A little history...DS is just about 23 months. He was a textbook sleeper up until about 5/6 months. He started sleeping 11pm-7am around three months. He dropped his nighttime feeds (still had dreamfeed) so early that he started falling down the weight charts which was a concern but I never woke him from his sleep at night. Then like I said at 5/6 months he started having several nightwakings. They weren't hunger related. At first they seemed habitual because I could almost clock them. We spent several months doing wake to sleep and other methods Tracy recommends. We played with his EASY to no avail. By this time last year we had just developed a very efficient method for getting him back to sleep in less than 30 seconds. Basically we ended up doing one or two versus of Twinkle Twinkle. 95% of his wakings were between bedtime and midnight. At his one year check up last June the doctor asked me some questions about his sleeping. When I explained that we dealt with 3-5 wakings a night between bedtime and midnight he was concerned and referred us to an Ear Nose and Throat pediatrician/sleep specialist. In September DS went through a sleep study. We discovered his oxygen levels were dropping about 4 times a night down to about 60%. Anything below 90% is abnormal. We did some Xrays and stuff to check his airways and everything looked good. The specialist decided that he wanted to monitor DS again in six months time to see if he outgrew it. As a result, we stopped trying any sleep training. It was looking like there was a medical reason for the wakings. We also know that DS experiences classic nightterrors (confusionals). This happens a couple of times a month. DH is a nightly sleep talker and occasional sleep walker, so DS comes by this symptom honestly. Well, we have gotten the results of the newest sleep test and DS seems to have outgrown the oxygen level thing. I am now thinking it is time to try to tackle the nightwakings again. They are nightly nightwakings (down to two or three still before midnight). A night without them is really noticeable since it is so rare. We are expecting baby number 2 in early July, so I know it is not great timing to start something but if we don't do it now we won't have the energy to do it for several more months. I fear DS will interfere with our sleep training of #2 with his nightwakings. By the way the wakings are full on crying. We always wait at least two minutes before we go in to him. This gives us enough time to determine whether it is a mantra and he will put himself back to sleep or whether we will go in. If we go in we usually give him back his blankie and sing one or two versus. Sometimes it can take 30 seconds, sometimes 20 minutes to get him back to sleep.
So here is my plan...Let me know what you think.
First of all I am going to track the wakings very carefully to see if there is any pattern. If there is I will try Tracy's wake to sleep methods, which worked wonders when he was a baby.
Two, since we currently go in return his blankie and sing to him, sometimes picking him up for a cuddle if it looks like a lengthier episode I would like to try something different. Go in tell him it is still night night and here is his blankie. Blankie will help him get back to sleep. Keep putting him down in the bed (he is no longer in a crib as he was climbing out). No singing. Just blankie and laying him down while talking to him about how blankie will help him sleep.
Three, during bedtime wind down talk about how blankie can help him get back to sleep if he wakes up.
He already has a nightlight in his room, so he doesn't wake up in the dark. We usually leave him a sippy cup of water but he has trouble finding it. Even though it is in the same place everynight. He has a gate on his door, so he can't wander out of his room but he rarely gets out of bed anyway.
His routine is as follows:
6:00am-6:45am Wakes by himself within this window. We have to drop him off at childcare by 7am. He keeps this wake time on weekends.
10:00am-12:00/1:00pm nap when he is at childcare
11:30am-1:00/1:30pm nap when he is at home on weekends. We don't wear him out as much as childcare does, so he is able to have a longer awake time and usually a shorter nap than childcare.
Lunch right after nap
5:30pm dinner
6:30pm bath every other night
7:00pm absolute latest bed, windown routine consists of teeth brushing, pyjamas and diaper, one story, one verse of song and into bed wide awake (we have NEVER put him to bed asleep even from day one), we leave the room immediately, he is excellent at going to bed, rarely refuses
So based upon routine and the plan above, what do you think? Any suggestions, even if it means routine tweak, although that seems to work fairly well for him.
