relapse after using wake to sleep to solve 45 min naps

[mommycoline]

Hello,  my lo is almost 11 mos old and I am still battling the 45 min nap issue.  After about 2 weeks of using wake to sleep, I thought I had successfully taught him to sleep longer.  He was taking an hour and a half morning nap without my assistance and then his afternoon nap would be about the same length, with me still needing to use wake to sleep and had pressure at the 30 minute mark.  This lasted a week or so and then he fell back into the 45 minute routine and now gets himself wide awake at the 40 minute mark even when I am there using the wake to sleep method, especially for the afternoon nap.  Is is normal for them to relapse to old habits after learning new sleep patterns?  It sounds like there are other moms struggling with the afternoon nap for 11 mo olds, so I'm wondering if it also has to do with his age...?  He also has started sleeping in until 7:30 last week, which he's never done before (usually wake time is 7:00) and we have not changed his bedtime at all, could this be disrupting his naps?  His usual routine is wake at 7:00, bottle, breakfast at 8:30, nap at 9:30 (although I extended to 10 yesterday and it seemed to help), lunch at 12:30, nap at 1:00 (yesterday I waited until 2:30 and he still woke at 40 min) snack/bottle at 3:00, dinner at 5:30, bath at 7, then bottle & bed at about 7:30.  So, I'm wondering about the relapse to 45 min, and the sleeping in time, as well his nap times.  Thank you in adavance for your advice, I really appreciate everyone's posts!  Coline

[mommycoline]

Before I worked on the 45 min issue, I did the pu/pd with him (well, actually more pd) in order to get him to go to sleep independently and he does do that now as long as I'm standing by his crib, with hands on, he will lay there and go to sleep.  I transition him to naps by reading books and then I rock him for a couple of minutes until he's relaxed, then lay him in his crib.  The 45 min issue is deeply entrenched, because I didn't realize it was a breakable habit until I bought Tracy's 2nd book in January (didn't remember reading that in her 1st book)...I always just thought it was because he is such an active baby.  So he used to just take 3, 45 min naps a day until I started to use wake to sleep.  I have extended wake times, and like I said, the morning nap is much easier, but he is a real stinker about taking a long pm nap, which concerns me since this is that nap that he will keep.  Oh, and as far as his mood when he wakes from a short nap....very crabby.  If he takes a long nap, he'll wake up and play in his crib for a while before he "calls" me in there, but if he wakes at 45 min, he wakes up crying and it's impossible to get him to go back to sleep once he's got himself awake...especially using pu/pd.

[sadiebean]

Hi,
Just wanted to tell you that your message sounds like it was taken from my sleep log. My son is 5 weeks younger than yours, also touchy/textbook (I think...). We finally did conquer the catnap just last week -- break out the champagne! I still cannot believe it after 6months of working at it BUT we had to ditch pu/pd, wake-to-sleep, all of it -- for him these things were agitating and/or became a new prop.

The story is, we restarted wake-to-sleep (again....) a few weeks ago, and it worked SOMEtimes... but even then we'd have to stay in the room with him (so really, it didn't work -- he wasn't able to sleep independent of us.) Plus, he started waking after I put him to bed at night...every 45 minutes! Untill 11:30-12am when I guess he got so pooped he would sleep for a few hours. I finally put it together and concluded that I was just creating a new sleep prop, and lost faith that W2S would ever work for his temperment.

Instead, last Tuesday I decided I would let him cry when he woke up -- couldn't be worse than being cranky for 6hours and having his night sleep impacted. I put tissue in my ears, patted and shushed him... then I sat my butt down and stayed in his room. I shushed intermittently from the chair to let him know I was there, and got up now and then to pat and shush him in his crib. But nothing patterned that he could get "addicted" to. He cried for 40min (frustrated, mad sometimes, very tired -- NEVER hysterical or fearful) and... fell asleep for another 20 minutes! Never did that before. And it has been uphill since then. I truly am astonished. 

His shortest PM nap since then (7 days ago) was 50min -- it used to be 20min if it was anything. Yesterday he slept almost 2hours without any wake up! And when he does wake up, I rarely stay in the room the whole time -- I know from his cries when he needs me to go to him and pat and shush him briefly; and when he is just trying to get back to sleep, and mom would just get in the way. I NEVER leave him alone if his cry sounds like he needs me.

Anyway, sorry for the book, but thought maybe you could benefit from my experience. I hesitate to call it a FULL success until it's been the majority of days that he sleeps w/o waking and crying a bit, but I do feel confident we have hit upon the route to great sleep. Hope it helps!!

[sadiebean]

Oh, I should also add that after his first day of really good naps (Wednesday, the day after I started this) he slept through the night for the first time -- totally unexpected!