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17mo sleep- damned if we do, damned if we don't!

1 reply

Lau2109 · 02/09/2024 14:51

Not sure if I'm posting for advice or just to hear that we're not alone really, but appreciate any input either way!

My (almost) 17mo DD is finally transitioning to one nap, but it's getting so difficult it's becoming ridiculous. We're an early to bed, early to rise family, so her bedtime has always been somewhere in the region of 6-7pm and then wake up is 5-6am, usually with one night waking and feed at around 3-4am. This is fine with us, the difficulty comes in with the naps. It seems like no matter what we do, she's miserable. If she has two naps (usually one very early, 8:30-9, and then 1ish to 1:30pm), she's difficult to get to sleep but I can keep them short (under 30 minutes usually) and then she's in a decent mood for most of the day and and is quite easy to get to bed. If she has one nap (11-12pm ish), which seems to be what she wants at the moment as she really fights the two naps, it's longer (never exceeding 90mins), but she's miserable on either side if it and is also very difficult to get to bed.

I feel like I'm losing my mind-- she's very demanding as it is at this age, and I feel like I have to choose between fighting her to get her to have two short naps, but then getting her in a decent mood on either side and an easy bedtime, or let her have one longer nap and deal with her bad mood on either side of it and the bedtime issues.

Am I doing something really obviously wrong? Is it just a bad phase??

OP posts:
BuckWeed · 02/09/2024 15:29

Your hitting the 18m sleep regression early I imagine!

Are you implementing a night time routine ? Apart from that the only thing that worked for us was controlled crying.

Starting at 5 mins of cying, then quick cuddle.
7 mins, 9 mins, 11 mins etc.

My daughter never got past 7 mins of crying (so would be 13 in total) before falling asleep herself.

Heart breaking at the time, but we have the only child in our friendship group that we can now put down at 7pm and she will settle herself to sleep for the night!

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