idea to push the bedtime back 15 min since she only slept woke at 3:15 with only 30 min of sleep?

Is your LO prone to EW or NW if OT?  If so you may want to have her in bed with a bit shorter A time than normal and then she can fall asleep when she is ready.  JMO

[MommaHolmes]

Pushing bedtime back is not a route I'd want to take when OT is a risk, esp as you already have EW, the next step down that path for us was NW, not good. Would try and keep the length of time between wake from pm nap and bedtime as consistent as you can. You can cope with EW if you don't have NW as well!!

Restricting the length of the am nap is what seems to be working for us. Got to a point where Ollie would refuse ANY pm sleep if I let him sleep for more than 30 mins in the am.

[Mamalou]

no no,Stacy, I don't want to let him sleep long for am nap-- I was just saying that he could probably do a very long am nap if we let him--

Thanks Laura, I think I've decided to try and give him lunch around 1130ish and see how go..then down for a nap just after.

babyre33-maybe since the day was 'off' due to long am nap and lots of 'car' time- try for the same thing with those two things corrected tomorrow?
Try it for a few days, then you'll see the change, right??

Kristi

[babyre33]

Hopefully, Kristi, hopefully!
She's been getting up early since she's had to go to bed early.  She's still getting a full night's sleep.  I don't know if that makes a difference with the EW stuff.

Lately she's made up for lost sleep with 13 hrs, but when she was younger she'd get OT easily.  I guess I'll play it safe today.  What's another day of waking at 5:00-5:30.

I wish this were easier.

[Mamalou]

you know, I remember trying earlier bedtime (such as 6.30) before to solve our early wakings (used to be anywhere between 4-5.30  ) and it didn't seem to help much--
but recently (from Sami's advice-- thanks Sami!) I've tried it again and this time it's finally seemed to work!  Maybe i just didn't try it for long enough before. I personally HATED the idea of such an early bedtime- so seems like I didn't really want it to work, iykwim.. but finally it has (for the  most part) (OMG I hope i've not jinxed it--- I'm sure he'll wake at 4 am tomorrow now )

Kristi

[Gippie]

I hated early bedtimes - but the only lasted a litttle while.    Our DD WOULD have taken a long AM nap - she used to do TWO 2-hour naps and the second was starting SO late that we ended up with a slew of NW's and a general mess that the 1 nap transition helped iron out.  DId I mention that MY/OUR switch was LOOOOONG - it took us 60 days....ugh - there were so many little AP moments that I used to fix the NW's before I realized that they were from the naps in the day (didnt Tracy say "fix day sleep before night"  - must have forgotten) - anyway it worked out - but it CAN take TIME.

Stacey

[debo620]

well I just had an awful time settling Noah for the night, in fact now he is crying again...

pretty normal day,
woke 6:30-in crib til 7:15,
nap 12:10-2:25
winddown at 7, in crib for 7:10 or so,

it is warm again, 27 degrees in his room,
I tried to lay him down without his grobag, what a disaster....I did put him back in it but he is ticked off and upset now. Now he is naked with his grobag on.
Its 7:35 and he is still not alseep, just fussing and upset.... I am sure he is verging on OT now,  and we are for sure to have at least one NW.

[samijoe]

i concur deb...it is hot.  yep, 27 degrees.

i don't have the results of our bedtime yet....dd fell asleep at 805pm (6hrs A time) and she had been in there since 635pm.

i might have kept her up longer...i will know more in the morning.  i put a fan in there because it is hot and at 730pm, i went in there and turned it off!

so, i have no idea what will happen with us......might just have to repeat my day again tomorrow.  so much for trying!  lol.


sami

[debo620]

well Noah finally went to sleep at 7:45pm, but he was so upset the whole time, I had to go in multiple times, and he was standing each time, so I hugged in crib and layed him back down. I NEVER have to do this. I just don't get it. he didn't really burry his head in to me like he normally does when tired during windown, so I don't think he was Ot. maybe not tired enough?
thinking of doing a 2hr nap again....

btwn the heat and the diffcult time he had settling, I think we are in for a doozy of a night.

wow Sami, 6hrs on a 1.75hr nap, maybe its the heat....
forgot to go and buy a fan today....

question for you though, do you guys find that your kids just randomly yawn, especially when in the car? Noah sometimes yawns like 1hr after waking from his nap

[samijoe]

yeah, i haven't used a yawn as a tired sign since like 5mths old.

not sure what to think deb....

she's doing 5.5hrs till nap consistently and 6hrs till bedtime no matter how long nap seems to be....

that's 11.5hrs day, and 12.5night/nap....hmm.....

ill wait to see what happens


sami

[debo620]

yah, me too...wait to see if he is OT tonight or what, I'll know by NW...
hope you have a decent nights sleep, we are considering the basement (directly below Noah's room) for sleeping...poor little guy, stuck in that warm room, gosh I hope it cools a bit...

[babyre33]

well, she fell asleep at 6:30 and woke at 5:45.  So far she's slept 15 min later each day.  So I'm going to keep at where i am..

I'm afraid to do a 20 min nap, that would mean she'd have nap #2 a bit after  12.  And if that's another crappy nap, we'd be back to square one.  So I'm not ready for that yet.

I hope this keeps working alright.  She's acting fine, and wake up is getting later gradually.  Cross your fingers that this keeps up!

[motherof3]

Okay, here is the deal...

Abby is up at 8am and I put her down for the 20min nap at 11am.  But it is taking her almost 20mins to fall asleep so she isn't getting up until 11:40ish!  This really throws off her 2nd nap b/c then she isn't going down till 2:30pm and she takes at least another 15mins to fall asleep and this only gives her at 1hr 15min nap at the most and she is not happy when she wakes!   I guess I can try to put her down at 2:15pm but that only gives her 2.5hrs of A time b/w naps.

Any thoughts?  Anyone else run into this problem?  I never thought that a late wake up would cause such issues!

Andrea