Help changing nap/food routine

[clairebear3]

My 10 month old DD has always been a cat napper. She still takes 3 naps a day but they are only 30mins long.  She also still wakes at night so I want to really try and improve her daytime sleeping.  Currently our day looks like this.

Awake at 6.45-7 ish

Bottle at 8.00

Nap at 10.15, 30 mins

Lunch at 11.30

Nap at 13.15, 30 mins

Fruit at 14.30

Nap at 16.15, 30 mins

Bottle at 16.45

Sandwich and cheese blocks at 18.00

Bottle and bed 19-19.30 ish

Generally she will wake between 12-2am and then the only solution is me sleeping with her in a separate bed in her room.  I can't get her to settle back in her crib and dad just won't do, it must be me.  I do think co-sleeping is OK if she really needs it but sometimes I would kill for a few hours in my bed with my duvet!

Frequently these last few weeks she has been surprising me with a 1h30 nap at 13.15 so I think I should probably skip the third nap and try to push back her second nap to 14.00ish hoping that she will sleep longer.

What would be a good nap time for the second nap?  How should I then changer her feeding schedule?  It just seems that everything is so squashed up at the end of the day.  The health visitor said bottles should really only be for morning and evening.  One day this week she didn't have her third nap so I put her down to bed really early because she was falling asleep whilst eating.  She was asleep by 18.25 but woke at 20.45 and would not go back to sleep.  I had to go and get into bed with her and that was the end of my Friday night in with DH.  I'm hoping that it was just coincidence.  What would be a good bedtime if she skips her third nap?

Thanks for any tips you can give me!!

[MichelleZB]

Originally Posted by clairebear3 

 The health visitor said bottles should really only be for morning and evening.  

Really? At 10 months? Isn't she still doing the formula or breastmilk thing? Two bottles a day doesn't sound like enough to me. My son was still breastfeeding every two hours at 10 months, quite frankly. On the other hand, if she is eating solids quite well, perhaps more isn't needed? She seems to be growing well and not hungry, right?

I seem to have a more laissez-faire attitude towards schedules than you do, so I offer my perspective just for whatever it's worth.

I always just let my son decide when he wanted to take his nap and then he settled on a time he liked. If she seems to be going down for her long nap at about 1 or 1:30, why not just let her do that and see what happens?

As for bedtime, just think about when you want them to get up, and then put them to bed approx. 11-12 hours before that! Simple.

As for a Friday night in, if you were stuck in bed with the baby, why didn't your husband just come and sit on the other side of the bed and read a book or play with his computer and hang out with you guys?

[LilyTiger]

I agree with Michelle that 2 bottles a day seems very low.  For the first year, most of baby's nutrition should still be coming from breast milk or formula. 

As far as the napping thing, I don't have much advice.  I let my daughter set her own nap times and I'm careful to put her down at the first sign of tiredness.  I'm not sure what the recommendation is for 10 month olds, but could an earlier morning nap perhaps set you up for better napping in the afternoon?  It seems counter-intuitive, but if your babe is over-tired by her morning nap she won't nap as long as she needs.  My 7 month old goes down for her morning nap around 1.5 hours after waking up.  So for me over three hours seems a bit long before the first nap, but again I don't know what the usual is for 10 month olds. 

Good luck.  Hopefully some others have some good advice. 

[Jaxy]

They probably meant like 2 bottles in the morning and 2 in the evening?

[clairebear3]

She has three bottles as outlined, 8am 220ml, 16.45 220ml, 19.00 270ml.  They are supposed to get at least 500ml at this age, she eats loads of solids and has always been off the weight/height scale, 10.3kg at last weigh in!

I really need to stick to a routine for DD and myself, if I just let her do her thing there may not be any naps.  I have to have a rough time for everything for booking appointments etc.

[clairebear3]

Originally Posted by MichelleZB 
As for a Friday night in, if you were stuck in bed with the baby, why didn't your husband just come and sit on the other side of the bed and read a book or play with his computer and hang out with you guys?

I was in the single bed in DD's room, she needs quite and dark to sleep there is no way she would sleep if we had lights or electric screens on, she just needs peace then to sleep.

[MichelleZB]

Originally Posted by clairebear3 

I really need to stick to a routine for DD and myself, if I just let her do her thing there may not be any naps. 

Well, that's not true. Every kid will fall asleep *eventually*. Just maybe not at the time you'd like, or the time that's best.

It's totally fine to schedule things out! But perhaps I'm just suggesting that she has some input into what schedule is best for her. So if she seems to want to have her long nap at a certain time, why not start with that time and see if it works?

[clairebear3]

That's just it, her naps are 30 mins long, in the last month she has had about 8 naps of 1.30h, the longest naps in her 10 month life.  I don't care which long naps she takes it's just getting her to take them.

I'll figure it out.

[colsxjack]

Our Dd was a cat napper too. I seem to remember we were on a 2-3-4 ish schedule with her when she was taking 3 naps a day.

So she would go for her first nap 2 hours after waking up in the morning, her 2nd nap would be three hours after that and the 3rd nap four hours after that.

We read about that and tried it out and it seemed to fit well for what my DD naturally wanted to do. But yeah, her naps were 20-30minutes long.

An example would be:

7:00 am wake up, eat, play, etc.

9:00-9:30am nap

then snack, go for walk, play,

12:00-12:30pm nap

then lunch, play, go for walk, etc

4:00-4:30pm nap

then play, dinner, read, play some more, etc.

Then she would go down for the night around 9:00-9:30pm.

This all depended on when she woke in the morning. If she woke at 6am we would move everything up. If she woke at 8 am we would move everything later.

We didn't really watch the clock. But around two hours after her first waking we would start relaxing her and doing our nap routine. She fell into it pretty well.

She switched to two naps at about a year. It made things easier and each nap became a bit longer. So she was still napping about the same total amount of time. Just two bit longer naps. I seem to remember that both her nap times changed when she went to two naps. Her first nap was about 3-3.5 hours after waking and her second nap was mid afternoon.

When she went to one nap, it was a harder transition. She needed more than one nap but two naps was too much for her. But eventually it worked itself out and she would nap early afternoon (right after lunch) for 1.5-2 hours.

I am not sure if your DD is ready to transition to two naps or not. But if you wanted to go that way, I may try to move her second nap to a bit later and see what happens.