Help with 10mnth old NWs please

[moosmummy]

Hi there, I am hoping to get some help with my DS2 who has just turned 10months.  He was a healthy 4.25kg at birth.  Has always been a great independent settler and has been a great improvement on DS1 in terms of sleep given we have more of an idea this time around!  (Discovered BW when DS1 was ~ 9months and it worked wonders with us understanding his sleep needs )

DS2 has only STTN on a handful of occasions.  He has pretty much always woken for a feed ~ 8hr mark in his night, so ~ 0230/0300.  This was always the case from when he was very little so I was happy to do one feed in the night.  This has continued but we are now getting a bit messy in the night and I've lost my way a bit.

I am thinking we are in the throes of 2-1 nap transition (he hit 3-2 late 5mnths and dropped the catnap pretty quickly this time round as I didn't have time to AP at that time of night with toddler in tow.  He handled it really well, he appears to be lower sleep needs like his older brother).  
He started crawling about two weeks ago.  Has two teeth that arrived a couple of months ago without too much bother.  Possible more are coming.  I thought there were some imminent so have tried pain relief during night but that doesn't seem to make any difference.

Basically he goes to bed awake and will self settle for naps and BT fine. Sometimes we'll get a couple of brief wakings (less than 2mins) late evening 2300/0000.  He settles quickly for these.  Then he has his feed ~ 0200.  After this, he can be quite wakeful through to start of day.  He will at least cry out at 10.5hrs, sometimes I can get him to go back to sleep, but it will be restless until wakeup.  Sometimes (like this morning) he won't go back to sleep at all.

Our past couple of days have looked like this (have just done sleep):

Wake 0635 happy
A       3hr40 (have been trying to push slightly)
S       1015 - 1140 happy
A       3hr30      
S       1510 - 1620 woke him as getting late
BT     1900 - asleep 1925 (A 3hr05)

NF 0130 (a bit earlier than 8hrs), 0440 (difficult to settle at 0440 so gave little feed but didn't really help), finally asleep, woke 0708 with small grizzle then fine.

A       3hrs
S       1010 - 1045 (in pram - went to park across road for a bit as thought we'd have time given A yesterday but fell asleep on way home in pram)
A       3hr15
S       1400 - 1540 happy
A       3hr35
BT     1850 - asleep 1915

Brief NW 0004, NF 0240, NW 0545, not resettling. Slept on me but each time put in cot woke up.  Got him up at 0650.  Clearly still tired.

During the night I will not feed him until ~ 8hr mark.  I try to stay out of his room at the 10.5hr mark as I think going to him just wakes him even more at that point. *Sometimes* he'll got back to sleep at 10.5hrs but mostly he'll just escalate his grizzling and then I go to him and try to give him a cuddle and then put him back down.  This is not very successful!  

I am slowly reducing the duration of the NF, we have gone from 8mins to 4mins so far.  I'm hoping he'll pick up the extra calories in the day and then eventually we'll be down to 1min and not even feed at all  

I think there are two issues here:
1.  I have trained him to NF.  He's always had it and I think he's come to rely on it. Do we continue reducing duration or just go cold turkey?
2.  I think we need a routine tweak. His A's are typically round 3hr15 to 3hr30 - a bit low given he handles things well?  

I am not sure if the 10.5hr wakeup is due to routine tweak being required or if the NF is interrupting his night?  Is he UT or OT?  NW's get worse if he has more than 2hrs day sleep.  I know the above A's are inconsistent, I'm trying to push his A.  I'm sure there's something glaringly obvious but to be honest I'm so tired I'm just not sure where to begin!

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks for reading  

[becj86]

I think your night woes are related to OT/UT loop. I'd say you need to push the A times and get down to one full nap and a catnap of around 30mins with a 12hr night. My little boy needed the longer A times to be tired enough for a good night's sleep.

[moosmummy]

Thanks so much for your really quick reply.  We had some rather short naps yesterday, 1hr in the am and only 35min in arvo (trouble settling for DH).  Had a better night as a result though, did have an OT wakeup at .45min after BT, but then only had the feed waking (reduced to 3mins last night) which was really quick and then stirred at 11hrs and woke properly at 11.5hrs.  

Seemed to eat better yesterday too now that the night feed is getting less and less.  

I know that is not enough daytime sleep for him but it perhaps helps support that he needs more A in the day to get a better nights sleep.  I do wonder whether a long pm nap throws things out too and I need to sort out what his appropriate A to bed is after a good pm nap.   DS1 was always long am short pm (because I could never figure out how to get a long pm for him) and his nights were quite good.  However we can't really do this route with DS2 as we have our outings in the am when everyone is at their best  

[becj86]

When we do short AM, long PM, we do this:
6 - wake
10:30 - nap
11 - up
11:30/12 - lunch
12:30/1 - long nap
2:30/3 - up
7 - asleep for the night.

Basically, the short nap is just to tide him over through lunch and to get the long nap late enough that BT is not at 5pm. Though that works ok here too

[moosmummy]

Interesting, thanks for posting that routine  

I see you would accumulate tiredness quite well with that long am A to first nap.  It's quite a short middle A as a result and then you have quite a long A to bed.  

Today we did first A 3hr30 (45min nap woke himself - always an UT nap despite him appearing very ready to sleep), second A 3hr10 (1.5hr nap woke himself), third A to bed 3hr35.  

So with the middle A being a bit shorter we got a good pm nap.  He did seem a bit tired throughout that A prior though.

Third A wasn't intended to be that long, I think we had a bit of an UT settle.  I put him to bed at 1845 and he had a bit of a roll around and chat.  Then did mantra (which I hardly ever hear from him) for about 2 mins off and on and went to sleep.  So not a messy settle, just longer than usual.  Will see what the night brings off the back of that.

What age was your LO on the above routine / A's you posted please?

I think we have some room to move on that first A.  Will see how we go.

[becj86]

Late 10 months, early 11 months. He is a high sleep needs, high A time fellow though, so one has to find a way to accommodate it all.

[moosmummy]

Wow, high sleep needs combined with high A....Nice work figuring that combination out 

[becj86]

I always had him pegged for LSN because of the high A but the 2-1 really sorted that out for me. Now he's onto one nap most days, its really obvious he's HSN but the high A really comes to the fore still when he goes to day care because its a longer day so we have to do two set naps and he doesn't get a long enough A time and has UT NW/EWs.

[moosmummy]

Thanks for the insight on that, it's handy to know that combo can exist.  The thought hadn't really crossed my mind and I had always thought long A = LSN.

Well, we had a shocker of a night but totally out of our control (as are most things in this game!) as DS has now got a nasty cough and was up coughing for a good two hours from 11pm and then woken at 0530 by his cough again 

We will work on that and then revisit things once he is well again 

[becj86]

Poor little fellow. Hope he feels better soon!