Hi all!
I'm curious if there's something I can do to help my DS stay in stage three and transition to deeper sleep. He sleeps beautifully at night (BT around 8, NW at 1230-1, 430 and goes right back to sleep after nursing).
He needs a lot of rocking in his WD, or he won't sleep at all. Shh-pat actually just aggravated him and he won't get to a drowsy state with patting, so it's either a constant pressure with one or both hands (if I'm lucky) or a PU to rock back to drowsy. We have a white noise machine which mostly does it's job, but he needs the extra "shh" to calm down from a "rage cry," which is generally what he escalates into if shh-pat isn't going to work. What I've noticed lately is that he'll get to stage 3 and then wake himself up. Kicking, attempts at flailing in the swaddle, sometimes just really determinedly opening his eyes.
Any ideas on how to help him get through this to sleep? A lot of times he breaks all the way back to stage 1 and the rocking has to start all over again, which means we're super late for a nap and then OT (and nap poorly).
Things are still a little variable with him being so young, but I try to keep him up no longer than an hour and 15 and will put him down as early as 45 minutes if he's really struggling or had a bad nap beforehand. Sometimes he gets a good 1.5 hour nap, others he wakes at 45 and either never resettles (yay early waketime!) or gets another 45 after a long resettle period. Otherwise, he ends up with a 2.5h nap in the sling or on top of me on the couch to make up for the OTness.
He's better at bedtime, but it could be because he almost always falls asleep while nursing and wakes only slightly when I transition him to the crib.
