Struggling - awful nursery & night sleep

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We have a 12.5 month old DD. She started nursery in January; she goes full time, 5 days a week, from 9ish until 5.

From the beginning she has struggled with sleep there. They have a separate room with cots etc. for sleeping. But even now, 7ish weeks in, she’s still not settling into naps at nursery. After a few weeks we agreed with the nursery that they should try for 1 decent nap; they had been trying to follow our 2-nap schedule initially. Hasn’t made any difference. Some days DD doesn’t sleep at all. Other days she manages 20-40 minutes. I think the max she’s ever done is around 50 minutes, once.

Naturally, she’s a total grump when she gets home, is upset at the slightest thing, etc.

Worse, it’s totally messed up her nighttime sleep. She was sleeping through before starting nursery (not every night, but most). Now she has multiple false starts in the first part of the night/evening, and wakes several times during the night proper, after we’ve gone to bed. We’re really struggling despite trying to share the wakes, co-sleeping after a certain time, etc. She doesn’t want feeding when she wakes, just to be patted until she falls back asleep; we might occasionally pick her up if she’s really upset.

Help?! I feel at a loss about what to do, as so much of this is outside my control. Everyone reassured me that she’d settle into a nap routine, that they often sleep better at nursery than at home, that nursery staff are magic for making them sleep, etc. etc., and we’re here many weeks later and there seem to be no signs of improvement. Today she didn’t sleep at all, again. If she was starting to sleep even a little bit I’d be more reassured that the nap might begin to lengthen, but she still has days, sometimes several a week, with no nap.

She has never been the best napper: even when she was sleeping through the night she often needed a lot of support with her naps. Which doesn’t help I’m sure.

Please, advice?! Should we try to tweak the routine with the nursery? Speak with a sleep consultant? I’m willing to try anything!

Have a look at calm and bright sleep support on Instagram. Sounds like she needs to learn to self settle to lengthen the naps and prevent the night wakes. I was always really against sleep training and thought everyone who said they'd done it were smug f*ckers but I did it with DS a few months ago and I can't believe the years of suffering I could have avoided with his sibling if I'd have just done it back then!

Thanks @NoItsStillNighttimeDarling, I’ll take a look.

I just wonder, since she was managing to sleep through before, that she does know how to self settle to an extent? We did do a form of gentle sleep training with her, moving from feeding to sleep to being able to put her down awake, and we had reached a point where I could put her down, give her a few pats, and leave the room.

However, it’s gone out the window since starting nursery: now she screams so much at bedtime and needs a lot of patting/shushing to settle her. When she wakes, she always wakes screaming.

Maybe it’s a case of retraining her?

Have you tried giving her a nap after nursery?
I know it seems late but I did that with my daughter, I used to let her sleep 5:15-6pm
then give her dinner then to bed 7:30
that small nap gave her respite from nursery and helped her sleep through the night. I dont do it anymore but did it at the start when nursery naps were terrible
her getting a good nights sleep I feel in turned helped her nap at nursery eventually.

@Pinklilly Interesting! Was your DD around the same age? We haven’t tried this. I think my fear would be that it would throw off her night sleep. But then again, it can’t be much worse than it is, so would be worth a go.

Sometimes DH or I can pick her up around 3, so we have her nap when we get her home on those days. It’s just that it’s not possible every day! I also wonder whether picking her up some days at 3 and others at 5 won’t help with settling into a routine in the long run.