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Sleep

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Original poster

Nap advice please!!!!

35 replies

NeverGotMyPuppy · 05/07/2019 13:08

9 month old - used to be a dreadful sleeper, now does 6 30-5/5.30.
The early wakkngs are the problem.
We had a sleep consultant. She said max an hour nap in the morning and 2 in the afternoon with a quick catnap at 7am if he woke early.
Problem is he doesn't do 2 hrs in the afternoon and he always wakes early.

Any advice? I wake him from the morning one under her advice- should I not do that? Should I just ignore her advice?!

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Original poster

NeverGotMyPuppy · 10/07/2019 08:51

Tha is everyone for your advice. Problem is of course I'm more confused than I was to start with!

@MustardScreams what I mean is is that DS now goes to sleep by himself so I dont want to try and elongate the lunchtime nap by introducing rocking and shushing.

I I dont know why it makes me so anxious. I have spoken to the GP twice about PND but he says I'm too coherent and am clearly just tired. My relationship with DH is not good at the moment and I just feel a bit low.

OP posts:

Imicola · 10/07/2019 11:12

What happens if you let them sleep longer in the morning nap?
For us (almost 9 months) , I normally go for morning nap around 2 and a half hours after wake up time, and then afternoon nap sometime between 2 and 3,and let her sleep as long as she wants for both, so long as she is awake by 5pm. I find it easier keeping her awake longer in the middle of the day as we can go out which distracts her! Then bedtime between 7 and 7.45pm.
She usually gets about 3 hours during the day like that, but it varies a lot. Overnight she then sleeps till anywhere between 6 and 7.30, but sometimes with one wakeup around 4am. I feel like naps are working better for us now than they ever have as until recently she would only have a max 30 minute nap! That was annoying.

Original poster

NeverGotMyPuppy · 10/07/2019 14:21

I let him sleep this morning- he had an hour and 5 minutes. I then took him swimming. His afternoon nap was just over 50 minutes.
He is miserable
For fucks sake.

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Imicola · 10/07/2019 14:57

Very random, and I'm assuming this is just my strange baby, but just incase it helps... the thing that got my baby napping longer was putting a jumper on her for nap time.
Anyway, I offer sympathy as I had 7 long months of crappy naps and it got very old.

Original poster

NeverGotMyPuppy · 10/07/2019 17:43

Thank you, I'll give it a go.

Why does it take up so much damn head space?! I'm so jealous of people who are like 'oh he just naps whenever really'

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Littlehouseinthebigcity · 10/07/2019 17:49

I'm the same as @Imicola and have been for a while (dd is now 22 months!!). She has a nap in the morning for around an hour to an hour and a half, then goes down in the afternoon around 3-4 for between 1-2 hours! I freaked out for a while cos all the books say she should be on one lunchtime nap by now but this is what works for her and she sleeps ok at night!

Original poster

NeverGotMyPuppy · 10/07/2019 17:51

That's helpful because it shows me that maybe i'm just expecting too much at 10 months.
I saw a friend today with a 3 month old who already has a pretty good.nap schedule. I feel so embarrassed that I have struggled so much with it.

It's been harder than I could have ever imagined.

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HerSymphonyAndSong · 10/07/2019 18:31

A nap schedule really isn’t the measure of how good you are as a parent. It does sound a little bit like you are trying to meet a particular idea of “perfect” naps, which may not exist, or may not work for your baby. I know it is so so hard but things do change, and it’s often difficult to know whether it is because of anything we have done or because a baby has reached a particular developmental stage

Original poster

NeverGotMyPuppy · 10/07/2019 18:54

@HerSymphonyAndSong thank you. It's so hard not to see it all as one big test that I am spectacularly fucking up. I'm also afraid that I have just made my whole mat leave miserable which probably isnt true but it is something that worries me!

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Liefster · 10/07/2019 19:07

Naps are a pain in the backside, especially at that age! I used to get stressed about it too so I completely understand how you feel. My son is 20 months old now and he has one nap a day for a good 2 hours...if someone had told me that by 12 months old, it all seems to click into place then I wouldn't have worried so much.

I would perhaps think about the awake times for that age and go from there. As far as I know it's 3-4 hours at 9 months, so if your baby is waking at 5.30 then the first nap would be by 9.30 latest. Having said that, I never used to force a nap - if my son wasn't tired, I would leave it another 15/20 mins or so and usually he'd be showing all the tiredness signs by then anyway. The afternoon nap will then be 3-4 hours after the last one ends. The only "rule" I had was not letting him sleep past a certain time in the afternoon so it didn't affect bedtime too much. And also 45 min naps were very normal for my son at that age, it's so frustrating but in the end I just went with it until they naturally got longer.

It will get better, I promise you. And you're doing a great job so don't doubt yourself!

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