14mo won't sleep at nursery or out and about

[lizzywig]

Sorry for the long post - I am desperate!

DD has since birth needed more sleep than other babies, during her first couple of months she was hardly awake, from 9wo she was sleeping through the night and from 4mo she was still napping for 6 hours or so a day. She started nursery full time when she was 8mo. At this stage she was fully sleep trained and would go to sleep upon being put into her cot, she would take 2 x 2.5hour naps a day.

Literally overnight on going to nursery her naps went to 2x 40 mins a day. At the weekends she would sleep 2 x 3h naps to catch up and still slept at all. I thought naps would settle but things seemed to get worse. After a month or so at nursery sh suddenly took ages to settle for naps at at bedtime, I couldn't fathom it until I spoke to nursery and they told me they patted her to sleep. I was aghast when she'd gone in fully sleep trained and there was no need but they told me they did it with all the children.

So I took the week before Christmas off using the time to re-sleep train her, this went fine and by the time she went back to nursery we could put her down and she'd go off to sleep, she was also taking a 1hr nap and a 2hr nap each day and sleeping 11hrs at night, so around what she needs for her age.

As soon as she went back to nursery I put in her care plan not to pat her to sleep. However DD decided that she didn't want to go to sleep at nap time (10am) and she would just jump up and down in her cot/bed or cry. She would refuse her first nap and they'd just get her up (after an hour of trying). They have tried laying her down, cuddles and just leaving her but nothing works. The room supervisor suggested merging the two naps into one. I wasn't happy about this as I felt she should be having 2 naps a day at her age but I agreed to trial it in case it was what DD needed/wanted.

We trialed it up until last Friday and she did combine the two, some days having almost 2 hours, she's been happy at nursery but on getting home so miserable and frantic. Weekends have been awful, she just screams. This is the girl/baby/toddler who people have always said "they've never known a baby to be so happy". She wouldn't take her two naps last weekend or Saturday gone, presumably because she thinks one nap is her new routine. Sunday was better, she got up at 7 & we gave her breakfast, then a little snack at 8:30 and 4oz of milk at 10am followed by a nap. There was 30 mins of screaming and us going in cuddling put back down and leave and repeat, then she went to sleep. I woke her up after an hour (in the hope that she would sleep later on), we gave her lunch and then at 2pm she went for another nap and slept for 2 hours. Success. She was soooooo happy after this, I can't even tell you!!!

Today she refused nap 1 at nursery. She then only slept for 35 mins at 2pm. I am at my wits end. She's been poorly almost the entire time she's been at nursery because she's lacking in sleep to repair herself. We keep her off when she's very poorly and then she's better, has a few days at home being well, goes back and within 2-3 days is ill again because she's not sleeping.

I realised that on closer inspection DD won't sleep if we're out and about or at a family members because there is so much going on. Nursery don't have any quiet places, they all sleep in the same room. There's talk of moving her up to the next room at the end of January and there is a separate room there for them to sleep...BUT they only have 1 nap a day there which means that the rest of the time there will be children there so we'll have the same problem!!

Please tell me that someone has a genius idea to help! I'm starting to feel like nursery are losing patience and we're certainly losing patience with them as they just want to pat her - we'd go back to this but she was taking 3 hours to put down at bedtime and just as long for weekend naps.....argh!

At nursery are they waiting til 2pm to put her down for her only nap of the day?

It does sound like she is starting to just want the 1 nap, but in my experience when they first make the switch,& especially if they are still very young, they need that nap before lunch, at around 11/11.30am. They may then sleep for 2-3hours & may still need an earlyish bedtime for a while too. Over time they are able to stay awake longer & the nap will gradually shift to after lunch (say 12
30pm). It can take several months for them to adjust. So if she is napping late i would def ask nursery to try much earlier & she might settle better.

Wrt the patting, they really should respect their wishes on that, you are after all paying them to look after her on your behalf. If the staff disregard this a second time i would raise your concerns with the manager, but i suppose on the flip side at least they are willing to put in the tome to help her settle in a caring way & not just leaving her to scream iyswim?

Will they not let her sleep in the separate room yet? When my ds started nursery the set up was similar & the babies had to sleep in the same room as the other babies who were awake, but the toddlers had a separate blacked out nursery. I knew ds would never sleep unless in those conditions as thats what hes used to at home, so i requested for him to be put in there for his nap, even though he wasnt in that room & they agreed. And voila as soon as they did he started napping as well there as at home. Also do you send anything familiar from home eg sleeping bag or favourite teddy? I found that helped ds too.

Sorry typo:

Wrt patting they really should respect your wishes not their wishes!

DD's nursery pats the children to sleep. She has always been patted at nursery, but not at home, she seems to know the difference between the two situations. They also switched her to 1 nap at 12 months (with our permission) and we just switched her to one nap at home too, it is at 12.30. I think it is important that they have the same nap times at nursery and home, otherwise it is confusing to them, like if you went to bed at 11pm most nights but were sent to bed at 8pm occassionally. Could you consider trying 1 nap at the same time at home? I appreciate that the nursery do need to follow your instructions, but perhaps you could give their routine a go to see if it could work for you at home. DD often has quite long naps at home to catch up on shorter ones in nursery, but always at the same time.

14 months is not an outragous age to move to 1 nap rather than 2 and it will be difficult for her to see her peers playing at 10am while she is put in a cot and left on your instruction.

While sleep is important to health, starting nursery will bring your DD into contact with lots of new bugs, so the illness may just be due to this.

OP I could have written that post (DD brilliant sleeper, through the night 12-13hrs from 9wks, 2 * 2.5hr naps in the day) and then she went to nursery full time around 8months. She also could not sleep out and about (I had a miserable maternity leave stuck in doors with a baby who needed a quiet cot to nap in) or even in the car for more than 45 mins as there was just too much stimulation for her. I was close to removing her from nursery because of this TBH but I stuck with it and at the age you DD is now (about 14.5 mths) she was moved to the older baby room where they all slept on mats on the floor straight after lunch for 2hrs (so about 12-2) with the curtains drawn and nothing happening in the room. I was petrified that this might be the end of sleep at all (we had days where morning nap was 10mins and then refused afternoon naps - like you evenings were a screaming mess) especially with the transition from proper cot to mat on the floor, but I tell you it was a revelation. Either her age or the fact it was quite and darker helped, but she almost straight away started having closer to 1.5hrs after lunch. This made a huge difference to how she was by the evening, and then by 18mths she was so used to this amount of sleep that our evenings became a lot let stressful and we were even able to start a bedtime story (before this she was just too desperate for her cot). I am so pleased we didn't remove her as she loved it and thrived there so much.

Stick with it, it will get better, and like omama suggested if the next room up does have this approach then you could always ask if they could try her napping in there? I was convinced that my DD had high sleep needs too (she always did at home) and for a long time we resigned our weekends to her catching up (she would have 3-4hr lunch nap when at home once she had gone to 1 nap). They all change so quickly. Good luck.

Thank you so much everyone, it's really helpful to hear some words of wisdom. With some of your questions I think I probably wasn't very clear. She's been trialing one nap at nursery for about two weeks and we tried one nap at home at the weekends. She was just frantic, overtired, screamed constantly and very unhappy. She has literally been a shadow of her former self. To compound this she has now got sticky eye and a nasty cold and cough. Her poorlyness pattern is usually a week or two of being very poorly post bad sleep at nursery as it is in this instance too after only getting about 50% sleep of what she was previously getting. Bear in mind that when she was in the pattern of 2 naps a day she would be able to "catch up" at the weekend but being in a routine of 1 nap a day at nursery means less sleep at weekends too. During our trial some days her 1 nap would last only 20 mins and others up to 2 hours but it was inconsistent. At least with the two naps she would consistently get at least 1h 30m a day, the issue was her falling asleep which had never been an issue at home - hence me thinking over stimulation when at nursery and out and about.

Today nursery tried two naps again and she had 2 40 mins naps, she was much calmer this evening although I could see how poorly she was so on your suggestion put her to bed early. She has never let us before (I know babies/toddlers can't tell the time but I'm sure DD can!), she would usually scream and scream even if we were 10 mins early...but bang on time and fine! I haven't tried it for a while though and so tried again tonight, she went down almost straight away. Presumably because she is poorly and exhausted, but I'll try again if by some stroke of luck she gets better at some point! Her usual bedtime is 7pm so it's tricky to get her into bed any earlier than that but I'm sure we can fit it in on some occasions. If she's up at 5am tomorrow I'll be coming to hunt you down ladies .

The patting at nursery wouldn't be an issue if DD could separate it from nursery and home but she can't. I had to undo this by taking a week off work which I would have rather have been enjoying with DD than battling. Patting at home would usually take 2 hours or so and we weren't ever going out at weekends because of it and we spent all of our time trying to get her to sleep. DH and I hardly spent any time alone which was frustrating knowing DD could do it before (and now that I've broken the habit she can again).

Pippy - your words are reassuring and I've got my fingers crossed. I'm not quite convinced on the one nap a day yet though. You know when you know your child best and you feel like everyone else thinks you're a bit PFB but actually you feel like you're jumping up and down in a room and shouting and no one can hear you?! It's a bit like that. I know she'll settle in the end and I'm willing to try anything that I think would benefit her and even those things that I think won't work but will try anyway but what I don't like is being made to feel like I'm being unreasonable. I think I feel a bit like that about nursery at the moment - DH works there - the room supervisor said to him the other day "I don't understand why you feel she still needs two naps a day, all the other children have managed to drop one" (referring to some children who are 10mo poor lambs). I literally told her to wind her neck in, which I told him he shouldn't have but the point is....I don't feel it's about DD, I feel it's about them....

Will talk to them about naps in the darker room in toddlers. Any more ideas would be welcome.

Should have also added that with the one nap a day, nursery were putting her down at 11:45 after lunch. They only put her down at 2pm the other day because she would have had a nap at 10am but refused it. In waiting until 2pm they were hoping that it would somehow reset her clock and today she would take two naps...which she did.