My toddlers sleep is baffling me!

[Bol87]

I have a 26 month old & I’m feeling very lost with her sleep.

For the last 4/5 months, it’s been taking her an hour & a half to fall asleep, couple wakes up in the night & a 5.30am wake up. Probably averaging 8 hours a night. Bed is 7pm, but sleep is 8.30.

Now, I very much fall into the camp I don’t expect a dead to the world 12 hour sleep. I know the odd brief wake up & resettle (giving her back her teddy) is normal. I also accept the 5.30 wake up even if I very much dislike it. It’s the amount of sleep that worries me.

We decided to cut her nap down to an hour or so (previously 2.5 hours) & move it a bit earlier in the day (11am) to see if that helped bedtime. I figure if she’s asleep by 7.15ish, at least it’s a bit extra sleep overall. The first two nights, it seemed to work a treat but now we are back to this not being able to get to sleep

Is there anything else I could try? Am I wrong to have shortened her nap? At least her nap was taking her up to a total of 10/11ish hours sleep..

I just want her to be less tired.. she always seems exhausted in the mornings

Hmm, sounds tough. I think since the shortening nap didn’t make overall difference, I’d be inclined to leave her be. If not for your sanity!!

Can you say a bit about your bedtime routine and how she falls asleep? In case can give any ideas to tweak that. And I’m wondering, if she seems exhausted in the morning, about holding a boundary about expecting her to stay in bed when she wakes early. Would be shit for a while as she resisted but hopefully result in her learning a more appropriate time to get up and resetting her body a bit?

My DD1, now 3.5 slept terribly until around 3 when her baby sister had arrived and we were forced to be a bit more boundaried with her with bedtime, overnight wakes and early rising. We had always been pretty led by her. But it really paid off, and tbh made me wish I’d been a bit stricter before. Not harsh but holding a line of what we do and what we don’t do around sleep, iyswim.