Could 11 MO be having too much daytime sleep?

[multicolourcat]

DD's sleeping has gone to pot and she is now waking in the night and not wanting to go back to sleep. she has always woken a bit, but generally a little stroke/pat on the back for a few minutes and she would drift back off. Now she is standing up in her cot, crying and very wide awake. I was wondering if she could be getting too much sleep in day? She has a nap in the morning for 1 1/2 hours and another the same length in the afternoon. I always make sure she is awake from 3.30 and she goes to bed about 7.30/8pm.

Any ideas anyone? Thanks.

Anyone? Also, do you think waking her at 3.30 from her afternoon nap is too late? Should I wake her earlier? thanks

Hi multi my dd started cutting back on her naps at 11mo. Do you think she'd go for one longish one late morning so you could drop the afternoon one, that might help.

Currently 13 mo dd has a one and a half hour nap from 12.30 but she's always needed less day time sleep.

Whatever changes you make it might take a few days to adjust. I would def look at combining naps to one longer one. You can only try!

Oh and if you have an earlier longish nap she might need to go to bed a bit earlier, say 7ish to avoid that crazy overtired baby condition!

thanks sick i will try it - so would you place the nap before lunch time then, maybe after her midmorning snack?

My DS also started cutting back on his naps at this age, BUT he wasn't ready to drop straight to 1 nap (we tried & he got very overtired). What we did was cut his morning nap shorter & so he would go for his afternoon nap a bit earlier, meaning he was awake a wee bit longer between nap & bedtime. As he got older we gradually shortened the AM nap more & more, and we alternated 1 & 2 nap days for a while too b/c he could do a couple, but any more than that & he got overtired. On 1 nap days we did like PP said - a long nap around 11am & then an earlier bedtime & by 15 months he could handle it every day & we were able to drop the morning nap altogether. As he got used to the 1 nap it moved gradually later & now its after lunch for 2hrs.x

Yes you could also follow omama's suggestion and cut morning nap quite short to get her through to just after lunchtime and make post lunch nap the longest one. Just before DD dropped her morning nap altogether it was only about 20 mins long and at 11 mo she just lay there chatting. I had tried to drop it earlier but she couldn't cope so let her do it herself.

I guess you might have to experiment a bit

A lot of people have said that this age is a bit of a transitional one when they seem to start needing less sleep but do struggle with the change.

I'm pretty sure I've met you on other sleep threads mama!

Very good advice so far. I made the mistake of letting my daughter have too much sleep in the daytime (think she was on around 3-4 hours at this age) and although she wasn't waking in the night, she was ready to start the day every morning at 5am!

For ages we didn't see the link and just assumed she was an early riser. So many health visitors even said I should give her more sleep as she would be tired getting up at 5am!!! It was only when I cut down her naps, things improved
I cut down her morning nap to 30 mins (between about 9.30 and 10) and she had 2 hours at 12.30. Bed was then at 7. This was at 14 months so a little older than your babe but mine was more than ready for the reduction.

Shortly after that she dropped her morning nap and then her lunchtime nap gradually got shorter and shorter (sometimes she started waking early again so I'd just take 15 mins off her nap). She finally dropped all daytime sleep at 2years old, although this is relatively early. Some are still having a nap at 3-4.

I'd give that a go and see if things improve - be prepared for it to take a little bit of time if it's been going on a while. Took us 6 weeks for her to wake at 7am every morning.

Thank you all. This is great advice, and I am going to follow your ideas and start reducing the morning nap, perhaps down from 1 1/2 hours to 1 hour first of all, and then to 45 mins and then to 30mins and bring the afternoon nap earlier so it really is straight after lunch, and so up by about 2.30. I'll see how that goes. I'm going to be attempting self settling as well, as this is something we haven't tackled fully yet, so hopefully combined I might eventually get some better sleep. Thanks so much for your help, really appreciated.

Sounds like a plan, keep us posted on your progress and hope all goes well