15 month old waking every 3 hours at night - please help!

[Wispa]

Hi all
I posted a while back about starting GW with my son, to get him back to going to sleep independently and hopefully stop his long night wakings!

Well we've had some success, thanks to all who helped!

But of course, things change!

The long NWs have gone, he goes to sleep great most days and nights and, for a while, he was only waking once a night. But the last few nights he has woken every three hours. Last night it was 11.30, 12.30, and then sometime around 3am and 6.30am, then stirred till his normal wake up of 7.30am.

We've recently extended his Morning A time to 3 hours as he was resisting the nap, and are finding if he is at home in his cot, he'll sleep well, for 1.5 - 2 hours, but we find there isn't really enough time in the day for a long pm nap, so have been capping his pm naps at 4 pm. Not sure if this is contributing to the night wakings now - is he getting overtired if we shorten that pm nap?

Should I try maybe capping his morning nap instead?

Thanks for any ideas!

[aidenmc]

I'm not sure when his bedtime is but I wonder if it is 2-1 transition issue. I couldn't get 2 naps into ds3 past 13 months.

Otherwise could it be teething? What are you doing when he wakes? Since we trained DS using GW at about 13 mo he has regressed as well, usually after illness, teething, OT and the like and if we used any kind of prop he would start having bad nights again because of the prop.

How much total day sleep is he getting?

[Wispa]

Hello

Ooh I'm not sure about going to one nap! For my sanity anyway!

His previous routine was roughly...
730 - wake
1030-1145 - nap
300-400 - nap
830 - bedtime

He would sometimes want to sleep longer at the pm nap, but I'd made a rule of not letting him sleep past 4pm, but yesterday I tried ignoring that, letting him wake on his own from the pm nap (after keeping his am nap short on purpose)

So he had 55mins in the morning (1120-1215) and 1hr 15 in the afternoon (330-445). However, even though yawning he took ages to get to sleep and didn't go till 9pm. Some success though, as he didn't wake every three hours! BUT when he did wake, he was wide eyed for 1.5 hours............. Not even any APing would help him. Woke then at 8am today.

So the 3 hourly waking stopped, but we had an extended NW instead?

Do I need to do some more tweaking, or have I tweaked the wrong thing??
Please help!

[aidenmc]

I'm hoping that someone else will come on and offer more specific advice. I wonder if you can work at getting one short and one longer (at least 1.5 hrs) more restorative nap that ends before 4 so that you can get a slightly earlier BT. Have you thought about cutting that morning nap to 45 or 30 minutes then having the pm nap earlier but letting lo sleep longer?

[Wispa]

Yes I might try that today. Just a bit nervous as he is a notorious 45 minute napper, so am worried if I cut one nap and he only has 45 mins in the pm, that we'll end up with a very sleepy boy!

In that case would I just do an early bedtime? How early can I go?

[aidenmc]

I've gone as early as 5:20 when things have been really bad. I would judge by behaviour. Even 20-30 minutes earlier than usual should help if he naps poorly.