18m old cannot sleep without holding hands....help!

[violagal]

Hi all,

DS is 18 months and used to be a fairly good sleeper although generally on the low sleep needs end of the scale. He has been on one nap since 12 months and his day normally looks something like this:

WU 6:30
S: 12.30-1.45
BT 7-7.15

In the last couple of weeks he's started doing this thing when we put him into this cot of of grabbing our fingers and then doing a sort of 'crocodile' roll so your hand is trapped under him. So you wait a minute or two thinking he's asleep but he feels any twitch and then cries if you take your hand away and will continue to cry and cry until he gets your hand back. Generally it needs 5 minutes until you can safely remove your hand! I've tried expermenting with trying to avoid the hand holding right from putting him down (very difficult!) and he will lie down and look like he's going to sleep but as soon as you go to move he sits up and cries. If you go back and sit next to the cot he will lie back down again himself. I tried this for two nights in a row but each night she did this for two hours - yes two hours before falling asleep exhausted. Needless to say I've accepted 5 mins of handholding...
He has just had his first set of molars come through but does seem like he's continually teething so we do give Nurofen when he's really cranky or upset and chewing his fingers plus he seems to understand the question 'are your teeth sore?' and so can tell us.
We have DS2 arrriving in 3 months so really hoping we can get through this before then!
Anyone else has anything like this? He is so independent otherwise and he used to be quite funny when he went to sleep as we would give him a kiss and cuddle and maybe stroke his head or something before he went to sleep and he'd just whinge, pull your hand off and turn over away from you!
Emma

[ZacsMumme]

Yeah sounds like the 18 mth SR. Google it and weep JK. But definitely sounds like the regression and that SA and teething are at play.

He sounds like T, re independence and previously sleeping so well. We had almost two weeks of DS2 leeching on to us, but couldn't sleep on us because he was such an IS so resulted in hideous OT and having to do WI/WO. Good news is it took literally 1 night.

So, I guess I think you prob need to do some WI/WO or if your not comfortable with it try GW in that you take your hand away after 5 mins, then sit close but no touching for 3 days, then 1 min same thing, then try to get out the room over a week or so. We medicated at BT too if we suspected teeth to eliminate pain as the problem. (Even though I know pain meds don't always work 100% they certainly help)

What do you think Hun?

[violagal]

Zacsmumme I did just google it and OMG we are there! I just didn't understand why he was screaming so much whereas wakeups before were generally whimpers but clearly it's the whole asserting independence thing!

For naps this weekend and bedtime tonight I seem to have had some success by stretching out the Time before putting him down. At bedtime I had him on my lap and read for about 10 minutes more than normal and during that time he was like a limpet on me as had both hands gripped with one hand and other hand round my neck. Then when he was yawning I put him down. He made a couple of half-hearted efforts to grab my hand but I just kept saying 'sleepy time' and after about 5 minutes he wrapped himself around 3 teddies and fell asleep so I'm thinking a) letting him have a good 15minutes of cuddles / skin to skin like that seems to give him what he needs to wind down and b) not putting him down until he is a bit more drowsy seems to have done the trick. The question is how to deal with him when he wakes in the night as he is not drowsy in the slightest once he's been screaming for a couple of minutes...

Also both days his nap was only just over an hour and bedtime was 7.30 so thinking we may also be heading for the start of an early 1-0 transition?! Hope not! A time of about 6 hours now.

[ZacsMumme]

Thats great Lots of extra cuddles and maybe a longer WD to BT will all help. Could he be scared of the dark? At this age both my boys needed/need a nightlight. something to try?

What is your EAS? - 1 hr nap is pretty short was he always LSN?

[violagal]

So an update from us:

We think we've weaned him off the hand holding with two tactics - firstly getting him tired enough that he doesn't try for too long; will give up after a couple of attempts and then cuddle one of his (numerous) teddies. Second is we will now stroke his foot when he's reaching for hands as it seems a bit easier to withdraw! Although he picked on this quick time and will now ask for 'toe! toe! toe!'. The longer winddown definitely works well and gives him the cuddles he needs outside the cot. Don't think the darkness is an issue as the room isn't blackout and actually fairly light at bedtime.

The nap is still shrinking - this weekend we had:

Fri
WU 6.30
S 12.45-1.25
BT 7

Sat
WU 6
S 11:30-12:15
BT 6.45

Sunday
WU 6
S 3-4!!! I tried putting him down at 12.30 after he was rubbing his eyes but he just rolled around singing to himself and generally larking about and by 1pm he was giggling at me so gave up! Finally dropped off at 3pm!
BT 8-6.30


So short naps 3 days in a row and I wasn't convinced he'd make it to bedtime each day but it was actually great as he was actually tired and ready to go down at 6.30-6.45 and took less than 5 minutes to go to sleep and then he slept straight through, no wake ups!!!
By comparison he was at nursery today (he's there Mon-Wed) and he slept 12.25-1.40 and as I write this at 19.15 he is nowhere near tired! Will try him down again at 7.30 and see how we go but will be interesting to see how well he sleeps tonight. I think we might need to cap that nap at nursery (we never need to at home, guess he gets more stimulation at nursery!)

He has always generally been on the low side and it's often taken a big push in A times - I remember we had the dreaded 45 min nap at around 6 months and it was only through encouragement on here I pushed his A times and we got the two glorious 2-hour naps per day at 7 months Then we were on one nap by 11 months so I guess both transitions those were a little earlier than most?

[violagal]

Hi all,
Thought I would post an update here just in case it helps anyone else.
DS has just turned 19 months and we have now got a consistently short nap of somewhere between 25-45 mins, sometimes an hour if he's really tired.
He does get cranky around 6pm but we bath, have milk and stories and he goes down like a dream around 7-7.30 and is often asleep within 5 minutes of going down. He needs approx 6-6.5 hours from nap wake up before he's properly tired enough for bed.
He then usually sleeps through until around 6.15-6.30. We were so unbelieving the first couple of times he only napped for 25minutes but it has completely eradicated a) his larking around at bedtime and b) his waking up for up to two hours in the wee small hours.
He has always been low sleep needs but didn't think the nap would shrink so soon but it has certainly made a difference here. So we're getting a total of about 11.5-12.5 hours sleep per 24 hours.
So we're going with it - until the next sleep trauma!