Lengthening naps

[Fantail86]

Hi all
I posted previously about my chronically overtired 14 month old. We've made great progress with sleep training, helped massively by her forming an attachment to a comforter. Whilst the nights are significantly better, I'm at a loss as to how to support her to lengthen her lunchtime nap. She is pretty reliably settling in 10 to 20 minutes and naps for 90 minutes. This is such a change from me holding her. I can tell though that she really needs a good two hours. Any tips?

Why do you need to lengthen that lunchtime nap? 90 minutes is completely normal at this age.

What time does she go to bed at night?

Just to warn you, one of mine dropped all naps at 18 months...it can happen and is within the realms of normal for some children.

I've seen others on Mumsnet say the same about their toddlers too.

She wakes up very cranky and it's clear that she's still tired

@FortunesFave sorry, I just read that back and I sounded really rude, didn't mean for it to come across that way. My daughter has pretty high sleep needs, she was in NICU post birth, has problems with overstimulation and needs the sleep!

My 14 month old still naps twice a day (born 4 weeks early and in NNU for a week). She naps from 9:30-11 and 2:30-4.. have you tried 2 naps?

@Vicky1989x interesting that you say that, I was advised by a sleep consultant to cut her morning nap down in order to conserve her pm sleep (she went through a phase of nap fighting although it could have been overtiredness). I'm wondering if I've been given the wrong advice...

@Vicky1989x out of curiosity is your little one very sensitive to stimulation too? I only learnt very recently that it can happen after NICU stays, nobody thought to tell me about it when our daughter was very young...

Do you go and get her straight away when she wakes up? I'd leave her ten minutes or so to see if she goes back off, if that's how long she takes to settle at the start of the nap. Or go in at 80 minutes and start patting or white noise to try and get her past 90 minutes.

I would deffo give it a go not cutting the morning nap short. Worth a shot isn't it! Give it a week to get a good idea if it works.

@MsChatterbox think you're right

@Fantail86 she is very sensitive to stimulation! Nobody told me about the NICU thing though, but now I know why 😂 My DD recently went through a stage of nap fighting and I thought she was ready to drop one but tried it for a few days and she was miserable so went back to 9:30 and 2:30. I think it was a regression as there is one around now! She naps 90 minutes each nap like clockwork usually, odd day she doesn’t (like today she only napped for 40 minutes this morning 🙄)

@TooMinty

Do you go and get her straight away when she wakes up? I'd leave her ten minutes or so to see if she goes back off, if that's how long she takes to settle at the start of the nap. Or go in at 80 minutes and start patting or white noise to try and get her past 90 minutes.

This. I used to come upstairs to go to the loo before getting DC from their nap - often they'd have gone back to the sleep by the time I was washing my hands!

The 'average' baby is having two naps until 18 months. There will be some who are happy dropping the to 1 nap early, but these would be happy in that. Your DC isn't OP.

My youngest kept 2 naps (Of 1.5-2h each) until 20-22 months old.

Id suggest naps at 9am and 2pm, with an 8pm ish bedtime.

@FATEdestiny that's good to hear. Every single sleep consultant I have spoken to seems to subscribe to cutting the morning nap to 30 minutes in order to keep the pm nap and it just doesn't work for my daughter particularly as we have an early morning wake.
She's taken to settling herself really well which is such a huge step forward. I fear that without allowing her to sleep longer in the morning we risk the same overtired cycle starting all over again.
Out of curiosity, do you know why it's "fashionable" to cut the morning nap to 30 mins?

The sleep consultant that we used always said to never cap the first nap unless still going at 3 hours. As your DC gets older and awake times lengthen, the morning nap essentially becomes the single lunchtime nap of the day and you want that one to be a couple of hours. You cap the second nap as that will eventually be dropped.

Out of curiosity, do you know why it's "fashionable" to cut the morning nap to 30 mins?

It's actually the opposite.

The routine of 30 minute morning nap and 2.5h afternoon nap comes from the Gina Ford routine, which was published over 20 years ago. Gina herself was born in 1960 so her techniques are based on practice through the 80s and 90s.

Thing is, the Gina Ford methodology for baby routines are really, really well known. Some people set themselves up as sleep consultants and basically just regurgitate advice from various sources, most notably Gina Ford (and often Tracy Hogg - another older generation baby sleep expert who has now, sadly, died).

It's lazy and formulaic advice. It doesn't look at the individual case and advise accordingly.

@FATEdestiny that's interesting, I wondered what the source was. It seems really counterintuitive too as in cutting a nap to 30 minutes an infant doesn't get a full sleep cycle, are likely to be overtired and then sleep is worse in the second nap anyway.

@stopchewingeverything your sleep consultant sounds very sensible!!