Hey All,
Well EW's are back for us and I am desperate for some sleep. Please can someone look at what we're doing and offer some common sense, I just can't think logically anymore. I have a post on the toddler board too. I am waiting for some advice...
J is nearly 16 months and we've had EW's of average 5:30am for about 3 weeks (I know that long compared to you guys!). They started when molar 1, came up, and now it's through and molar 2 has come through too. I do feel he is still "teething" we only have one corner of molar two and every second day or so he is very very clingly and irritable. We have not yet had a run of good days. But we are stuck with EW's I think its a habital waking thing too. LO is sooo tired and I can't fix it!
His routine
6-6:30am Wake (now its 5:30am)
11:00am nap for 1.5 - 2 hours (now hes tired by 10-10:30am and only naps 1.5 hours)
7pm bed
so he's losing an hour sleep every night due to EW. Sometimes he catches up the sleep during his nap and has an extra long one of say 3 hours.
I am back at work and just can't concentrate past 3pm in the afternoon, I hit the wall.
I have tried early bedtime -- he won't sleep longer than 11 hours at night so it just perpetuate the EW. He won't be resettled in the morning, he wakes right up so quickly.
Once we had EW's for about 2 months when he was alot younger and the only way we got rid of them was with a time change, when daylight savings came in. So really we didn't fix it ourselves. I am interested to see what Tiny did .... do you think we need to treat this as a daylight savings change and move everything forward? But how, we can barely keep him up till his usal bedtime let alone extend it.
Tiny: how old is your LO? Please please i hope the same age as mine! I really really hope I can get that same miracle to work for us. Can you tell us more? I have so many questions that I would love to ask. My LO defo uses nap time to catch up sleep, the npa length varies, however not the bedtime or the waketime.
ggrossman: ((hugs))
I think these are your key points:
Quote: "My 18mo dd is a terrible sleeper and has been from the start. Her issue is not being able to self soothe and put herself back to sleep once she's gotten the barebones minimum for survival. "
--- Does she need some general sleep training like PU/PD, to teach her to get to sleep herself?.. If you do this first then the night sleep and day sleep may resolve itself.
Quote: "For whatever reason, she wakes up (screaming) before she has gotten the sleep needed to make her rested and happy. Then she is fussy and tired throughout the day. She crashes for nap and bed b/c she's exhausted. It's cyclical--up early then crash and burn. I should say besides the early wake-ups, she does sleep through the night."
----- I think that this is the classic behaviour for an overtired LO. They are so OT that they can't have restful sleep anymore, and it doesn't resolve itself until they catch up their sleep. So when they are in this state, you need make your priority for them to catch up sleep... sometimes it's not possible until some sleep training is implemented like PU/PD.
Sara: The only thing I can think is it time for one nap? How old is LO??
