Is my 11 month old under tired or over tired? Help with routine!

[Springbaby2023]

So my 11 month old DS has been a terrible sleeper since four months old. We do everything you’re supposed to do, good bedtime routine, black out blind, white noise etc but he just seems to not need much sleep at night.

Yesterday he woke at 5.55am. Napped 9-10 and 1.15-3pm. I’d usually cap the naps to an hour each but he seemed exhausted, as it was I had to wake him at 3 and he was absolutely dead to the world he was in such a deep sleep.

Asleep by 6.50pm. Woke at 7.20pm (always ALWAYS wakes 30 mins after first going to sleep). Woke at 10.30pm for probably around 15 mins and then woke at 12.45pm for almost two hours. Then up for the day again at 6am.

I am assuming he was under tired because of his length of naps. But is there a chance he’s over tired?

I would like to try switching him to one long nap but there is no way he’d stay awake from 6am until 11ish, he can never seem to stay awake past three or four hours.

All the routines seems to suggest a 30 min morning nap and then a longer afternoon nap but he has always preferred a longer morning nap (yesterday was unusual) and then a shorter afternoon one.

Any advice? Or is this split night he’ll just something we need to persevere with until the phase passes

He needs to be encouraged to get more sleep at night rather than in the day. Dd2 was like this for me, she'd love napping in the day, was amazing I'd get everything done but she just didn't see sleep at night as important. We had to literally force her to drop naps, by 11 months 1 long nap after lunch should be fine and they should never nap later than 3pm, so should always be awake by then. Then again at 3 years old we've had to remove her naps all together.
However it is hard but some kids just are bad sleepers, it's really hard isn't it. I feel your pain. With dd1 she just slept through from 11 months and we never had to do anything with naps etc then dd2 comes along and I had no idea what do to 😂 she's just a worse sleeper all together.

Really similar as eldest DS started sleeping through from just before 1 too without us doing anything. I think you are right, he absolutely loves sleeping in the day, always has. It’s like he’s still not got it the right way round.

My 15 month old DS is very similar. He will have a split night if over/under tired. He's also an habitual early riser. So to get him to one nap, I started by capping morning nap to 30 minutes. I usually just used the time to walk the dog so he would snooze in the pram and it seemed to take the edge off for him. Then I'd put him down for one long cot nap at around 12pm. He started doing 1hr30-2hrs and he's now dropped that 30 minute nap of a morning. I've had to bring the big nap forward slightly to 11.30ish but he seems to have took to this quite well and we haven't had any spilt nights for a good few weeks. Oh and just to add, I have had to stop him sleeping past 2pm! He isn't tired enough by 7pm if he's slept over this time.

From what I read split nights where they are up for a few hours are nearly always undertired from too much day sleep or not a big enough wake window before bed. At this age he started preferring a long morning nap also (1.5hrs ish) so we capped his afternoon nap to 30 mins, which was often awful as he was grumpy. And I can't say if it helped or not as sleep has never been great. He wakes at 6, which seems to be considered fine (although none of my friends babies wake before 7!!) still doesn't go to bed until later than most and still wakes overnight at 16m. We waited until 14m ish to fully drop to 1 nap as we were then getting 5am wakes..before then our little one wouldn't have managed but they are all different