10 month old napping question.

[AliceW89]

I’d like some advice about My DS (just turned 10 months) napping.

I rather lost my mind when he was 7 months as he was waking every hour or so overnight. We thought he would only accept a breastfeed, but actually it turns out he just wanted someone there. If it was me, boobs were an added bonus . He started sleeping next to his dad and almost overnight started pulling 11 or 11.5h (7pm-6/6:30am) with either no wake up or one feed at ~3am. We’ve started slowly transitioning him to the cot. He does all his naps in the cot in his nursery and self settles. We use white noise and black out blinds and have a good routine. He also self settles at night, but in a second hand cot side car’d to our spare bed so OH can sneak in next to him at 22:00. The plan is to try him in the nursery overnight when OH has a good chunk of leave

Since this though, his naps are rubbish! He’s doing well to have 2 x 40 minutes. It’s a minor thing, but I’d just love for one of those naps to be over an hour so I can have a head break. For the last week we’ve strictly cut the first nap off at 30 minutes, but that second nap is still stuck at 40 minutes!

Has anyone had any success at this age either making the first nap a proper 10 or 15 minute power nap or, dare I say it, attempting 1 nap? He’s a bright wee thing during the day, eating well with tons of energy so I suspect 12.5 - 13h of sleep is all this low sleep kid needs . He’s never been the sort of baby who would sleep for hours during the day without us paying for it at night.

Thank you in advance.

[kwaziseyepatch]

Yep sounds like that's all he needs. With 1 exception out of all the babies I've known, I've found the good nappers are the bad night sleepers and I know which one I'd rather have!
Pretty good going for now and you're probably a couple of months off 1 long nap but I doubt he can do the awake stretches at 10 months

[SBAM]

He might be able to do one nap. Mine was doing two naps but taking ages to settle at 9m but then started at nursery and within a month or two was just doing an after lunch nap.

[AliceW89]

Thank you both. It’s just a little disconcerting when all the sources suggest a 10m old should be having 2.5-3.5h of napping in a day - on the very rare day DS gets to 2h of napping I’m twitching thinking are we going to pay for this overnight! 3.5h in a day is a ridiculous notion Will stick to our current routine then and reassess in a few months x

[Restingpotato]

Do you try and resettle? My 11mo sometimes wakes after 35-40 mins but if I go and and lie next to her (also sidecar cot) she will go back to sleep and have a total nap of 1h20. Its great, but our nights are not so I am by no means a sleep expert!

[AliceW89]

@Restingpotato yeah, used to work a treat! Used to go in and put hand on chest and do a bit of shh-ing and straight through he went - although that was when his sleep at night was far more disturbed. For the last month or so though no joy sadly. He either (rarely) powers through without any resettling or he just wakes up! X

[Restingpotato]

Oh thats a shame. At least your nights are good. Have to take the wins where we can get them! My win was 2 good day naps but she decided she only wanted one today, nightmare!

[AliceW89]

Just thought I’d update this for anyone in the same boat - over the last 3 or 4 days cutting the morning nap off at 15 or 20 minutes has increased the afternoon nap to the dizzying heights of 1h 15 minutes 😬🤦🏼 Which to be fair overall I much prefer to 2 x 40 mins...he’s got an excellent internal barometer for not exceeding 1.5h of napping I’ll give him that! X