# Great napper, terrible night sleeper



## Lyci (Feb 10, 2004)

Well right now ds is blissfully napping on a crib mattress next to our big bed, as he usually does in the afternoons. He is a great napper, goes down easily and sometimes sleeps for 2 hours straight! He wasn't always good at it and it took time. But here's the problem: he doesn't sleep at night. He is often up every 45 minutes to 1 hour and wants to play/nurse/crawl. It's been so hard on dh, he is now sleeping in the den. I fortunately can take naps during the day if I need them. So now I am wondering, are we waking him up during the night with our snoring, rolling, breathing, general restlessness? Anybody ever experience this? I am thinking about experimenting with ds sleeping alone at night! But we don't have a crib! Is this just the exhaustion talking?


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## sheilaames (Oct 20, 2004)

undefinedI also considered having my 8 month old in his own bed for the same reason. He seems to go in phases. He recently went for a whole month without sleeping well at night, and I woke up feeling like a mess, and then the next day, I wouldn't get anything done, because I would be catching up taking naps. Has this been an ongoing thing? For how long? Fortunately, lately, he's been doing O.K. I've also started going to bed earlier, which takes away my time from my hubby, but I feel much better.














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## Daffodil (Aug 30, 2003)

My dd is also a good napper and a not-so-good nighttime sleeper. She started taking good long naps in bed by herself by the time she was about 7 months, and would often sleep 2 hours at a time, or even longer. But at night, she often wouldn't sleep more than an hour at a time, and hardly ever more than 2 hours.

I also wondered if having me in bed with her at night kept her from sleeping well. I think it was when she was around 12 months that I experimented with sleeping on a foam pad near the bed instead of right in bed with her, to see if that would help her sleep longer. But it didn't. In fact, she woke up even more often, and every night I tried it I ended up giving up and moving back into bed with her fairly early in the night because I wasn't getting any sleep with her waking up over and over.

One night recently I slept downstairs with my dying dog, and just went up to nurse Lindy back to sleep whenever she woke up. She didn't sleep any better than usual, probably a little worse than average. And during the early morning hours, I found I couldn't leave without her waking up.

So for my dd, sleeping alone doesn't seem to be the answer. Fortunately, she is starting to sleep for longer stretches as she gets older. (She's almost 21 months now.) Two-hour stretches are pretty typical now, and she sometimes sleeps for 4 or 5 hours - once even for 6 1/2!


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## beth568 (Jul 1, 2004)

Hmm. That sounds a bit like my DD, who never did any better sleeping alone, either. What eventually made a difference for us was shortening and then eliminating the naps. I didn't really do it deliberately - I just didn't always TRY to get her to nap, and sometimes she'd just nod off for 15 minutes during the day, and that was enough. By about 18 months, she had stopped napping completely, wasn't really cranky in the late afternoon, and would fall asleep by 7 pm. She still woke at night to nurse, but all in all she slept MUCH better at night without a lot of daytime sleep.

Now, your DS is not quite a year, and that does seem a little early to stop the naps. But have you tried changing the nap routine, or letting him nap for an hour instead of two, or having him nap earlier in the day? It might help.

If not, maybe he does just need to grow into a different sleep pattern.


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## Lyci (Feb 10, 2004)

Thanks all for your insights. Ds has NEVER been a good sleeper and then only time he slept more than 5 hours was when I was in the hospital and dh had him all night. We think ds realized I wasn't there so no point in waking up. I am beginning to wonder if it's my diet? On evenings that I've had curry ds is up a lot with what I think is stomach pain. Hmmm, I'm always coming up with new theories...


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## Alison (Feb 11, 2004)

My DS is like this too. A champion napper, but a night nurser/waker. He wakes within minutes of me coming to bed. He goes down at night in the sidecar, but I still think that he hears/feels/smells/whatever me coming to bed. We're in the process of switching to a toddler bed (just waiting for my brother to get it to us now that his DD has outgrown it) next to our bed instead of the sidecar. I'm hoping that he won't "feel" me coming to bed anymore, although he may still hear/smell whatever. don't know if it'll work or not. Andrew has NEVER been a good night sleeper, although he did sleep through the night (that would be from 11-5) for about six heavenly weeks that started when he was five weeks old. Boy, we were thinking how easy this parenting stuff was, and then at about 12 weeks or so, he stopped sleeping through. Oh, did we ever have a rude awakening! We were just getting used to having a full night's sleep again!

Alison


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