need help for 14mo with sudden sleep issues!!

[heidiruthie]

i am nearly at my wits end, so i hope someone out there can help me! my ds has been going on a week now where he is increasingly more difficult to settle for his nap and bedtime. and its been getting worse. not only is he difficult to settle, but he now naps for only 30min to an hour!! this results in early bedtimes, and early mornings (this morning he was up at 5:15am)

every day is different depending on what time he wakes up in the am (he has NEVER had a consistant wake up time, it could be anywhere from 5am-7am) but i'll do my best to give you an idea of what sort of routine we have now.

6:00-wake up and cuddle w/ sippy of milk
7:00-breakfast
10:30 wind down & nap time
11:00-awake CRYING!!! (i do try to get him to re-settle, sometimes for up to 45 min! but he never does)
12:00-lunch
4:30-dinner
5:30-bath
6:00-bedtime

thankfully, he's been sleeping through the night ok, but the early mornings are killing me! as are the crappy naps. i know you may suggest that i give him an afternoon nap, but that is impossible in our house because we live in southern california without air conditioning and his room gets the sun beating on it in the afternoon and no matter how many different things i put up in the window, its like an oven in there and no, there is no other room that he could nap in. not only that, but i dropped the 2nd nap when he was 12mo because he had been refusing it and found it hard to settle, then once he'd settle, he'd sleep for only 20 min, so i found it wasn't really worth the effort.

before this, he had been falling asleep without ANY fuss and napping for 2-3 hours. his bedtime and wakeup times were around 7:00 and it was all so lovely. the only thing that's new in his life that i can think of is that his top molars are coming in, but i do give him teething tablets, orajel, etc and it doesn't seem to make a difference in extending his nap.

ANY adivce would be greatly appreciated

[skatty]

Perhaps you should try paracetomel or ibuprofen, teething tabs never worked for my DD and the molars are huge, must be so painful. Also if he is waking at 11am and not going back to sleep then his afternoon A time is really long so he may have accumalated OT, I know it's very early but I'd try putting him to bed at 5pm for a while so he is not too OT by bedtime. If you really don't want to put him to bed so early could you take him out in the pram late afternoon so he has the chance of a catnap? 20 mins is perfect, just enough time to see him through dinner and bath (about 2hrs) though by now he probably wont want to go back to 2 naps. If the early bedtime works and he catches up on sleep it would probably be best to try and increase the morning A time and then if he does short nap the gap to bed isn't as long but hopefully he will start to have long naps again anyway 

We also transitioned at 12 months and my DD went to bed 4½ hours after her nap (in fact she still does) whatever time she woke up, she had some crazy early bedtimes but it worked and she now has a morning A time of 5 hours and is finally sleeping 1½-2 hours though she has always been a short napper 

Anyway I guess the main thing now is to get his sleep caught up but I do think it is probably his teeth that has mucked everything up as he was fine beforehand. Good luck and keep us nformed 

[heidiruthie]

thanks so much for your reply! its nice to know that others have been there too with the short naps

i do think its his teeth as today was a nightmare with him throwing tantrums and just being all over grouchy. once i got some ibuprofin into him, he became his normal angelic little self again. i just gave him another dose as he awoke crying at 7pm (he was in bed at 6 tonight). i do think you are right as well about the OT thing. his afternoon A times can sometimes be 7hours and he seems to only be able to do 4 1/2 in the am, so i'll try stretching the am A time and perhaps putting him to bed a bit earlier. this evening i was about to put him to bed at 5:30 but my dh thought i was insane because he thought he'd be up at 4:30am tomorrow! who knows, but it might be worth a try...

i'll let you know how things go.

[skatty]

Definitely teeth then, poor thing  He may surprise you with the early bedtimes, Leorah was going to bed at 5.30pm at the latest for months and would wake between 7.30 and 8am (she woke around 6 before the switch!) I think you can only try, at least he'd claw back some sleep, sounds like he is normally a good napper so hopefully when those teeth are through it will go back to normal. Definitely try and reduce that evening A time though, I think he could accumalate serious OT and that does cause problems, we got a bit careless with L's evening A time at about that age and for 8 days in a row it was longer than 5 hours and we started getting NWs and EWs, luckily it was fixed in a few days.

Keep in touch, Katt