1yo DD wakes at 5am and now trying to drop morning nap - help!

[MedicalEd]

DD has never been a good sleeper, she wakes 2/3 times a night, sometimes will settle herself sometimes not but has always woken early - around 5am.
I have tried getting her to go back to sleep but if she does it can take until 6.30am and then she will only have another half hour.
This week she has been fighting her morning nap which she normally goes down for really easily. She lies there whining (which drives us mad) or napping for ten mins and then whining again.
I am worried that its not healthy for her to have only 9/10 hours sleep at night and drop her morning nap as well.
Yesterday she didn't nap at all until 3pm, then had an hour and ten mins.
She has been whiny and moaning all week and we are all strung out.
Any ideas how to get her to sleep later (then she could drop her nap) or keep her nap?

Some kids just don't need as much sleep. You're lucky that the morning nap has continued this long. My DS dropped his much sooner than that, was always awake late and always woke at about 5-5.30. Now at 10, he still wakes about 6 and is often still awake when I go to bed. My DD was a 'good' sleeper but was still only having an afternoon nap by that age. Just to warn you, both DCs had dropped all daytime naps by 18 months

drop the morning nap, do something really active in the morning and then put her down for a sleep around 12ish. make sure she does not sleep past 2 and then again do something active in the afternoon. Getting out achieves two things. First it makes the whinging easier to bear and second it will tire her out, my children were bad sleepers but slept a good 10-11 hours at night this age if they had less than 2 hours sleep during the day and did not sleep much past 2 or 2.30 (for going to bed at 8). I don't think routines work for little ones but for toddlers they are vital

Thank you. She had physio this morning and has gone down for a nap at 1.10.
Will get her up at 3 if she is not awake by then and go out again this afternoon.
Thanks for the help.
I'll let you know how I get on!
x

Hiya

Good luck with that. I think pp's advice to drop the morning nap may be right, but I think that going straight to a nap at 1pm from a 5.30am WU is too late. You might find she gets very overtired very quickly & continues to wake early b/c she is OT. Most babies will start off with nap at 11/11.30am when they drop to 1 nap & it will gradually shift later over a few weeks/months. Also, if you do get a short nap, then early bedtimes are vital. HTH.x

My ds1 dropped the morning nap at about 13 months, I still used to put him in his cot for half an hour at around 9ish though while I had a shower and got dressed, I'd give him his blankie toy and some board books and he was happy to amuse himself. He still has his lunch nap now and he's 2 .8, but has maximum 1.5 hours.

she's probably ready. dd2 started to drop hers (would have one perhaps every other day) at 11mo, and it was gone completely by 14mo i think.
try to avoid taking her out for long trips in the car or buggy after about 11am, do an early lunch, and get her in bed for 11-30-12.
BTW if she's not up, I have to wake dd2 after 2 hours, otherwise she's up all night.

After about three days the morning nap is back on again!
Varying between 40 mins and an hour plus same again at lunchtime.
She has been awake and moaning several times in the night for about a week and for hours at a time, I was on the brink and had not been a good mummy.
But last night she took herself off to sleep again quickly each time she woke and woke up properly at 6am! Oh the joy.
She'd had packed day though so maybe that's the answer, loads more stimulation!

I've been looking at these sleep threads interestingly recently and also posted about an early riser last week.. seems like loads of us in same boat !

Would support what others are saying - our 14mo dd totally dropped morning nap a while ago now, we shifted lunch to around 11am (sounds bit odd but think it came from baby whisper 'routine') then gave her a bottle about 11.30/12 and she'd sleep.. Not for particularly long sometimes but we have had up to 2 hrs (my sister followed this routine and her dd who is 16mo literally has a great nap at 12-2pm) has done for at least 3/4 months now.

For a few weeks around the 12mo mark dd could plough on through till about 2.30 without a nap - but given more active / mobile now she seems content to sleep earlier now

Try and not get too frazzled - easier said than done, but sounds like it's a similar phase to my dd went through.

Do you give her a bottle or anything when she wakes in night ?

I think in the long run it's best to try and drop the nap and have one good 2 hour nap over lunchtime, rather than try and balance two short naps. Her restlessness at night could be becuase she's overtired (short naps aren't as restorative as long naps - it's like being woken up lots at night, even if you go straight back to sleep, your quality of sleep is poorer as you're not going into deep sleep phases).

My daughter woke at 5am for ages because she'd been sleeping for hours in the day up till she was about a year old (I was a bit clueless). Once I started cutting the morning nap, it took 6 weeks to see an improvement but I was almost militant about doing the naps at the same time each day. I'd still let her have a 2 hour lunchtime nap at 12.30. Gradually, the morning nap went and the waking moved to 7am on a regular basis. The lunchtime nap grew shorter and shorter until she was on 30 mins just before her 2nd birthday and then she dropped it altogether.

She was awake and chatting from 4am today and then fell asleep playing on the floor at 8am! I put her to bed and she slept for an hour and three quarters.
We were out most of the rest of the day and she had 40 mins in her buggy at lunchtime and that was it.
Its a catch 22, she is awake early so tired enough for a morning nap and won't sleep late enough in the morning to go without that nap.
DH and I are taking it in turns to sleep with the monitor so we can still function but it means we are going to bed at 8.30/9pm and in separate rooms.
She doesn't have anything in the night. I stopped feeding her in the night when it stopped sending her back to sleep! (before Christmas so she was 10 months). If she is ill or really upset in the night I will give her some water and she is happy to take that from me, not looking for boob or anything.
But at the moment we are trying not to go in there at all because, touch wood for the last week or so, if its in the night she will get herself back to sleep and seeing us just gets her excited thinking she can get up.
She just won't go back to sleep in the early morning.
I am worried she is not getting enough sleep in total, mostly it is 9/10 hours at night and then 1.5 - 2.5 hours in the day.
I think that is why I am worried about forcing her to drop the nap because when she has gone without it, she has still had night wakings and early starts.

(((hugs))) I feel your pain I have truly been there. I think the difficulty you are in now is like you say, b/c she is up early she is so tired she needs a long morning nap, HOWEVER, by continuing to offer her a long and early morning nap, she WILL continue to wake early.

Another option rather than cutting the morning nap back, is to shift it (very gradually) later. A 1yo should be able to handle staying awake somewhere between 3-5hrs. Wide range I know, but think of it this way, if you want her to wake up at 7am, this means her nap needs to start absolutely no earlier than 10am & probably nearer to 11am. If you can push it just 15mins later each week, and let her sleep as long as she wants, then shoot for a shorter nap in the afternoon, you should find her wakeups get later. This may take several weeks so you have to be prepared to remain consistent with it. As you do this her afternoon nap will get later too & you may need to cap it shorter so she is tired enough for bed.

Ultimately the choice is yours as to which nap stays long, but I certainly think you will see a huge improvement if you push it later.

Personally, I preferred the short morning nap & longer afternoon nap like love suggested, because it completely ensured my LO wasn't overtired by bedtime, as he had a lovely big 2hr nap after lunch. We tried long AM nap initially, & it worked for a start, but then my LO quickly refused his PM nap. He got very overtired on the 1 nap b/c he simply wasn't ready for it, so we went back to the short AM nap/long PM nap. We finally dropped the morning nap at 15months.

xx

Thank you everyone. She was awake at 3.45am today but that might have been because it got cold in her bedroom (strange weather). I got her back to sleep at 5.30am until 7.
So today feels more like a day should do. She had a 40 min nap starting at 10am, then we went swimming and had lunch.
She is now on her second nap, went down at 1.40pm.
She feeds to sleep most evenings, do you think that means she is overtired by bedtime? She didn't last night and it didn't stop her waking and crying at 11.20pm. She usually has some kind of waking between 11pm and 1am, sometimes early.
I just want a normal night's sleep with her. A good night now is if she wakes but only makes a few noises, takes herself back off to sleep and wakes sometime after 5am. I only need her to go to 6.30, its not that much further.
It would be nice if she slept for more than half an hour in her buggy so we can go out for the whole day too - but that's another tread altogether!

You say she is 1yo - my ds was 14mo when he stopped wanting a morning and afternoon nap and wanted one longer lunchtime one instead, he did similar thing - fought against the morning nap, so I kept him up and put him to bed after lunch when he snoozed much better. I think 14mo is normal for that change but maybe your lo is ready now? Took about 4 days to make the cahnge and settle into new habit. :)