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2 year old early waking and short naps

2 replies

lizzywig · 14/12/2013 07:43

DD has always loved her sleep but it rapidly went downhill when she started nursery. Prior to nursery (8mo) she would sleep 12 hours at night at have 2 x 2hr nsps each day. However at nursery she'd only have 2 x 40m naps desperately trying to catch up at weekends napping for 4 hours. She moved up to the toddler room at 13mo where they had a rule of 1nap a day which i was horrified at. She would sleep only for 40m and became unhappy and unwell. My opinion is that children should drop naps when they are ready but the nursery told me it was to prepare her for dropping a nap at 18mo. I ignored this and asked them to give her 2 naps and she would sleep for 2 x 40m.

So she's now 2.10yo and is having 1 nap a day at nursery but only between 40-50 mins and she tries to catch up at weekends sleeping for around 2hrs, the same as when we're on holiday. For the last 4-5 months she has decided that 6am is a good time to start the day. We're shattered. DH works 2 jobs, I'm full time and while he works his night job I'm trying to keep the house running. We would love to sleep until 7am! More importantly i don't feel that DD is getting enough sleep. She is always grumpy, always rubbing her eyes and keeps getting colds (we all have one now).

I appreciate that theres not much i can do about nursery but would love her to sleep an hour longer in the mornings. She goes to bed at 7pm, she has always known when bedtime is. I will never forget our long car journey going on holiday thinking it would be fine and that she'd go to sleep in the car. Nope 7pm came and she screamed blue murder until she was put to bed. I did try a 7:30pm bedtime to see if she would sleep later but she was so miserable being up later and was still up at 6am!!

I feel like she has a backlog of missing sleep. Any ideas wonderful ladies? I could really do with some ideas and some experience.

OP posts:
Cnix · 14/12/2013 07:51

I can really sympathise but would kill for a 6 am wake up tbh.

Nursery did the same to my dd. she was sleeping really well until she started and they dropped her nap long before she was ready IMHO. Some days I've picked her up and she's only had 30 mins all day and is beyond shattered.

I don't really have any advice but I hope I settles down.

Cnix · 14/12/2013 07:52

She's only 16 mo btw

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