nearly 3 yo NW

[imsmum]

Margot who will be 3 in August has had been waking once per night for the last week.  when she wakes she does a whiny moaning until I come in and tuck in her blankets.  If I don't tuck her in her crying just escalates so I've been going in but not saying anything--just tucking her in and leaving.  I think she goes right back to sleep since I don't hear anything else from her.  I know this isn't a huge deal for all of you who are experiencing much bigger sleep issues but i find once I'm awake I can't sleep again for hours so I'd really like to put an end to this! 

she had been sleeping well before this with a schedule of 10 hours night sleep 1.5 hour nap.  Not sure what the trigger was other than she had an extra long nap one day (not sleeping later--she just went down earlier so it was longer) and fell asleep a bit late that night after being very resistant to going to bed.  since then her naps have been about 15 minutes longer (from going down earlier she wake around the same time), she goes down at the same time at night but usually sleeps slightly later in the morning, with the one brief wakeup anytime between 12:30 and 4 am. Any thoughts about the cause and/or how to fix this?  she has a slight cold with a cough but that doesn't seem to be waking her.  she is still in her crib because we wanted to keep her there during the winter but we are looking for her big girl bed now.  She has woken for her blankets in the past but if i told her she  can reach down and get them during the night that usually was the end of it.   

Any thoughts much aprreciated! 

[mari]

I've know you for ages, but never asked where you come from?  Are you UK?
If so then could it be that she is too hot and chuck the blankets and then gets too cold?  I have this problem, I don't know what to do in the nights with this unusual close weather that we are having.
I know that she is capable of pulling the blankets back but in her sleepy stupour things are different!!  Do you go and tuck her in when you go to bed?  Try it, really tuck her blankets under.
also, do you think that, at her age, her nap could be a little shorter.  Perhaps it might be robbing her nighttime sleep.
Alex wakes sometimes during the night, either for her blankets or if she hasn't had a nap, she will wake briefly.  I also have a problem of getting myself back to sleep, perhaps we should start a thread on tips for getting back to sleep after being woken at 4am by pesky toddlers!!!
Mari

[Lana]

At that age I found that I had to make sure that Ewan only napped for 1.5 hours or it would affect his night sleep.  You could try that.

[imsmum]

Hi Mari--You're dead right about kicking off the blankets because she is too hot, but insists on her 2 blankets even with the warm weather we've had here lately!  I'm in Toronto, Canada  and we finally are having glorious spring here(20 C today) but we are still going down to 4 or 5 C overnight so I'm sure that she's hot first thing at night but cold later.  when she did this before literally all I had to say was you can pull them up yourself and she was fine but now I swear she likes the night visit!  i try to do a good tuck at night but the problem is she's getting too big for her crib (and her blankets) so they come untucked pretty quickly.  Maybe I'd better fast track that big girl bed!

Her naps were heading closer to 1 h 15 mins for a while, the longer nap is new  but she's still going down at the same time at night and not sleeping later for her nap so I thought that the nap couldn't be the culprit but maybe we'll go for the shorter nap tomorrow and see how that goes (thanks Lana for that suggestion as well).

thanks again and I'll let you know how it goes.  Caroline