My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Join our Sleep forum for tips on creating a sleep routine for your baby or toddler.

Sleep

10 month sleep regression? Naps? Help!?

3 replies

Olivebranch5 · 15/10/2020 06:06

My girl has never been a brilliant sleeper and has always had long distressed wakes in the night with no obvious cause. Recently though she started sleeping through from 7pm until 6 if we were really lucky. For the last couple of weeks she has been getting up earlier and earlier and she is so ready to start the day there is nothing you can do to get her back to sleep and she get so upset with staying in her cot, despite my efforts to encourage her to stay there as long as possible. On top of this she is also waking multiple times in the night and because she is so hard to settle I often resort to milk because Ive tried everything else. Most recently was 3.50 and obviously she's absolutely exhausted by 7. It's not hunger because she doesn't look for milk.

She still has 3 naps a day which I don't think is ideal for her age but she doesn't sleep for long (2 -2.5 hours across the 3 naps) and with her days being so horrendously long I can't see another option.

It's definitely not teeth as she behaves differently when it's teeth (she already has 8). We don't co sleep and despite trying from time to time it's never done anything to settle her.

I suppose I'm reaching my limit of exhaustion and am considering a sleep training programme so was wondering whether people think that's worth a try or whether this will pass? I feel like 7 is an early bedtime but she's so exhausted by then that I don't know whether she should go to bed earlier? I'm so confused and desperate for things to improve because I'm really finding it hard and it's affecting my mood with social isolation and such long days and nights.

Any advice or personal experience of this kind of scenario would be greatly appreciated. What I wouldn't give for a 6am lie in!

OP posts:
Report
alwaysmarmiteontoast · 15/10/2020 19:57

Sometimes early wakes are due to over or under tiredness or needing to drop to 2 naps. How many hours is she awake in between naps and before bedtime?
It sounds like you need to drop to 2 naps and bring bedtime earlier to compensate.
My DS is 9 months and is on 2 naps. Usually a morning one around 0915-0945 depending on what time he woke up, and an afternoon one around 1315-1345. He went through a phase of early wakes (before 0600) when he was on 3 between 7-8 months so I dropped the last one and moved his bedtime forward. He now doesn’t nap past 1530. The way his naps are at the moment and the amount of time he can stay awake for before he gets overtired, he’s in bed sometime between 1800-1830. I was worried that’d he’d wake up even earlier but his night sleep has improved. He wakes up once for a feed and generally wakes for the day sometime between 0610-0715. I’ve also noticed on the days his naps are shorter for some reason he wakes up later in the morning.
Give it a go, it sounds like she’s ready for 2!

Report
Olivebranch5 · 15/10/2020 21:02

Thank you so much for your reply. I think you're right, she's ready to drop a nap and I just hope that that starts to improve things. How long are your little one's naps @alwaysmarmiteontoast?

OP posts:
Report
alwaysmarmiteontoast · 16/10/2020 11:39

Hopefully it will!
Naps are still a bit of a work in progress, but the morning one anywhere between 30mins- 1hr 15 and the afternoon one is usually between 1hr20-2hrs. I do usually wake him up in the morning after 45mins (unless I’m extra tired and want some more me time) because then he’ll sleep longer in the afternoon. Sometimes he’ll wake up after about 45mins/1hr in the afternoon for whatever reason (teething/he’s done a poo etc) so I just put him to bed earlier.
Hope that helps.

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.