That nursery are leaving baby awake too long

[littlejalapeno]

DS is 10 months old and we try to make sure he naps every 3-4 hours when he’s at home. This means a morning nap at -around 9.30. He goes to nursery three mornings a week However at nursery he rarely goes to sleep before 11.30. I know it is a more stimulating environment, but if he has been up since 5.30 or 6.30 it means he will have been awake 5-6 hours, which seems very long for a 10 month old to me.

When we joined we filled out a sleep schedule and info on how to help him get there and I have asked the staff and his key worker to help him sleep by 930. But it doesn’t happen and they tell me he’s too excited to sleep and just doesn’t want to. To me that’s a sign of an overtired baby. I usually end up waking him at 1pm when I collect him and he’s like a zombie and yawning and fussy about his next nap, which he’s not ready for until 4/5pm (instead of 1.30-2pm) which also pushes bed time back by two hours and then he spends the night waking constantly.

AIBU in thinking nursery should be following the sleep schedule they requested and helping him sleep on time?

Every morning when we arrive and have a chat about him and I do ask for him to be put to sleep at 9.30/10, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. When I collected him yesterday they gave him to me at the door ready to go and said he had been playing downstairs with the big kids, but he was so sleepy I checked his book and it said he had just woke 10 minutes before I collected him, so I don’t know how he could’ve been up and playing and coat and shoes on in that time. I feel like I should escalate it to management... How can I do it in a polite way where we find a solution, as I understand he’s not the only baby that needs attention? It’s just making our lives harder and I’m worried that he is very over tired and it could have a negative impact on his development. Is 6 hours too long for a 10 month old to be awake? He just seems so grumpy 😔 I’m so tired too from being up constantly at night, so sorry if this is a little garbled! Any advice on how I can handle this tactfully would be so welcome!

Possibly because he is sleeping too much during the day?? 3 to 4 wake ups in the night - to do what? Feed?

Not necessarily, mine wakes more at night when he’s had less sleep in the day, as he’s overtired and unsettled.

5.30am for wake up seems really early - 6.30 is the absolute earliest anyone is allowed up in this house!

Well tbh, me and all my mum friends at that stage had kids taking one very long nap. At 9mths ds would be up at 6am, he'd have early lunch at 11.00/11.30, and then be asleep for 2.5/3hr nap by 12.15/12.30 latest. Waking at about 3pm ish he'd manage through to 7pm bedtime.

My 10 month old is also a 5:30am riser.

No way could he do 1 nap.

We still have 2 naps, first around 8ish, then the second around 3 hours from when he wakes up. Heck some days when he only sleeps for 30 minutes at a time he has 3 naps......

Same for my 5 and 4 year olds snowone (actually they’re not allowed up before 7) but it’s quite hard to reason with a 10 month old. If they wake up they wake up, not much you can do!

My 2.5 year old naps like a trooper in the house, usually a good 2-2.5 hour nap. When he's at nursery...won't sleep at all, despite their best efforts. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Your baby might be at the stage where one nap is not quite enough, but 2 is too many. In that case 1 nap some days and 2 naps on the other days might actually be his optimal sleep pattern..

I've 3 dc and two of them were down to one sleep a day by 10 months.
Sleep schedule at 10 months as a general rule was:
Dc1: Night 8:30pm-8:30am, Afternoon sleep 2-5pm.
Dc2: Night 10:00pm-8am (with 1-2 wakings), Afternoon sleep 1-1:45pm (or 2:30pm on a really good day)
Dc3: Night 7pm-6am, Morning sleep 9:30am-11:30pm, Afternoon sleep 3:00-3:15pm (in buggy during school pick up)

Dc3 had a very different routine to the others. Dc1 would always sleep at least 12 hours at night, and if you put her down later, she just woke later. Dc2 wanted to stay up as late as possible, and only slept shorter during the day. Dc3 it was a struggle to keep him awake until 7pm, and I think he only slept in the afternoon because he was in the buggy for school pick up.

This is one of those things where you have to accept that a busy nursery is unlikely to be able to mimic your home sleep schedule.

At 9.30am staff are likely busy doing nappies, snack time and activities so it might not be possible to spare an adult for 1:1 to 'help' him get to sleep. Maybe there's an adult available at 9 but he's not sleepy enough then and if he doesn't go down within 5 minutes they will have to give up and get on with something else. And then the next time an adult is free is nearer 11 and he's a bit overtired and hard to get down.

Since he's only there for the morning I would probably just work on keeping him asleep later in the morning, then he can skip the morning nap and fall asleep on the way home on those days.

I'm a childminder and ime most children have 3 naps a day until 6-9 months and 2 naps a day until 13-18 months. 10 months is pretty young to drop to 1 nap but it might be the best option in the circumstances.

My DD was in nursery at that age. She slept 7pm-7.30am, sometimes with brief wakes, sometimes would have a bad night with a couple hours awake etc it varied. At nursery she would have usually 3X 30 min naps at random times. Or less even. It wasn't great but after a few months they managed to get into their nap routine probably from around the 12 month mark and since then she has one nap for around an hour or an hour and a half 12-1.30pm ish. She sleeps 7-7 now usually without too much interuption. I don't think you can expect nursery to have magic powers to get him to sleep if he would rather be up and playing with the others especially if he's a light sleeper like DD is. The reason they have nap routines is so that there's a quiet time where the light sleepers and those with FOMO can get a decent nap. It is short term this and it won't harm him.

I think that if you want to stick rigidly to your schedule for your ds, you should consider a nanny, or at least a child minder, in a less (over)stimulating home environment.

My little boy started nursery at 10 months and he was used to having 2 sleeps a day too as he wakes about 5:30-6:00. First few weeks he had 2 sleeps but then started to refuse his morning nap and at our nursery all the children nap together after lunch at about 12. After a week or so he started napping with the other kids after lunch. Now he just has 1 big nap a day for 2hrs or so jes sti up at the same time on a morning and he's fine being awake for 6 or sometimes 7 hours before he naps. He'll also nap in his cot at home which he never did before nursery. As they get older they can cope with a bit less sleep and eventually they drop naps altogether.

I’ve done some reading just now and he shouldn’t drop down to one nap until 12 months

The books are only a guide, not set in stone. I’ve got 3 children- they all had really different sleep needs and nap schedules, especially as younger children have no choice but to fit into family routines so may well, for example, get cat naps on the school run.

Have you ever considered a childminder? It's a home settling and they can only have 1 child under a year so they can often accommodate the babies routine a lot easier than a nursery

Babies just don’t behave the same in a nursery as they do at home
It’s unrealistic to expect them to, with all that’s going on

It's a difficult age I think, they're starting to move towards 1 nap but can't quite manage it yet. I often let mine have a little cat nap in my arms for about half hour at 4 at that age to help them make it to bedtime.

I’ve done some reading just now and he shouldn’t drop down to one nap until 12 months

Babies don’t read these guidelines tbh.

Both of mine were down to one long nap at that age. I will only do my DS's routine as he is the youngest. He would wake about 6-7am have breakfast, play until 11/11.30 when we have lunch then down for a nap about 12/12.30 waking about 3/4pm depending in how long he took to go to sleep, play for a bit then tea at 5/5.30 play again and bed for 7pm.

A childminder is less overstimulating and can be a bit more flexible on routine, but still unlikely to follow the routine of a single baby at home.

A baby has to fit in with the older children rather than the other way round. So my youngest childminded baby would have to nap in the buggy on school runs or to or from toddler groups - I wouldn't be able to put the baby to bed in a cot at 9.30am either. Mine could sleep about 8.30/9am in the buggy or 11ish on the way home, or in a cot after lunch, or 2.30/3ish in the buggy again. Very young babies got a cat nap in my arms at about 4pm if I had the chance to sit down before making tea!

@littlejalapeno Do you know what nursery are trying? It was years ago, but when I worked in the baby room; all parents recorded their sleep routines and we'd take the babies into the sleep room at the indicated time. We'd sit with them and try and get them to sleep for 20 minutes, and if they were still awake; take them out to do quiet reading or something until they were more tired. Is yours the same? Are they not trying, or is he enjoying the different sights and atmosphere and not wanting to sleep?

You could ask them if they can sit with him for longer but I believe the 20 mins was the OFSTED max when I was in childcare, although as I said, it was ages ago!

DD was on three solid naps a day at that age. Dropped to two at around 20 months and was on a nap a day until she started pre-school. She slept 7-7 too. Without those naps she really didn’t function well.

Nursery never managed to get her to nap much, despite their best efforts. She was only there three days a week so we figured we would make it work, and we did. The reality is, you can ask them as much as you like but if he won’t sleep in their environment there isn’t much they can do.

Maybe consider a childminder instead.

The problem is that he is moving to a one sleep routine while at nursery but because you collect him at one o’clock, you are disrupting that routine
You are waking him up when he should be having a longer sleep
Which is why half day sessions don’t work for babies

Sleep is a habit that can be taught and kept to in the nicest possible way there is huge variation in sleeping habits and there is no such thing as a sleep habit, otherwise insomnia would be a pretty easy problem to treat. Sleep patterns at that age change very frequently, there are multiple sleep regressions and as the child develops sleep requirements change.

Nurseries have to deal with a large number of children so they can’t spend ages trying to instill your idea of sleep habits. Maybe a nanny or CM would be a better fit for you, but even a CM would find it quite limiting to stick to these sleep patterns as she’d never get to do morning activities outside the house,

I'm a room leader in a baby room. We have 6 under 2s with 2 members of staff. Our youngest at the moment is 8 months old and oldest is 18 months. Sometimes we have 4 children to get to sleep at day 10am according to their parents wishes. That's 1 member of staff getting 4 children to sleep whilst the other member of staff is looking after the other 2 children.
As much as we want to stick to a child's routine sometimes it's not physically possible. I am not inspector gadget and don't have octopus arms to be able to rock and pat 4 children to sleep at the same time.