Author Topic: 14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem  (Read 1786 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline ShannonMVT

  • New & Learning The Ropes
  • *
  • Showing Appreciation 0
  • Posts: 27
  • Location:
14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem
« on: July 06, 2010, 21:17:04 pm »
Hello,
I'm seeking help with my 14.5 month old's schedule.  He went down to one nap somewhere around 11 months old, but it's never gone that great as most of the time he will only nap for 1.5 hours.  Recently he went back to two naps, then he got sick and was teething again; everything went totally crazy.  Now he is mostly well and seems to be stuck in the "two naps are too much, one is not enough" phase.  We're also struggling with night wakings.  

We did CIO around 11 months which was the only way to make him fall asleep on his own (prior to that he nursed to sleep).  It has mostly worked and he does go to sleep on his own, generally speaking.  We've had to "redo" CIO several times after visiting my mom or being sick when he got back into the habit of me getting him when he cried/nursing him to sleep.

His "schedule" more or less today:
Wake up around 7:00 -7:30 a.m.

Down for nap around 10:00-10:30 - wake up around 12:00 or so  (I know if we go back to one nap I have to push this later, it just stinks because he is so ready for a nap at this and cranky because he is tired.  If I make him stay up he wakes up from his nap still tired b/c he only sleeps for 1.5 hr most of the time)

Try to put him down for another nap around 3:30 - 4:00 and nap gets refused, he just whines/plays in his crib

Bedtime around 7:00-7:30 p.m. at which point he should be tired but has some sort of second wind going on.  Husband argues with me that Matthew is "not tired" so he never goes to bed super early.  And if he does, the night wakings get really bad.

The night waking occurs anywhere from 9:30 pm to 4:00 am.  You never know when it will be.  It started a month or two ago and it used to be a once a week thing.  Now it is happening every other night or more (had a short break in it while he was sick now it's started back again).  These are not the wakings where he cries and goes back to sleep after a minute or two (he does that as well sometimes).  He will wake up and then either just be AWAKE for an hour or two.  He rolls around, babbles, thumps his foot against the mattress, etc.  I can see him on the video monitor.  He'll be quiet and still for 10 minutes at a time and you'll think he's make asleep but then he starts moving and babbling again.  After he's been awake for sometime, he will usually start crying and rubbing his eyes.  Sometimes he will NOT stop and I have to go get him.  Recently with the night wakings he just wakes up and screams this horrible scream and stands there and won't stop.  Even if I go get him I often can't get him back to sleep.

I really just don't get what is going on with the NW.  He should be all rights be very tired, so why does he wake up and just lay there awake?  He knows how to fall asleep on his own so it seems like if he woke, he could just put himself back to sleep.  I'm really at a loss for what to do.  Even if I let him figure it out on his own, which I've done many nights, he still keeps waking, keeps me awake in the middle of the night with his babbling and then to top it all off he is tired the next day because he didn't get enough sleep.  My husband and sister in law think he just isn't sleepy enough b/c I expect him to sleep too much.  But I think a 12 hour sleep at night is reasonable.  Especially if he goes back to one nap a day and he is only napping 1.5 hours during the day.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.   :)
« Last Edit: July 06, 2010, 21:23:33 pm by ShannonMVT »

Offline Colin Macs Mom

  • Queen B
  • Global Moderator
  • Resident BW Chatterbox!
  • *****
  • Showing Appreciation 854
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 26994
  • Location: Bothell, Washington, USA
Re: 14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2010, 16:41:48 pm »
Are you familiar with BW and the techniques? Are you willing to commit to it?
BW does not support CIO in any way and the first thing you will need to do is stop leaving him alone to cry.

http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=163041.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=63839.0
Jessica
Mom to Colin Ronald, August 18, 2005
Spirited + Reflux =  :o


Offline momtonb&ab

  • Resident BW Chatterbox!
  • *****
  • Showing Appreciation 234
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 6749
  • Location:
Re: 14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2010, 20:58:15 pm »
as jessica mentions, bw does not support cio in any way.  you may find as you get into the bw techniques that part of your night waking problems relates to the cio actually.....little ones need to trust you to come back and if he is waking in the night and not knowing how to put him back to sleep, he will cry out over and over for you to come back because he doesn't trust that you will. 

have you read tracy's books?   they will help you put right any problems......if you are committed to not using cio anymore, there are lots of valuable links and tools here to help you (and lots of great moms who have been through a lot of the same things).   no one here will judge you for having used cio in the past, but if you want to move forward from it, we are here to help you establish a better routine with your little one.


Offline ShannonMVT

  • New & Learning The Ropes
  • *
  • Showing Appreciation 0
  • Posts: 27
  • Location:
Re: 14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2010, 21:48:28 pm »
CIO was a last resort when nothing else worked.  From the get go he was hard to get to sleep, he had reflux which didn't help.  I nursed to sleep for 11 months, then he started not going to sleep while nursing and waking every few hours.  I tried gentle weaning of the need to nurse (no cry sleep solution), the Shh/pat technique (tried that when he was little as well), pick up/put down, trying to calm him in his crib without picking him up, rocking, etc.  None of it worked and he just kept crying for hours.  He will not accept any sort of comfort other than nursing.  In fact if I came in and wouldn't pick him up or nurse him it just made him more mad and it took even longer for him to calm down and go to sleep. 

  Trust me, I never wanted to do CIO.  But after 3 nights of it, he was STTN.  I just couldn't keep getting up every couple hours every night, I was having trouble functioning as a mom during the day.  I have had guilt over letting him cry but I honestly had tried every other method that I knew of. 

  I know that he knows how to go to sleep on his own, so that isn't the problem.  It is that even though he knows how, he isn't wanting to do it lately and is having these spells of just lying awake in the middle of the night.  Maybe there is some technique I have missed for toddlers though or something that might work now that he is older?  I'm willing to try something new or again, but I don't really know what might work for him since only nursing seems to comfort, other things just tick him off because he isn't getting booby.  And to be honest I do have a very hard time listening to him scream in my ear for hours on end! 

Offline mylittlelovelies

  • BW Devotee
  • ****
  • Showing Appreciation 11
  • Posts: 386
  • Location: Sydney, Australia
Re: 14 month old - NW and general schedule mayhem
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2010, 22:08:26 pm »
sorry to hear its been so hard :(
hopefully someone with lots of experience will give you some good advice. All i can say is that NWs like you describe where he's babbling and fidgeting but not initially upset makes me think he's having a bit of his awake time during the night because he hasn't had quite enough awake time during the day?? Is that after two nap days...you might need to go back to one nap??
If its after the one nap from 10-12...then probably the NW is due to being overtired from the last long stretch of teh day (7-7.5hrs is heaps for a 14 month old i'd have thought). So if you want to keep 2 naps you might need to do a short morning nap (20-30minutes)...wake him up and then you probably won't have any trouble with him refusing his afternoon nap as he'll still be tired. If he's having 1.5-2hrs in the morning, he's probably using up all his 'nap hours' in that one nap so he refuses the afternoon one.

you could try...

7am wake
10:30 nap till 11
11am awake
2:30 nap
4pm
7:30 asleep

that way you get a long afternoon nap and he's not OT at bedtime.

If you want the first nap to be long, it will probably have to be the only nap of the day if he's consistently not napping in the afternoon after it. And if its the only nap of the day it should really start in the middle of the day, rather than the morning...so one nap at about 12 oclock.

My DD is almost 14 months and still has 2 naps, but we do the short morning nap of 30 minutes, so we always get an afternoon nap as she's still tired enough to fall asleep..its usually about 1.5hrs.

Hope you get some other advice as we're at the same stage and certanly not getting perfect nights so someone else might have a better suggestion.

Jessie