What went wrong?

[nolejen]

I honestly don't know if he can handle 5 hours of A time. I tried to get him to nap earlier, he sat and played until 11.

[deckchariot]

If he refuses the catnap tonight, then I'd put him to bed no later than 6 - that's still a 12 hr day, so I might even try 5:30 - I know his wake ups are getting earlier, but I suspect that's due to OT.  {{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}

[nolejen]

He is in his crib now for a catnap. It doesn't look good though. 


Nope, no catnap. 

I plan on trying to get him to bed between 5:30-6

[deckchariot]

{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}  I sooooooooo know your pain.  I had many, many days of no catnap and early to bed.

[nolejen]

Things are going. They've been better and they've been worse. Jared has been running a high fever for 2 days now, so everything is pretty much out the window. He is still doing EWs. We have been trying w2s and I think we are doing it wrong. He will wake up an hour after we do it. Which is about the time he wakes up if we don't do w2s. He does this EW regardless of the naps the day before or how bad/good the night has been. ANy ideas?

[coopers_mommy]

Is the fever from teething or another illness?  Is he in pain with the fever?  With DS we were pretty religious with the medication when he was sick and even now if he has a high fever from teething.  Sometimes it would mean waking him a little to give it to him, but then he'd go right back down.  If he's not feeling well, then he could be waking for more meds.  Act like it's still the middle of the night and put him back down.  Does light come in his window?  If so, could you put a dark blanket up (and even go as far as to pin it to the wall)?

I'm not sure how to do W2S as we never did it.  Sometimes if DS is up early, I'll get him up, feed him and then do a shorter bedtime routine and put him back down for about an hour to an hour and a half so that then he'll be up at a normal time.  That's only worked a few times though! 

I know the pain though of EW's!! I hope he gets to feeling better soon.

[nolejen]

Its not teething. The doctor just thinks he picked up a virus somewhere.
We have a room darkening shade but I think I need to block out the light on the CD player. I keep forgetting to try that. I will this afternoon for the pm nap.

[nolejen]

CIO is looking better and better.

He has been awake since 1:30 and is ready to play. It is now 3:05 and I am ready to lose it. I did wi/wo and pd and it seemed to be making him angrier. So I tried standing there with my hand on his back telling him it was time to go to sleep and when he would calm down I would pull my hand off and stand by his crib. I did that for an hour and nothing. I don't know what else to do.

I know he is OT. He woke up yesterday at 5:30 but was able to be convinced to fall back asleep for an hour. He then took and hour nap from 10:15-11:15. He refused an afternoon nap but went to sleep easily at 6.

The only thing I can think to do is to try shortening his am nap and A time and going for a longer pm nap. It didn't work before, but now letting him take a long am nap and a catnap in the pm isn't working.

It won't help me for tonight. I am not sure what will. I can't do CIO, but it is looking better and better.

It is now 5:40 and he has been screaming for 4 hours. He has had Tylenol, Motrin, water, milk. Nothing has worked. I even crawled into his crib with him and he was using me as a jungle gym. He was crawling on top of me trying to use me as a step stool to climb out of the crib. He decided he was done sleeping at 1:30am.

[deckchariot]

{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}} What an awful night - I"m so sorry!!!  PLease don't do CIO.  Even though wi/wo feels that way sometimes, you aren't just leaving him there.  We've had nights where we did wi/wo for 4 hrs....it was awful, but it did eventually work.

With shortening the am nap - if he tends to need his longest A time before bed, that's probably the better option to try.  I've actually been chatting with some other moms on how that works - so you would keep his am nap at the same time (wherever it was when you started the switch) then gradually shorten the length of it (like by 15 min every 3-5 days).  At the same time, you move the pm nap earlier (because his am nap is shorter and he's not as well rested).   Then once the am nap is back to 30 min or less, you cut it out and work out pushing the pm nap later to balance out the day.  I"m told that plan is the best bet if your bub needs a longer A time before bed.  If he can go to bed after a relatively short A time, then the long am nap plan seems to work best.

Hang in there!  I'm so sorry you're having such a rough time!!!

[nolejen]

I have shortened the am nap for 2 days now and I don't know. I know 2 days isn't long enough but the first day it went fine. Of course, that was the day he'd been up since 1:30am. Yesterday our day went like this. (the day before went about the same only he napped in the pm for 1.5 hours and bedtime wasnt until 7:30)
6 wake
10:30-11:15 nap
2:20-3:15 nap
7:15 bedtime

He would only nap for just shy of an hour in the pm, he went down easily and was asleep by 7:15. But he is up at 5am.
Is it too early to shorten the am nap even more to 30 minutes? I don't want him to catch up on the missed sleep quickly. If I wait to put him down at 10:30, I risk a way OT child. 5.5 hours of A time is too much. Should I put him down earlier? He usually falls right to sleep after 4-4.5 hrs of A time. And then should I shorten his nap to 30min in the am? Then shorten the A time between am and pm nap again?  I don't know. This inconsistent sleep is killing me. I just can't seem to get it right. Sigh.

[♥ MaryAnn ♥]

He does this EW regardless of the naps the day before or how bad/good the night has been. ANy ideas?

So my question is, what do you do when he wakes so early?   It could be that he is expecting something at that time every day. Do you feed him right away?   Maybe someone has already mentioned this, so sorry if this is repeated advice.
Lately when my son wakes so early I have been camping out on his floor trying to catch a few ZZZ's while he walks around and plays with his toys, then when it seems like a decent hour to eat, like 6:30 or 7:00 we go have breakfast.
It sounds like an OT cycle to me, but with him being sick lately too, I'm not sure. When my son was in his OT cycle recently I fell into the early bedtime cycle, where he was going to bed by 6 every night, because he would  not take a pm nap!  and it was driving me crazy.  That was the only way I could get him to have 11-12 hours of sleep because he was waking at the same time in the morning regardless of what I did.  It has gotten a bit better because of the early bedtimes allowing him more sleep.  But then my DS is sick this week too  it never ends.

I guess I'm not much help, but send ))))))HUGE HUGS((((((   your way!  and hope that today is better than yesterday!

[nolejen]

When he EWs I do pu/pd for 40-45 minutes. J won't play with toys for long in his crib. He starts to scream and throw them out of the crib. I kinda figured he is stuck in an OT cycle. I just can't seem to break it.

[deckchariot]

I would definitely move that am nap earlier  - especially since he's caught in an OT cycle at the moment.  If he goes down well after 4/4.5 hrs of A time, then move that am nap back to 4 hrs of A time.  I'd take a couple days off from the switch to help him get caught up.  So do the am nap after 4 hrs, let him sleep.  Then do the pm nap again after 4ish hrs and then bedtime.  If he's waking early, that might help get him to bed a bit later and shift the day some.  Then, once you think he's pretty well caught up, start shaving 15 min off that am nap.  I would just do 15 min every 3 days.  And then move the pm nap 15 min earlier as well.  But keep that am nap at 4/4.5 hrs of A time.  Does that make sense?

the switch is really confusing and it's easy to get stuck in an OT cycle, and I found the best way out was just to forget about the switch for a couple of days and just try to get caught up on sleep as best we could.

hth
michelle

[nolejen]

Today he went down for the am nap after 4.5 hours of A time. He slept for 40 minutes. The pm nap was after 2.5 hrs of A time and he slept for 1.5 hrs. He fell right asleep both times. He will have 5hrs of A time between pm nap and bedtime. If this doesn't work, I am going to try to forget about the switch for a few day like you suggest Michelle. Thank you so much for all your help. One day I will get this figured out.

[deckchariot]

It took us 6 mos....but you do make it to the other side, and it's really nice there   Abby's been on basically the same routine for almost 6 mos right now  - it's delightful!  So hang in there!!!  Looks like you got good naps today - here's to hoping bedtime and nighttime go well!!