Confused about naps for my 10m.o dd. Advice please!!

[mammainlove]

My 10m.o. DD has 2 naps a day. First is 3hours after she wakes in the morning, and the afternoon nap used to be about 3 hours after that. Recently though she's not been tired enough to be fed to sleep that time in the afternoon, but if she naps any later this interferes with her bed time sleep. I cant drop the morning nap as she gets really tired then, and i've just tried dropping her afternoon nap, so she was awake for 9 hours straight and the last 3 hours were hell! Any advice anyone?! Thank you x

This is a tough transition. It took us a few months where there was no perfect answer to this. There are a couple things you can do.

• If she only has one nap, move her bedtime earlier.
• Try one nap one day, two naps the next.
• Put her in her bed to fall asleep even if she's not quite ready -- some quiet time in the afternoon will help even if she doesn't take a real nap.

I would reduce the morning nap so that she has a decent long sleep in the afternoon. Ultimately she will drop the morning nap. How long does she sleep at the moment? I think Gina Ford recommends from 9:30 to 10:00 for that age and then a long nap at 12:30 iirc.

Firstly I would advise that you stop feeding her to sleep. Start in the morning when she's really tired, give her a feed but don't let her fall asleep and put her in her cot awake. Get her used to this or it will be a nightmare getting her to have sleeps once she's weaned (& she may self wean at any time) for the next few days I'd feed her and take her for a walk in the pram in the afternoon so she falls asleep without being 'fed to sleep' but is still getting some 'help' - then once she's used to going to bed awake morning and night (and not fussing too much) then do the same in the afternoon.

Oh - there really isn't a 'normal' amount of sleep for any baby, but I'd say the majority of them would still have 1-2 hours morning and afternoon at her age - it may drop off if she's not very mobile then pick up again when she is.

Good luck :)

I agree that it depends on the baby and would say that the timings that i gave are just a guideline. But it sounds to me that she is not tired enough for her afternoon nap. The nap in the afternoon is important as it avoids overtiredness at bedtime so your DD should really get a good sleep then.
Also agree that she should not be fed to sleep but i would first work on rebalancing the naps and then tackle the feed to sleep thing.

Thank you everyone. She sleeps for just over an hour in the morning, same in the afternoon. She's just asleep at the moment 12.30. She goes to bed at 9.3O approx and wakes up about 8am. I am planning to breast feed her for another year or so. She co sleeps with us with our beds on the floor. If i just put her down, even when she's tired and i lay next to her she just gets up and crawls about..i'll try and shorten her morning nap maybe. It just seems a bit unnatural waking her up.

I know how you feel. I only started waking my DS from his naps when his daytime sleep started to have a massive impact on his nighttime sleep with wakings of up to 3 hours at a time. After 5 weeks of this i could barely function so i decided to become more rigid with his sleep pattern. He has no morning nap now on most days. I read quite a lot around the topic and what you describe of your DD seems quite common for that age. We are still not in an absolute perfect state but on most nights my DS sleeps through.