Not sleeping enough nursery

[HettyMeg]

My little one, 10 months old this week, started nursery on Monday and she is not sleeping enough at nursery. For the past couple of months she's been on two good naps a day, one in the morning usually lasting around 1.25-1.5 hours, then another around 2pm for anywhere between 45m and 1.5 hrs. Nursery have tried to get her to sleep in the morning but she just fights it and they don't have any other babies napping at that time so she is distracted by the noise. Then they all have a nap after lunch. Not only is she not napping in the morning she is only sleeping 30/40 minutes for that post lunch nap and that's it for the whole day. We're trying to make up for it by doing an earlier bedtime but I'm so worried about this, as far as I was aware babies need 2 naps until at least 12 months. However she has slept better the past few nights (touch wood) Sleeping solidly for 11 hours.

It's her first week, let her settle. DD never slept as long at nursery as at home but it didn't really make much difference. She just went down a bit earlier on nursery days if she was beyond it.

Not all babies need 2 naps til 12m, mine was down to an hour a day by 9m. If she's sleeping through the night and fighting naps in the day she's likely ready to make the shift.

Lots of babies transition to one nap a day once they start nursery as they fall into the pattern the other kids are doing. It’s fine and won’t harm her. My dd did the same at that age and at 2 is still doing a nice lunchtime nap routine of around 1.5 hours. Your dd will probably up the nap time as she gets used to it so it will be longer than 40 mins.

It's her first week. Give it chance to settle.

If she is only must now sleeping 11 hours at night at 10 months old, she probably didn't need all of those day time naps. Neither of my DC were big nappers but both were sleeping 12 hours a night from 4 months old.

Let her settle in first but yes, most babies of that age need two naps so do keep at it and have a word with nursery. They’ll be brilliant at this kind of thing (nursery staff have all kinds of magic sleep skills!) Maybe they could find somewhere dark/quiet. I think good sleep as is important as nutritious food for brain development etc so wouldn’t let it go. Sounds like she’s probably just settling though.

This could have been me a couple of weeks ago (although ds started at 12m) but the last couple of days he has finally managed good 90minute naps after lunch. He just needed time to get used to the noise and environment. At the weekend he has still sometimes been having two naps because he is shattered but he is generally happy so I've been learning to let go of the routine a little bit!

My DD started nursery at a similar age and rarely slept longer than 30mins there. She'd still sleep 2 hours when at home at lunch time but nursery, I could count on one hand she slept past an hour. They didn't have a separate sleep room so there was just way too much distraction, so once she stirred, she was up!