Please help...Only manages 1 sleep cycle constant OT loop, what should I do?

[Sam2805]

Hi Everyone  ,

I am hoping that someone may be able to give me some ideas as to extending my LO's naps as we seem to be in a constant OT loop.

Until 2 weeks ago when I read SOTBW and BWSAYP, my DS (17w/o) would only ever nap on me, in a moving buggy or a swing chair.  I have been working hard to get him to take naps in his cot and now although he cries when we go up the stairs because he knows what is coming he does nap in his cot  .  The problem is he only ever manages 1 sleep cycle and wakes up at 40mins on the dot.

Along with letting him nap on me, I have also been guilty of going to him whenever he made the slightest noise (he had reflux which is now under control) so I am now trying to learn his cues and cries.  I have been spending time over the last couple of days really trying to listen to my LO's cries to identify what is "mantra".  I think that I just about have the daytime cries sussed now, night time however is a different matter as his noises seem to be different at night and as I am worried about him waking my DH and neighbours, I tend to go to him after only a couple of minutes before he has a chance to get any louder.

Sometimes his cries will escalate after about 10mins and others they just stay as what I think are "mantra cries" (more moaning with annoyance/for attention than a full "I need you now" cry) and he can go on like that for ages.  He definitely does not seem to be able to get himself back to sleep on his own so eventually I would always need to go in to him.  The problem is that then, although he is still clearly very tired he is so wide awake that he just lays staring at me, waving his arms about and trying to grab/swipe at my hands . If I sit back next to the cot he just moans to get my attention until I put my hands back in the cot. 

He sleeps in a light sleeping bag with a cellular blanket tucked in over the top to try and calm some of his kicking.  He doesnt like being swaddled and gets quite angry that he cant move his arms! 

I have just given up after 1 hr of trying to get him back to sleep after a 40min morning nap!!

Also to add to the OT problem he sleeps well from BT at 7.30pm with a DF at 10pm – 11pm however, he wakes anywhere from 3.30am onwards and moans/ whinges with head thrashing back and forth and arms flailing.  I tend to leave him for 3-4 mins to see if he will settle himself but when he doesn’t I re-plug with the dummy and Ssh.  He calms down and seems to be drifting back off to sleep, occasionally dozing on and off for 10 mins but then shortly after the whole process starts again.  He also rubs at his eyes, pulls at the dummy and grabs at my hand and pulls it around.  This already means that we start the day tired!  (I posted this problem on the general sleep board a couple of days ago and am hoping that someone will also have some ideas to help him sleep better in the mornings so we start the day on the right foot.)

So I have a few questions  :

How long should I leave him doing the mantra cries?  If I leave him to it I am sure he would just carry on right through the entire nap period or would eventually escalate anyway.

As he has woken up early I know that I should bring in his A time.  How long should I bring it in for?  Is it for the same amount of time as he managed to sleep, so 40mins?

Do I count the hour that I have been trying to settle him as A time?  In which case, he has already been up for longer than he had napped and our routine is going to be nothing like E.A.S. IYKWIM.

Any suggestions for trying to settle him back to sleep and helping him to learn to transition through the cycles?  I have tried W2S a few times but am not sure if I am doing it right as although he stireed and I was trying to HTTJ his eyes still popped open and from that point onwards he was wide awake and back to flapping at me!

Any thoughts you may have would very gratefully received as we are currently only getting a max of 3-4 40min catnaps from him and I am at my wits end, exhausted from going up and down to him and sshing etc for hours! By the time I make sure that he has made it to sleep and got through the jolts in the first place I currently only get a max 15mins of Y time so am unable to get anything done around the house.  Even having time for a shower is proving difficult!

Sorry I have rambled on for so long 
 

[~Karen~]

Bumping for you

[ZacsMumme]

(HUGS) 4-6 months were the worst for us nap wise. I feel your pain with trying to teach a touchy refluxer independent sleep. It is hard

With short naps, when you cant extend then you just have to offer more and bring forward the next A time to try to prevent OT. I remember giving 4-5 at this age when we were stuck with 30-45min naps. When they short nap like this you will struggle with EASY. It will be more like EASAES, this is okay as long as you don't feed to sleep each nap/BT etc.

Can you please post your latest routine for the last 24 hours? I personally think you may be stuck with short naps until around the 6month mark when most LOs seem to outgrow these short naps, but a routine tweak may help you to have more success in extending.

(HUGS)

[Sam2805]

Hi ZacsMumme, thanks for your reply.

Here is our day:

S: BT @ 7.00pm, DF @ 10.30pm, woke fussing at 3.45am replugged & head stroked went back to sleep.
NF: 5.30am - (woke at 5am, nappy changed, fell asleep on bottle.  Put back in cot)
A: 7.00am  
E: 8.30am   - Very tired, rubbing at eyes etc.
S: 8.55am   - Woke at 9.35 am after 40 mins sleep, tried for 1hr to resettle then gave up.
A:
S: 11.50am - 30mins
A:
E: 12.35pm
A:
S: 1.30pm  - Had attempted to put down for nap at 1pm but he refused so I took him out the room for 5 mins then back again.  Very OT and
                   upset.  Had to rock until drowsy as unable to calm any other way.  Slept for 40mins, spent 45mins trying to resettle, resorted to
                   APOP, woke again after 20mins then had a complete meltdown!!
A:
E: 4.00pm
A:
S: 4.40pm   - Went for a walk in hope that the buggy would help him nap, woke after 20 mins.
A:
E: 6.50pm   - Falling asleep on bottle.
A:               - Nappy change.
S: 7.20pm   - BT, went down easily as clearly exhausted.
E: 9.30pm   - DF

NW: Woke, replugged and head stroked back to sleep at 12.45, 4.40, 5.00 and 5.45am

E: 6.00am   - Had to start day at 6am as he was wide awake and hungry. (Would normally try to start the day at 7am)

I have been trying to leave him if he is just mantra crying but have found that he never settles on his own and so I have now been going in after only 5 minutes as my best hope of getting him back to sleep is before he has got himself too worked up.  Then occasionally I can get him to have another 20 mins.  
Am I potentially making things harder for myself in the long run going in to him like this?  Should I definitely wait until he escalates?  How long should you leave them if it is just mantra crying?  Its so hard for me not to go in to him after a few minutes  

Also, when he does the staring, moaning, arms flapping at me when I put him in the cot, I have been picking him up again, he stops fussing and then shortly after starts fighting me to lay down again.  I put him back in the cot and 8 times out of 10 he will then turn his head to one side and go to sleep.  It is almost as if he wants to say "I wasn't done with that cuddle yet, okay... now I am!  )  He will only settle when HE wants to not when I want him to!  I guess that is part of his spirited side shining through.    
Should I stop doing this and only pick up if he is really upset?

[clazzat]

Following along as your day sounds *exactly* like mine and I am completely tearing my hair out. Would love it if someone could come up with a suggestion that got as one decent nap a day, at least.

As for mantra crying, hard though it is, you really should leave him to mantra as long as he wants to - I remember the early days with dd2 when she would sometimes mantra for 2-3 hours in the night - because it is a very important part of learning independent sleep and if you keep interrupting it then it will take him longer to learn. We didn't have that long with dd2 mantra'ing for hours in the night, so it does work.

[rastasha]

We had a major struggle with 45 minute naps around 4-5 months but i can tell you one thing it will pass My DS started sleeping great at 6 month. And I think I should have stressed less about it. Extending his A-time helped a lot, and my advice is to stop stressing out and to start enjoying your LO cause in a blink of an eye he'll be all grown up

[Sam2805]

Hi Clazzat

Just one good length nap a day would be lovely wouldnt it!!  J spends a lot of his day grumpy and struggling to get to sleep.  I think that even if we could have 1 good nap then we would all feel so much better.  I think the lack of proper daytime sleep is now starting to affect his nights too, last night he was awake and thrashing about/rubbing his face and pulling his dummy out by accident from 2am - 4.30am so needless to say both of us are already starting the day tired.

I will give it a go at leaving him to mantra cry today and will try to distract myself so I dont go running in there so soon.  We are moving J into his own room later today in the hope that he will be disturbed less.  Do you think it will be ok for me to start leaving him to cry longer on the same day as he changes rooms, or should I carry on as I have been for a couple of days?  I am worried that he will all of a sudden wonder whats going on and feel a bit abandoned in a different room on his own 


Hi Ratasha
I know what you mean, he is growing up so quickly already!! 

I find it quite hard to judge his A time where he is always tired, and with the short napping I know that you are supposed to bring the A time in a bit but never sure by how much?

[clazzat]

Your night sounds like mine was - passed out until 2.20, then unable to get back to sleep for 2 hours because of ot...and the day started at 5.55!

I suspect it wouldn't really matter if you left him to mantra in his own room, but if you are worried about him feeling abandonned then you can give him a day or two to settle. My experience with my 3 would suggest that actually the move to a big room is more of an issue for us than them, though, so he might be absolutely fine.

Shortening the a time is a little tricky - I have never had much luck with shortening a times as I have never known how much to shorten by!  Also, some los seem to need the a time that they need, regardless of how long they have slept.

But definitely enjoy this bit - as the mum of a lo who has just started school I can attest that it really does go too quickly. And this bit is the good bit - before they start answering back!

[J+M]

Well your day sounds a lot like mine, too!

I was pushing through with the techniques and making progress and then it just some how stopped a few days ago and started getting worse and worse each and every day.  It's so frustrating.

I also have a 4 month old and I'm just at a total loss. I'm doing the exact same thing I did before that seemed to get us to a good place.  I don't know why the regression, or why it's not helping anymore.

As far as asjusting A time, I learned from my DD (Touchy/sensitive with reflux until 15 months), that I had to trial and error my way through. I'd take notes, and try an A time, maybe even just adjusting by 5-10 min increments.  The thing is - I'd have to stick with something for a couple days or so to really see if it was working or not. Even if it got my 5 more minutes sleep I'd stick with it and find that it would turn into 10, then 15, then 20 min more, etc. That's how I got back from OT...slowly but surely.

Well I'm sorta stuck in the loop again with my DS and I'm trying to shorten A time and move up bedtime, and feed an extra feed between naps.  Like I said, it got us out of the funk for about a week, and then it started up again.

You can find it on here (How Tracey fixed my son's 45 min naps - or something like that).

The big thing I remember was doing an EAEASY...to extend the A time longer but get the feeds in to sustain a longer nap...then the calories would also increase in the day, reducing them waking at night to eat since they were full.  Also, when they wake - try to sooth them immediately back to sleep to help train them to transition to the next cycle. 

This has been the hardest part for me because any help I give only seems to make my son MORE upset than if I just leave him to mantra cry on his own.  So I'm in a catch-22 of sorts, on how to get out of this OT, extend the A or don't I?  Help him back down or let him do it on his own?  I'm so confused at this point!

Anyway, don't know if any of that helped at all...hopefully something in there did!

[ZacsMumme]

Sam2805, just getting a chance to look at your EASY now sorry hun. I have a sick baby here ATM.

That first A where you said your LO was tired at 8.30, have you tried to PD then? If so what happens? SOme LOs like a short first A time, then a longer one as the day progresses. The 40min nap could be UT or OT, but the 30min one does look OT. As the day goes on your LO will get OT if you keep the A times as long as normal, to prevent OT you will need to pull them back a touch so if your usual A time for your LO is 2hours, after the first short nap you would maybe try to PD 15mins earlier.

HTH Ill try to post some links to W2S and HTTJ posts later x

[Sam2805]

Hi Sara, sorry to hear that your LO is sick, hope he feels better soon 

I have been trying to experiment with the first A time but I need to go back and have a look at the times I have tried so far and see which seemed best and go from there.  Thanks for clarifying on the OT/UT and pulling in the A times.  It gets so confusing trying to work it out!!

      Joy - I will try and stick with an A time for a few days as you have suggested to see if this works as I have been pretty much adjusting
      them back and forward each day never really having much success

I was worried that if his first A was quite short then because of his poor sleep in the early hours his first nap would just be a continuation of his night sleep.

Clazzat - We haven't yet moved J into his own room, had a busy few days and so haven't got round to moving his cot but with each day of bad naps and disturbed nights I am getting better with the thought of moving him in there.  I think you are right, it is probably me that has more of the issue with it than he will.  Atleast I hope that is the case when we get round to moving him.  It will also be a lot easie to cope with leaving him to mantra cry is he is in his own room.  I have really been trying to leave him but is is so hard to listen to especially when lying in the bed  next to his cot!!  I know I shouldn't but I feel so guilty leaving him to do it.... to me he still sounds upset and I'm not there helping him!

Today has been really hard, J woke at 5.40am and wouldnt go back to sleep, had a 35min first nap, followed by only a 15min nap late morning and 15mins dozing in his buggy this afternoon. He was extremely OT by this afternoon and to top it all off he had to be weighed and have 3 injections . With a lot of tears I managed to get him to have another 30min nap at 4pm and then resorted to rocking and letting him sleep on me so that he could have just a little more sleep.  He was so tired (even has bloodshot eyes) and really upset this evening!!! 

We now think the dummy is becoming a problem as even though it doesnt work every time it seems to be the only thing that can make him drift off again. We will replug then the flailing arms will knock it out or he will rub his eyes and pull it out, then cry to have it put back in.  He doesnt seem to need it to stay asleep but does to fall asleep. 
As he has never been an independent sleeper and his sleep is so bad at the moment do you think it would be a bad idea to wean the dummy now?  If I did wean should I do it gradually or just go cold turkey and use PU/PD etc.  I am not sure how much more of the constant replugging I can take  but am worried about taking away the only thing that seems to soothe him.  Sshing only works occasionally, he doesnt get on with patting (too stimulating), hand on the chest doesnt seem to help either as he just likes to grab and pull at my fingers!!  Even stroking his head which had been working is starting to get a swiping hand now 

Also any ideas on how to get him to take a lovey?  I was thinking that it may help him to get to sleep if he had one.  Would I be better to wait until he has a lovey he likes before taking away the dummy?

[ZacsMumme]

I was worried that if his first A was quite short then because of his poor sleep in the early hours his first nap would just be a continuation of his night sleep.

I hear you my ds can't have a short a first up or we get ew. But some lo's don't have this issue.
it is really hard to work out their mantra sometimes, sounds like you are doing a great job, it is easier when they are in their own room I found anyway.

Re weaning the dummy I will see if someone with experience of this can pop on to give you advice
I think it's a great age to introduce a lovey. I ade a tabby and 'wore' it for a few nights then would always give it to ds when feeding, settling, etc eventually he took to it and loves it now! 

[clazzat]

We went cold turkey on the dummy about a month ago. I won't lie - it was horrible! We had 2 days where he was inconsolable and he hardly slept at all.  Then he found his thumb and settled down a bit. It is still a little tricky - he hasn't quite worked out that he can also suck his thumb when he is unhappy, not just when he is trying to get to sleep, but in general he is sleeping better since we got rid of it than he did before.

I get a lot of swiping and grabbing at my hand when I try to stroke his head (which used to work). I find that he often settles if I let him hold my hand. The other possibility is that he is trying to tell you to b***** off and let him go to sleep! It took me a while to work out that one of dd2's behaviours was exactly that, and when I started to leave her to it she settled much better.

I am forcing a giraffe on ds! I tuck it under his arm every time he goes to sleep and give it to him in the buggy and when he is playing.

Your day sounds just like ours was yesterday - hope you had a better night than we did!

[Sam2805]

I have a blanket teddy which I had tucked in my top all morning so hopefully it now smells of me.  James is currently asleep with it  . 

Sorry to hear your night was bad Clazzat.  We actually had a really good night.  James was not very happy after his jabs so ended up having to give him Calpol.  He then finally went to sleep at 7.55pm.  As he was so tired I didnt bother with trying to give him a dream feed (he has a tendancy to wake fully for these at the moment where he is such a light sleeper), I decided to just feed him when he woke up during the night.  He woke and made a few noises at 1am, I replugged and he went back to sleep and the next I heard from him was at 5.45am!!    I replugged again and he slept through until. 6.45am when we got up.  Unfortunately this is such a rare occurence that I stll didn't sleep well as I kept checking on him to make sure he was still ok, I was so shocked that he was still sleeping!

It is 1.30pm here now and so far he has had a 1hr nap followed by a 20 min nap, and has now been asleep for 35 mins.  I am hoping that this is a sign that my efforts are worth while although I suspect it is just the leftover effects of the vaccinations.

When James grabs at my fingers, he wont just hold my hand and drift off, he pulls it around in different directions so I am not sure if that will help him to settle or just make him think he can play!  I have tried to just leave the room if he is calm but he cries straight away.  I have also tried just sitting next to the cot but he just cries and flaps his arms staring at me until I put my hand back in the cot!  I am not sure what I should do to ry and calm him anymore!

[Lolly]

With regards to weaning the dummy, if you want to do it, now is a good age I think! We weaned DS from the dummy and the swaddle at the same time, I gave him a lovey and did what you did, slept with it for a couple of nights beforehand! I started with the first nap, it took a while, a lot of ssh/pat and a bit of PU/PD but he did go to sleep and the same for the next nap. I think he refused the cat nap so had an early bed that day. The first night was pretty bad, but by the third night he was sleeping more soundly and for longer periods, naps got progressively easier as well. We also had reflux to deal with so nights weren't good, but the quality of his sleep seemed better after the dummy had gone.

We did intend to do the same with DD but left it too long and she still has hers at nearly 2.5 . I would say, if you decide to wean it then throw all the dummies in the bin so you can't cave in and give it back when it gets tough!

Laura