cutting lunch nap down to nothing - tell me it's a phase?!

[hellosailor]

Minisailor (almost 9 months) has started waking up at 30-40 mins - basically after 1 sleep cycle of her lunch nap - and instead of just stirring and going back to sleep for another hour as she normally does (we have a video monitor so I know she has always stirred at this point!), she now sits bolt upright and tries to scale the cot divider in her cot like it's Becher's Brook.

I go upstairs to re-settle her to find her on her knees, wide awake, holding on to the cot bars. Nothing will get her to resettle - she is WIDE AWAKE, grrrr.

The rest of the day is now spent with her grizzling and crying loads because she is knackered, to the point that I don't want to take her out anywhere in the afternoon because she is so fractious that it just becomes an exercise in damage limitation, and yet staying indoors all afternoon with a strung out baby is equally difficult!

This is seriously getting me down - we all know that the afternoon nap (which even before this has only ever been about 1hr 20mins for the last few months, not ever the holy grail of 2 - 2.5 hours I hear people talk about!) is the only chance you get to sit down and shovel a pitta bread into your mouth, send an email, wash up etc, and I'm finding the day is very different when it basically isn't happening!

Is this a phase? She has nothing obvious bothering her or waking her, it's more as if she's too wired to resettle when she comes into light sleep after 30mins so I guess could be developmental stuff...

[snowboarder]

I think totally a phase...I always leave youngest snowboarder 10-15 mins before going to him in the hope that he'll resettle if this happens. I bet one day she'll just go through again. Maybe put her down a bit later? Mine currently does around 9-10am and then 1.30 - unknown (sometimes 2.30, sometimes 3.30!). My battles with sleep over the last couple of years has taught me to be really consistent with what you do and grimly determined.

(we're still sitting up in the cot again and again pre settling. sigh)

[hellosailor]

Hi SB,

Yes, I do leave her crawling around her cot for at least ten mins to see if she'll re-settle (unless she starts crying) but at the moment there's no hope she will!

We are very consistent with naps but in the last few days I have experimented with times a little to see if, like you say, it could be that she now needs to be awake for longer before going down at lunch time, but after experimenting I don't think it is that unfortunately as that would be a pleasingly easy solution!

She was very tired and seemed desperate to be put down for the nap today...but still....ping! at 30 mins...awake but in no way refreshed of course.

She is now so exhausted and grizzly she doesn't even want me to put her down for a second, just starts crying as soon as I let go of her, exactly the same yesterday...it's going to be another looooong afternoon....:-S

[snowboarder]

Gah. Go for a drive/snuggled up buggy walk or something?

[Inkmaiden]

Does Minisailor still have a morning nap? Inkspawn dropped her morning nap of her own accord at 6 months but struggled a bit by lunchtime, so just moved lunch to 11:30am with sleep at 12/12:30 and she slept 2-3 hours every afternoon. In fact, at 21 months she still sleeps for that long but now goes down at 1/1:30pm so there is hope!

[Ole]

I'm sorry to say that this happened to me too and our baby never went back to sleeping like before. He never had more than 1.5 hours lunchtime nap and at about this age (9 months) he cut right back to 30-40 mins and it has been like this ever since, except that now he is 2 somedays he does not nap at all (but you are not there yet). Occasionally he would do another sleep cycle like you say but that was more the exception, for me it has always been 40 mins at lunchtime and that's that, and I go green with envy when I hear of other people's babies sleeping 2-2.5 hours (even now at 2years old!!) but what can I do. What we do find is that putting him down for his nap slightly earlier sometimes helps. It might be that she is getting quite tired by the time her naptime comes around but that she is over tired and for some reason this makes them sleep worse, so I would try putting her down for her nap a bit earlier so that she is not so exhausted and see what happens.

[hellosailor]

SB I don't drive! hoho! But I'm going for a buggy walk in a second! Have to get out!

Inkmaiden thank you I might experiment with that if it doesn't change soon, she still has a morning nap but she definitely still needs it, so if I was to see what happens if we didn't have it (*pales*) then it would definitely be a case of me trying to lengthen her lunchtime nap by dropping the morning nap rather than something that she is ready to drop organically. So I will prob wait a bit to see if this sorts itself out before trying that measure. It doesn't seem to be a case of waking up because she is not sufficiently tired to go for longer, more that she is all of a sudden too wired to get through that first sleep cycle - though I'm not doing anything differently to cause this, i.e not suddenly putting her down later than she is used to. they are such complicated little creatures!

[hellosailor]

Ole, I am shuddering somewhat at the thought that it might not go back!

Interesting what you say about putting her down earlier, it has occured to me that even though she is being put down at the same time as normal, she is obviously increasingly active during the morning, now crawling etc, so is perhaps getting more tired more quickly, so is maybe now overtired at her usual nap time...will try putting her down earlier tomorrow!

[Inkmaiden]

You wouldn't necessarily have to drop the morning nap but you could shorten it to 30mins and see if that makes a difference?

[snowboarder]

So hard to know. I certainly wouldn't assume it might not change. My older boy (now 2.5) never slept for more than 30-45 mins until he was one. Then after a bit of sleep training he had 2 x 1.5 hr naps morning and afternoon, only gave up the morning nap at 16m and even now he can sleep for 2 hrs after lunch (I do pay at bedtime though for this now - ooops better get him up!).

[Inkmaiden]

Also, if the crawling is a relatively new thing it may well be connected to that. Inkspawn never crawled so she didn't roll over and get up when she came into a light sleep, but we did have issues when she (finally) started to stand up and would spring to her feet at bedtime and ridiculously early in the morning and refuse to lie down again because this new skill was just so exciting! However, it didn't last very long and then normal service was resumed.

[Pickle]

I would cut the first nap of the day down to 30 mins max, then try putting her down a little earlier for the lunchtime one. Perseverance is the key - my son was an angel, daughter not so easy when it came to daytime sleep. She finally cracked the 2 hour lunchtime nap at around 9 months by which stage she was down to one nap a day (and it continued until she was 2.5). My lazy son was still having a 2 hour sleep after lunch until he was 4!

[nunheadmum]

My youngest never took to the lunchtime nap when little and we ended up with a longer morning sleep and a later afternoon nap. With my eldest, I remember the nursery encouraging us to drop the morning sleep around 9 months. Both eventually did get the lunchtime bug and continued with it till school-age.

Regarding putting them down early, I've always found with my youngest (the stronger willed, feistier one) that putting her down early for her nap gets a better sleep. Even now at almost 3.5yrs, if I can get her down around 12.30 she goes off with no problem and sleeps for almost 1.5 hours (or more) but if she's left till after 1pm, it's a real fight and she sleeps far shorter.

In your case, I'd agree with Pickle- shorter am nap and earlier lunch/nap.

Hope it works - I know how precious that time is!

[hellosailor]

Thanks you lovely lot, all useful advice. Unfortunately she generally only naps for 30 mins in the morning (very rarely she goes to 40 mins or an hour) so I can't cut it down any more without dropping it altogether!

I will definitely try to put her down earlier for her lunchtime nap tomorrow to see if it makes any difference though..

Inkmaiden I'm hoping you're right and that it is related to the crawling development. She definitely springs up and starts climbing around her cot when she comes into a light sleep phase, rather than rolls over and continues to snooze as she once would have done. Having said that she's been crawling about a month and the cutting down the nap has only started in last few days so I fear may not be the culprit...we'll see!

[hellosailor]

Can I just ask a logistics question which may be relevant while I've thought of it?

In the morning sometimes minisailor wakes up at 6:00 / 6:15 am and sometimes not till 7:00am.

Regardless, we never actually go up and get her until 7:00, but the days nap timings tend to be tweaked according to what time she actually woke up. i.e I have always made it that there is 3 hours between waking up from her morning nap and going down for her lunch time nap, so sometimes this means her lunch nap is at 12:00, sometimes 12:30 etc, according to what time the morning nap is, which is in turn dependent on what time she actually woke up for the day. I have tried putting her down at the same time for morning nap regardless but it's not a good idea - if she's been kicking about in her cot since 6:15 she definitely needs to be put down for her morning nap earlier than if she has actually slept till 7.

Therefore, is it best, do you think, to stick to the exact same time every day for her afternoon nap even if this means that sometimes she will have been awake for less time in between naps than she is used to?

i.e today, very unusually, I put her down for lunch nap at 1:00 because she had woken at 7:00am (unusual) and had napped for a whole hour in the morning (also unusual and meant she was up late from her morning nap at 10:00 so I waited the usual 3 hours to put her down for lunch, knocking lunchtime back nap to 1:00 for fear she wouldn't be tired enough if I did it at the usual time.)

Would it have been better to still do the nap at 12:00ish even though she would only have been awake for 2 hours before it rather than the 3 she is used to?

phew, long winded, tired, unsuccinct question...sorry

[Pickle]

I always went with the same time each day, regardless of what had happened before. I do think the consistency helps (it did for us anyway - whether the same applies when #3 arrives waits to be seen!).

[Yak]

For us, the morning nap ends at 10am but the time at which is starts is flexible depending on what time the yaklet wakes up. That way I stick to a pretty fixed routine from 10am onwards, with lunchtime nap at 12.30.

So for instance if yaklet wakes up at 7, he needs a full hour from 9am, but if he doesn't wake up til 7.30 then he goes down at 9.20(ish!).

Another quick thought - how long are you leaving between lunch and nap? I found we really needed a good half hour between lunch ending and nap starting, to make the food settle in the tum - otherwise a bit of wind or unsettled tum could wake him up early. He also does the mid nap wake briefly, make a few random noises then (generally) go for another sleep cycle - but not if his lunch has not settled...

Good luck!

[hellosailor]

Pickle I think you're right, I think it is prob best to stick to the same time rather than tweak according to what time they wake up - tomorrow I shall be putting her down at the same time regardless of what has gone before in the day. Hope it makes a difference!

Yak, that's a tricky thing! I've already thought about this! Because she only sleeps for half an hour for her morning nap, and that nap is pretty early (often starts as early as 8:30 as she has often been awake since 6:15), it pretty much means she has to go down for lunchtime nap at 12:00.

Unless I start doing lunch ridiculously early at 11:00, there is not much time to digest so she does tend to have lunch at 11:40ish and then go straight down. Having said that, going down so soon after eating has never kept her awake before, and in fact today, the briefest lunchtime nap yet, she went down for the nap over an hour after she finished lunch so I don't think that's the solution, good thinking though!

[KateW]

At 9 months I cut my daughter's morning nap (MN) down to just 15 mins because if she had any longer it was starting to affect her lunchtime nap (LTN) and she wouldn't sleep the full 2 hours. Now at one year's old, she naps 9.45-10am and 12.45-2.45/3pm. She wakes up anytime between 6-7am but I'm always consistent about when her naps are. I think the point of shortening the MN until they are only having a cat nap is so it prepares them for when the drop this nap altogether.

[snowboarder]

When we had help with our older son's sleep, we were advised to stick to the same times every day - apparently it kind of helps 'reset' their internal clocks. Do have to say I'm not that rigid second time round, but I do more or less keep to the same times as often we have things arranged around naps for both boys...

[hellosailor]

Thanks all, today I will not be adjusting times by putting her down half an hour later because she got up later as I would normally do, I will just stick to usual time and see what happens.

Tho I suspect it is to do with developmental stuff as opposed anything I can change by the timing of the nap as last night she woke up at 5am to try to scale her cot and practice kneeling, just as she's been doing in the naps....so think that may be the answer....hope she gets bored of practicing this soon!