Wake a sleeping baby?

[gina]

DD is 11 months. I have a hard time getting her settled for naps and bedtime. So her naptimes are not consistent and neither is her bedtime. On the days when she puts off her naps she end up sleeping too late and it throws off her bedtime. Do I let her get a full nap and risk a late bedtime or wake her so that she'll go to bed on time?

Last time this happened, it was so late I thought if I let her sleep she will just sleep on through the night, but it backfired and she woke up at 11 p.m. and stayed up for two hours.

Gina E

DD 15 yr
DD 11 mo

[jniter]

Hm...

hard to say if there is no nap schedule yet.
We tend to treat bedtime as rather sacred, within a 30 minute window either way. If she is sleepy close to bedtime, can you try putting her down earlier for bed? Just keep her up a little longer??

I think I read that somewhere...

[jgriffin]

We're like the pp, bedtime for the most part is a set time, plus or minus 30 minutes. I strongly recommend setting a time and sticking to it as best as possible. E takes terrible naps on the weekends, so it's pretty variable when he'll go down during the day. I try to make sure he's awake from his nap ~2 hours before bedtime (even if he only got a 30 minute nap), to give him time to wake up, run around and play, and eat dinner before bed.

Before E was a year old his bedtime was 6.30pm, we shifted it to 7pm a couple of months after his birthday.

[maestramommy]

Yeah same here. Naps can shift around a little, but bedtime is pretty set between 7-7:15. If she puts off her naps I would wake her a little early so that you can still put her to bed at that set time. For example, I don't let dd sleep past 5 unless something unusual has been happening and it's a weekend.

[gina]

Wow, 7? I hear that all the time and I feel like I put my dd to bed way too late. We go to bed at 9. She takes two naps during the day and we wake up 7 or 8 a.m. She usu will only sleep approx 10 hrs at night. I am guessing its because you get up earlier?


Gina E

DD 15 yr Jade
DD 11 mo Olivia

[maestramommy]

Dd wakes up at 7, or a few minutes before. She was totally sleeping in til 7:30 for a couple of months, but that has recently fallen by the wayside. 7 is pretty usual for her.

When she was a newborn she "went to bed" when we did at 10. But she started getting fussy after a couple of weeks, which I thought meant the start of cluster feeding. After 3 months, when the evening fussies continued, a friend suggested putting her to bed earlier. Initially we were shooting for 8, starting the bedtime routine at 6:30 because we were currently engaged in the battle of the bottle. After that got resolved, the routine got shorter and shorter, until it got to it's current time of about 30 minutes. But that's the way it's been since she was about 4 months old.

[gina]

With Olivia she gets up around 8 (give or take), takes a nap from 10-12, then another nap from 4-6ish, then to bed around 9. She really fights sleep, so i have to make sure I catch her when she's tired or she gets really wound up.

Gina E

DD 15 yr Jade
DD 11 mo Olivia

[DrSally]

I've had luck with not letting DS sleep 3 hours before bedtime--7:30 ish. He wakes up around 6:30-7am, and takes his nap now from 12-2p. I've actually never had to wake him up for fear of not sleeping at night b/c he naps early, but did have to wake him up from his first nap to preserve the 2nd when he was taking 2. Maybe if you set a specific nap time(s) and bedtime it would help? If you try it, I would give it at least a week to see if it works. Does she take 1 or 2 naps at this point. Also, DS transitioned from 2 to 1 naps around 10 months, so things were very variable around that time, perhaps that's what's happening with your DD?

[gina]

I guess that could be part of it. She seems to be pushing off her morning nap and lately i can't get her down til about 11. Maybe we will try one nap one day and just move up the bedtime.

She definitely fights sleep though. There were times she would have eyes closed and almost out, then she would sit straight up in my lap and want down.
Phew! Some days she wears me out.

Gina E

DD 15 yr Jade
DD 11 mo Olivia

[DrSally]

DS was/is a very wakeful baby too. We joke that he really only fell asleep without fighting it for the first day of his life :) I would try the one nap. We started at 10am b/c that's when ds seemed to be getting tired, and he slept until 12:30/1:00pm. We have only just been able to move it to noon. Sounds like 11am will work for her. It's much easier to keep a consistent naptime when they only have 1, b/c there are fewer variables to deal with (what type of first nap they had, etc.). If you do it every day at 11am, maybe that will help her know this is the time for sleep and set her body clock. Good luck, I know what it's like to have one that fights sleep.