Why does my 19-months baby not sleep until 10PM?

[Alica]

My baby sleep very late at night and she just needs 12 hour sleep in total (including nap time) every day? Anything I can do so that she goes to bed early and sleeps more everyday?

[Mellie]

What time is she getting up in the morning?

[Alica]

She gets up 7:30 or earlier. In total she sleeps about 12 hours.

[loupou]

Try shortening the nap & giving the nap in the morning.

Warning - the earlier you put your child to sleep, the earlier she'll wake up.

I usually put my kids to bed at about 7:30 pm when they were that age and they usually woke up before 6:00 am. I have horrible vague memories of my son often waking up between 4:30 and 5:00 am a lot when he was a toddler. The memories are vague, because I was so tired. :)

Now they are in primary school and go to bed between 8pm and 8:30 and wake up between 6am and 6:30.

[barbwong_130]

Do you have a bedtime routine? One suggestion is to bring forward the start of the routine by five minutes each day. It is better to bring forward the start of the routine and be relaxed about the end of the routine than to end the routine too early. Over time this will bring the bedtime forward.

If over time your daughter just keeps increasing the bedtime routine to fill in the whole of the time until the old bedtime it is an indication that she isn’t tired. And if she isn’t that tired in the evening then she will just wake up earlier in the morning if you manage to change the bedtime.

All of my children have had late bedtime while they were young, sometimes as late as mid-night. I found that starting primary school with an early start and no nap in the afternoon made an earlier bedtime easier to manage.

I liked the that fact that they went to bed late because it meant that I had help from my husband, and later from the elder brothers and sister, to look after the little one at the time that I was at my most tired. Also it allowed my husband to have a relationship with them everyday as he usually doesn’t return home until after eight o’ clock.

People would sometime ask me about having time alone with my husband. We did manage this just not in the evening. I found that my children were happier to spend time with babysitters in the morning so we would go out for lunch or breakfast. There is something quite decadent about going out for breakfast.

Best wishes,
Barb

[loupou]

Barb, Midnight?!

I go to bed between 10pm and midnight myself. I would have DIED if my kids stayed up that late. But in general, DH and me are early risers. If we sleep 'til 7:30 on a weekend, that's "sleeping in" for us.

When my daughter was a toddler and my son a baby, I used to go to bed at 8pm myself, so I could get in 4 or 5 hours before the wee hours wake-up and cry.

The bringing forward the bed-time routine is a good suggestion.

[NewMama]

Sometimes its just a phase. My son went through about 6 months of sleeping for just 8-9 hours total (incl. 1 daytime nap). Removing the nap didn't make any difference apart from a grumpy and groggy small boy. It happened from about 2-2 1/2 years old. He's now 3 and a bit better, but he still just needs about 10 hours total. It was gruesome when he wasn't sleeping more than 8 hours, no time for myself at all, and I was very tired. His doctor said he was fine and healthy and some children just did this. When I googled this I found a UK site which said that some children do have this and as long as they are physically fit and alert it will pass. The site did say that parents however tend to be more tired than usual and some mothers suffer from exhaustion :) What a shock.