sleep routine 11 months

[nichan]

Hey ladies :) could you please share your little ones sleep routines with me, my 11 month old has recently started waking every morning at 440am. She has a morning sleep from 830am till about 9am and an afternoon from 1 til 2. She goes to bed at 645pm.:)

hiya hun - thought I'd give you a bump & share my thoughts.

My LO is now 19months but at that age he was also waking at a similar time of day. I did the same as you and put him down for his morning nap at around 8am because he was utterly exhausted, but what I didn't realise at the time was that in doing this, I was actually reinforcing the early waking. For us, because my LO had a really early morning nap, he needed his afternoon nap before lunchtime, and then couldn't make it to his usual 7pm bedtime, so I brought that earlier & then we got stuck in a cycle of early wakeup, early nap, early bedtime. The way we stopped the early waking was to push everything out later very gradually until he was napping 9.30-10am & again 12.30-2.30 & BT was 7pm & this really really helped.

Your situation is a little different because you have a very early morning nap, but then she is awake for quite a long time before her afternoon nap, which is also fairly short at 1hr, and then she is up an awful long time again until bedtime. Its my guess that its a combination of a too early morning nap AND overtiredness that is causing your DD's early waking.

Here's what I would do to sort it out:

1. immediately bring the afternoon nap earlier so it starts no later than 12.30pm. Hopefully, because she isn't pushed so far before this nap, she may actually start to sleep for longer than 1hr - this may take some time for this to happen so don't expect instant results! (ideally you want a 2hr nap here so she can make it to bedtime without becoming OT).

2. Whilst her PM nap continues to be short i.e. just 1hr, I would do a super early bedtime of 6pm. With a 1.5hr nap I'd probably try between 6-6.30pm bedtime. The idea with this is to shorten her day & the length of time she's awake between that short nap and bedtime, so she doesn't get so overtired. Hopefully this will help her to sleep for longer at night. Many people are scared of early bedtimes because of the fear they will wake even earlier, but its often the exact opposite & they sleep in later because they are better rested. Even if she still wakes at 4.40am she'll have had an hour's more night sleep IYSWIM & this will then help her cope with the next step:

3. you REALLY need to push the AM nap later. This is the most important and the most difficult bit. Ideally this nap needs to start no earlier than 9.30am, & at this age I would cap at 30mins max. However, DO NOT push her to stay up all the way to 9.30am in one go or she will be exhausted. You need to do this gradually & consistently, so push it 5 mins later every 3 days. This is going to be very difficult because she will be very tired from the early waking, so do whatever you can to keep her awake. And be patient - it may take around a month to complete, so you need to be prepared for this - it can't be fixed overnight.

As the AM nap gets later, the gap between the AM & PM naps will get shorter, which will mean she is no longer going down for her PM nap overtired, & so you should start to see that PM nap extend. As the PM nap gets longer (capped at 2hrs max), you can then gradually push bedtime later towards 7pm again. So you are ultimately aiming for a routine something like:

WU: ??? hopefully after 6am
Nap: 9.30-10am
Nap: 12.30-2.30
BT: 7pm.

Ooh another epic post! What do you think?x

Wow that was long lol, but sounds like good advice, she seems to get very tired around 830am and 6pm at the mo, so will give your advice ago. Am up for the early bedtime that seemed to work with my eldest, plus to be honest am shatterd and willing to try anything at the mo. Will start tmos as we are out and about today which makes the routine go out the window due to car sleeps. Will let you know how it goes :) thankyou :)

I dont think we are going to be able to make the morning nap later till she starts sleeping later, she gets soooo very tired. So gonna keep with the earlyer bedtime till she catches up abit i think. The thing is when she wakes up shes sad and still tired i just cant get her to go bk to sleep.........

Hiya hun

Trust me I know how hard it is when they are tired like that. We had early waking from 6-12 months then again from 13-16 months so I've done my time lol!

I think you do right to start off with the earlier bedtime & see if that helps.

However, I can't stress enough how important it is to push the nap later. Its perfectly fine to give her a few days of EBT first, so she can catch up, but this may not be enough on its own to lead to her waking up later. I think if you wait around for her to wake later before pushing the nap out, it may never happen, because its the early nap that is encouraging the early wake to continue. And if you continue on a long term basis with a 6pm bedtime, its not unreasonable for her to carry on waking at around 5am.

So my advice would be allow a few days of catch up with EBT and then start pushing the nap later, 5mins at a time, every few days. It really does work.

xx