please tell me if your 9mo only has one nap a day

[katechristie]

Please tell me how your 9mo naps - how many, for how long and where? DD is 9mo and naptimes have always been difficult, she has always fed to sleep and I've just gone with it as having tried other ways, just stuck with what works in the end. I try to put her down for a nap mid morning, after she's been up 3 hours or so and is looking sleepy but sometimes she doesn't want to sleep at all. (I've tried being consistent and do exactly the same thing every time, also have 2.10mo DS to deal with, so can't spend hours pounding the streets with the pram this time!).

I have avoided the books this time, but have sleep facts imprinted on my brain having devoured books on the subject first time around, and I know they will tell me the importance at this stage of her being well rested and having two naps of around hour - hour and a half. She doesn't. Just want to save my sanity and check if any other babies out there have dropped to one nap this early? am wondering whether to swap things around, give us early lunch then nap straight after. TIA.

SORRY, 2.10year old not month old!

my dd is 9m and her naps go like this -

wake at 5-6am; 1/2hr nap no later than 9am.

IF we are at home and there's nothing too exciting on, she has another nap when ds (2.9) does around 12. This is often an hour or more but sometimes also 1/2hr and if she can pull it off sometimes she doesn't have one here at all.

Third nap of the day - another 1/2hr - is around 4. Or 5. Or 6. Have had lots of MNers advise me not to let her nap then but no clues how to avoid this with dinner to get ready and toddler to mind as well.

Then she is very tired and usually goes down around 7:30.

I feed her to sleep pretty much every time - like sleep eating is another thing she's just too busy for so often the only way I can get her to have a proper feed is to ambush her when she's dozy.

I'm very flexible with nap times - tend to respond when I see tired signs, only getting martial if I know we've got afternoon plans - and it really varies whether ds has eaten before or after the lunch-time one, whether they nap together or one after the other, it's a tricky judgement call every day.

hth - and good luck!

thanks, TBH I'm just hoping for such a wide variety of times, to show how different they all are aand no one pattern suits all, so that's really helpful. She's such a live wire, she can ping herself awake just at the point of sleep and won't then nap for love nor money until at least an hour or so has gone by.

From 8 months DS started wanting to drop to one sleep.... he did two - but stayed up as late as he could for each - so napping at 11am and 4 or 5pm (bed at 8pm)... He has just dropped to one sleep at 10.5 months at 11am or 12am - I did torture myself a bit with the books but gave up in the end. He managed fine on whatever he got! I Cuddle / dance to sleep when he looks tired and now he tends to fall asleep over his lunch! He falls asleep if he is tired enough - he has a lot of stamina. My Ma gave me very good advice which was to not try and get him to sleep unless he really did want to - daved me a lot of stress! Does that help?

My dd's 2.8 now so that time's long gone but dd definitely only wanted one nap then and fought it to the bitter end. She gave up napping entirely at 13 months and was/is awake 7am-9pm.

She just never needed much sleep.

She's happy, well-adjusted, bright and sociable.

thanks, yes it does help - DD really won't sleep unless very tired - so looking for sleep signs and get her down before she's tired just doesn't work for us. I'm just starting to be able to resettle at night without a feed when I know she's well fed so am hoping in the next month or so to settle at nap times without a feed, so will keep on letting her push the time of the first nap back so she naturally drops the later one when ready thanks.

My 7 month old only naps once a day but it is usually for around two hours I do wish she would have a little cat nap now and again.

thanks showofhands, that's good to know.

My dd at that age sometimes never slept at all in the day.

Katechristie - know exactly what you mean about the sleepy signs and before being tired thing not working - has been the same for me since 8 months old. Have been wishing I had taught him to nap in his cot awake but think it's now too late. He does settle at night alone as I let him cry a little when 7 months old - lucky with my timing I think. It is good that you manage to settle at night without feeds - my next challenge. How to do it when I am returning to work next week. I don't know what to do as twice a night he stands in his cot waiting for me to bf...... He is now 11 months. How did you manage it?

katechristie, your dd sounds JUST like mine. She can be in her cot, literally closing her eyes and then pings them open, jumps up and starts laughing, like it was all a joke

she alternates between 1 and 2 naps a day, usually wakes up around 6ish, then asleep by 11ish, naps for anything between 30mins and 2hrs and then awake til 7pm.

Looking for sleep signs doesn't seem to work for us either, she just does the 'close eyes, then ping open' routine. I'm glad I'm not the only one!

My ds only slept for about 30 mins a day at that age. I stressed from when he was born that he didn't sleep much during the day compared to other babies but some just don't seem to need it.

It's a pain for you as it's hard to get anything done ( or to do nothing at all).

From about 12 months when he was really tired in the afternoon but wouldn't sleep I got in the habit of giving him some milk while he was propped up on his beanbag in front of the tv for 20 minutes. (I know I'm a bad mother but the tv was the only thing that got him to stop moving for any length of time). It meant he got a rest and was not so grumpy.

OMG the 2 minute cat nap that replaces a proper sleep. I hate those.

my YS didn't get into a day time nap routine easily. From 8 months old he decided he'd have a 1-2hr nap after lunch. And that's it..... I worry it's not enough but he goes to bed at 7.30pm and sleeps until 8.00am.

DS2, 9 and a half months, has only just fallen into somewhat of a two-nap-a-day routine - 9:30 am anything from half an hour to an hour and a half (often an hour though) and then an hour and a half at around 1/:1:30 pm. However, before the last couple of months, he was sleeping about an hour a day, once a day, around 11 am, then wanting to go down for the night at about 5 pm.

A little girl that I minded from 7 months onwards would only ever sleep once a day for 45 minutes to an hour!! She was often visibly tired but just wouldn't sleep anymore than that, no matter what I (or her mum) tried. This didn't seem to affect her moods at all though. Her mum told me that she slept extremely well at night though, around 13 or 14 hours, 7 pm to 8/9 am

hf128219 - ok, that makes me feel happier about working to just one nap then!

dycey - ah, I wish I could pass on words of wisdom - but it's only just the last couple of nights, and it's only after she's just had a feed an hour or so earlier! - she slept last night from 7pm, till 11pm, - it was the longest stretch she'd done since the early days, so she had a feed, then woke an hour later, so I knew for definite this time she wasn't hungry (sometimes she falls asleep the minute she latches on, so I doesn't take a full feed, so I've been automatically feeding "just incase" - also largely as it works!!!) so I just held her tight and everytime she tried to move and kick her legs, arch her back (general wake myself up really good signs!) I just kept holding and shushing, eventually she went to sleep again - in my arms alas, not the cot. Think I'm in this for the long haul again, DS was 18mo before relying sleeping through, (then it went pear shaped once I was pg again), so I'm hoping at most to have a decent night's sleep in another 9 months or so .

tasmaniandevilchaser - I had friends come round, who had a newborn (their first) couple months younger than DD - they were looking at each other really superior, I could tell they were thinking I was getting it all wrong - they were literally quoting bits of Baby Whisperer to me, 9mile stare or whatever it is, like I didn't know to watch for sleepy signs, unbelievable itn't it, the way they just refresh themselves on that mini sleep.

paddypoopants - as DS wasn't a great napper either, I'm used to getting nothing done and having no time for myself in the day - I work round it now, mop my floors after brekfast, zooming DD round the room in her highchair whilst DS soaks us trying to help with the mop, mumsnet on a friday whilst having a picnic easy lunch on the playmat - me? at those babies who sleep for a couple of hours at a time so mummy gets a rest??? never.

Pancakeflipper - thank you - again, good to know!

thanks you all, you've given me hope. Having two DCs reluctant to nap, I'm trying to tell myself a lot of babies are like this, rather than me having got it all wrong twice!!!

thanks snooch! x-posted with my epic reply there.

Yeah katechristie, it's always good to know that there really ARE other babies out there that don't entirely fit into The Box! In fact, waaaaaaay more than we think!

Only words of hope I can give are that DS was like all your babies - short sleeps, didn't need much at all, refreshed by 5 minutes etc....... but with age his naps have lengthened... He is now walking and so much more knackered so naps are deeper, longer sleeps.

I depaired at 6 months when they were never more than 45 minutes and he woke all night. But crawling at 7 months made them longer and they continue to improve! (naps not nights).

I like what Penelope Leach says about the more awake baby being more demanding for the parents but getting a lot of developmental advantages from more awake time. Seems true with DS who learnt to walk at 10 months.

thanks dycey. am so glad I posted this message now, it's always a help to hear other stories. - i always remember with DS, someone on here said if your baby wakes a lot at night it's a sign of extreme intelligence as they do all their developing then. Kept me hanging on by a thread through many a dark day after very little sleep and naptime battles also to contend with.
thanks one and all for your replies.

Both mine (DS 2.9) and DD (9 months) are rubbish at daytime naps. DD often has one 45 minute nap in the morning and thats it till bedtime - if I try and put her down when I think she's tired in the afternoon she just chats away to herself for a bit and then starts shouting till I get her up.Other times she'll have a good two hours at lunchtime or an extra nap in the afternoon. (and the other day she quite happily had three naps.

I really stressed myself out with DS and daytime sleep so decided early on with DD to go with the flow - they both seem quite happy and are developing well. I really think some babies need less sleep - as indeed do I - if I'm anything to go by it'll come in handy when they have their own babies!

xx