22mo sleep/nap routines please!

[PerchanceToDream]

Hi mummies,

I'd really love to know what other 22-month-olds are doing in terms of a very rough (or not) daily routine.

We're half-way through this awful sleep training thing with DD (been to see a specialist who says she is over-stimulated) and because of that we're changing it up a bit but that's meant she's now gone from napping like an angel to screaming blue murder at nap times because she's waking too early and is overtired by the time I put her down for her nap! She's waking too early now because she's no longer allowed in our bed at all where before I'd let her come in from about 6 and snooze. (Yes, yes, I know!) Now I can't bloody win. :(

Sleep lady says she absolutely needs more sleep in general and must have a nap. She's even got me trying to extend the afternoon nap (which would be amazing!) but until she's properly sleeping through, all night, in her bed, I just can't see it working.

So, this WAS her pattern:

8am wakes
1pm nap (goes down immediately)
2pm wakes (like clockwork)
7pm bath/milk/story
7.30 bed, asleep by 8 (but then of course we'd have multiple wake-ups in the night/her tossing and turning all night in with us just to keep the peace.)

Now it's more like this:

6.30am wakes (we try to get her to go back 'til at least 7)
12pm I try to put her down for a nap but she fights. Today it took an hour and 45 mins :()
6.30pm bath/milk/story
7pm(ish) bed - to be asleep by 7.30, but more often than usual 8/8.15 and we still have multiple wake-ups but do the Supernannying thing of putting her back in bed until she gives up, which is frankly killing us.

Aaargh! Sorry for the rambling post. You'll understand I'm VERY tired.

Thanks. xx

20mo dd wakes sometime between 7 and 8 normally (though is waking a couple of times a night as well at the moment), and has a nap sometime around lunchtime depending what we're doing, usually about 1pm, and the length of this varies. I wait for her to look tired before trying to put her down, and sometimes she doesn't nap if we're out and about or have visitors etc. She goes to bed sometime between 7 and 8pm normally, again when she's tired (she's recently started asking to go to bed, which is novel to say the least!). The current wake-ups are a phase, she goes through them every so often and I've no idea what causes it, after a few weeks she's back to sleeping better so I'm not so worried. Sounds like a nightmare for you, hope things improve soon.

I have an 18 month if that helps?

Wakes 7.30
naps 2.30 - 3 or sometimes 3.30
Sleeps at 8.30 ish
Wakes about 5 times in the night so we bedshare.

Sometimes she doesn't nap, so will go to sleep at 7.30 instead then.

Thanks DIY DD is NEVER naturally tired at night except for the very rare occasions when we've been travelling home late from somewhere at 10 or 11pm. That's what's getting me down. It's the nap times that have gone to pot too and those were the easy bits. :(

Thanks Rainbows that sounds very similar to DD's old routine. We just can't have her in our bed anymore as she tosses and turns like a mad thing and hurls herself out onto the wooden floor.

DD never normally appears tired at bedtine here too, but I've found that 30mins of wind down in bed - stories/lullabies can induce sleep. Sometimes it fails and she's awake til 9.30 but worth a try :)

We took the bedframe apart and have the mattress on the slats on the floor with another single mattress alongside to accommodate thrasging toddler

We took out the chest of drawers into what was supposed to be her room to make the space!

Hi. My 21 DS is making me constantly question what I am doing! He's down at 7ish naps 1.5 - 2 hours at 12ish- with me waking him. For past few weeks he has been sleeping through all night (4 out of 7 nights) but is up as early as 5.15 (this am!), latest 6.15. Previously he would have been up 2_3 times a might but would sleep til 7.30. Today, after the 5.15 wake up, he fell asleep on nursery run at 11.30 and I decided to leave him to wake himself,(sleep begets sleep?!)so he slept for 3 hours! I have no idea what tonight has in store for me as a result, just wanted you to know you not alone in trying to figure it all out.....and being tired!

Hi Missus

Wow, I couldn't cope with 5.15. Poor you. My sympathies!

The thing about DD waking up at 6.30 now is she just wants to come in with me. (DP works shifts and is usually up earlier than that). I really miss our morning cuddles and feel like this whole stupid sleep training thing is driving us further apart. She's a hyper little thing so it's not as if I get the cuddles in the day. It just makes me so sad! But Sleep woman says we were giving her mixed messages - how come she's allowed in our bed at 6.30am but not 2.30am? I can see where she's coming from but it still breaks my heart.

Rainbows Yes, we do try to do a really good wind-down thing now where she goes straight from a relaxing bath to bedroom/pyjamas/milk without coming back into the living room - again avoiding mixed messages - nice, relaxing story in bed. It still doesn't work!

:(

My DD2 (almost 22 months) varies day to day.

During week days she can wake up at any time between the hours of 6 am and 7.30.
She gets breakfast and gets dressed and at 8.30 we take DD1 to school.
Sometimes we go out in the mornings to a toddler group or we help do things at school but if not, sometimes she will nap in the mornings. If she gets up at 6 she'll be tired as soon as we get back from school so she'll go for a nap at about 9.30. Sometimes she holds out until 10.30. I always wait until she shows signs of being tired, rubbing eyes etc. Sometimes she'll ask to go to sleep, sometimes I'll ask her and she'll run to the stairs as if to say yes please!

If we're out in the mornings my mum will put her down for a nap straight after she has eaten her lunch, which she usually eats at about 12. If she hasn't napped in the mornings her eyes start drooping while she's eating so she goes straight after.

If she naps in the afternoon I usually have to wake her at 2.55 to go and pick DD1 up from school.

She usually goes to bed at about 7-7.30pm after a bath and bottle. She knows that a bottle is her cue to go to bed and she starts trying to climb into her cot then.

She HAS to have at least 2 hours nap. If she doesn't have a proper nap she's irritable and she wakes in the night.

We've had a few nightmare phases with her where she would just NOT go to bed/sleep but we seem to have got through it ATM.

My DD was still having a nap after lunch most days at that age. DS had almost completely stopped.

I hope DD2 isn't ready for stopping any time soon! She'll drive me mad.

Thanks Robins that would concur with what sleep woman says too. I would love for DD to get more sleep in the day. I saw her yawning at 11.30 this morning but I thought that was too early to put her down. Waited half an hour and all hell broke loose. Maybe I should try to be less rigid about when she naps and focus instead on making sure she just gets enough...

Hi op have just sleep trained my 23 month ds who was cosleeping and bf on demand til recently.
We put him in his own cot in the same room as his brothers around 7 pm. He cried on the first night for 30 mins or so, 15 mins second night, and now 2 mins or so.
As for naps he just falls asleep when he is tired usually in the buggy or car seat and sleeps anything from 30 mins to a couple of hours. I don't let him sleep after 3.30 pm, if he looks sleepy then a bout of tickling/ wrestling does the trick.
My evenings and nights are transformed.
Is your lo in a bed? Do you still have a cot you could use?

I would be tempted to try Perchance. Sometimes DD2 will want to sleep at 11 and I'll just let her and give her a late lunch.

I work at school at midday (dinner lady) so my mum looks after her for an hour and a half. She usually gives DD her lunch but if she's gone to sleep then I'll just tell my mum that she should be ok until I get back. She's usually had a snack mid morning so won't starve and if she sleeps at 11 she'll have just woken up just as I get back at 1.20.

I think that if you try to stall bed time they get overtired and struggle to sleep.

Hi Norem no, the cot's long gone so we're attempting to sleep-train an escapee. The weird thing is that she was fine and sleeping through even when we changed over. We thought, oh, this is easy, but then about a month in she rust regressed.

Thanks Robins and Keep - there's definitely much food for thought there. Will check out Marc Weissbluth too. I think I'm just a bit shocked that she's gone from being an absolute robot with her nap (1pm-2pm) to it all going out the window so suddenly and obviously what we're doing with her at night is now having an effect on her day.

This is really interesting.

Dd has just turned 21 months. We went they a horrific couple of months in may/ June when she was waking 4,5,6 times a night and rarely napping for more than 45mins. Then all of a sudden whilst on holiday at the end of oct something clicked and she started sleeping through, I'm not really sure why, a combination of things I think. For a glorious month or do she became a sleep monster & was having 2+ hour naps and sleeping through from 7.30- 7.30 or later. But now we're really battling to get her to go to sleep. So now her routine is something like this:

7.30-8ish- wake up
1-2ish (earlier rather than later if poss) - naps for up to 2 hours. We wake her after two hours otherwise she really isn't tired at bedtime & I think I might start waking her after 1.5 hours to see if that helps with bedtime
7.30- ideally I'd like her to be asleep at about this time after bath, stories & milk but at the moment she's rarely asleep before 8.

DS is about to turn 2 and his routine for the last few months has been wake up anytime between about 6.30am and 8am, nap after lunch for between 2 and 3.5 hours, then he'll be asleep within 5 mins of being put to bed around 7-7.15pm. He's always needed a decent nap and tends to sleep better when he's had a long one. I do find though that if he falls asleep while we're out and about (e.g. in the pushchair or the car), even if only for 5 minutes, he won't then nap at all for the rest of the day and is practically manic by bedtime.

DS is sometimes ready for a nap by mid-late morning so if so I tend to put him down without waiting for him to have lunch first. It's probably easy for me to say as DS is such a good sleeper but I think the key is to catch your DC when they're showing signs of tiredness and take them up for a nap then rather than waiting for a particular time. For my DS rubbing eyes or getting clumsy are the most obvious signs that a nap is needed. I also found that a decent black-out blind in DS's room and a bit of quiet time before nap/bed made a huge difference.