11 month old, EWs have gone on FOREVER. Ready to give up!

[smahalik]

OK, so today went pretty well and I've been feeling optimistic.  But then this afternoon the wheels fell off!!  Last night he slept from 6:00 pm - 5:30 am.  Still too early, but at least it's 11.5 hours and we can work on moving it later slowly.  Then, he took a nap right at 9:30 and I woke him at 10:30, like you said.  I really thought he would be grumpy, but he wasn't, I guess since he got such a good night's sleep!  BUT...then I tried putting him down for nap #2 at 2:00 (as it seemed like you thought 4 hours was too much A time for an 11 month old) and there was no way he was ready.  So then I tried again at 2:30 and he went down with a little coaxing.  But then he woke up screaming 45 minutes later!!  I tried really hard to get him to go back down, but he wasn't having it.  So he's been pretty grumpy this afternoon and I'm now pretty concerned about how he'll sleep tonight with only 1 hour 45 minutes of naps under his belt. 
So what do you think happened?  He's never been a great afternoon napper, but usually that morning nap seems to make up for it. 

[smahalik]

So we put him down at 6:00 last night and he was up at 5:00 this morning.  Not terrible, not great.  Then I took him for a walk and he kept trying to doze off (around 8:30 AM), but I worked really hard to keep him awake so that he could still nap at 9:30.  He hard a harder time going down at 9:30, either due to OT or b/c he may have dozed during our walk.  I guess I'll still wake him at 10:30...
I'm feeling really, really down about this today.  I just feel like I've spent his entire life so far dealing with sleep issues and I'm just so tired of it.  One day goes well and I feel optimistic and then the next day is terrible.  I just don't feel like I can ever get him on track without something happening to mess it up. 
And on top of it, I have all these friends whose LO's take naps whenever, for however long, go to bed late, and still sleep late and well.  ARGH!!  Jack just seems to be so incredibly sensitive to sleep that I just really have my doubts that we'll ever get him on a good routine where he's waking at a reasonable time, going to bed at a reasonable time, taking decent naps, and not OT. 
I HATE that I'm spending my son's first year of life feeling so stressed about this!

[Mashi]

First of all, last night you had a HUGE success with the 11.5 hours of night sleep!  Keep that one on your mind when you are feeling down!

I really understand how hard it is when looking at friends with LOs the same age - my two closest friends had LOs at the same time as me...we all had boys, and the age gap is 2 months from oldest to youngest.  They have very different methods than me, and they just let their LOs sleep whenever, wherever and however. Go out for lunch on a weekday together and their LOs scream their heads off from OT and the moms just sort of ignore it or stick LO in his pram and push it back and forth until a big sigh of relief "he's asleep!"   LO is up until 10pm, etc etc. Used to tell me he slept good as gold, why was I bothering with this "nap business" and so on.  And then my DH would talk to their DH and find out that LO really IS up several times in the night, mom really IS up the wall...and so on. Would just never say it in front of another mom!  I'm NOT suggesting this may be the case with your friends, but just letting you know that I know the feeling. xx

So you had a good success with the11.5 hours of night sleep, and yes, you're right, it's early, WAY early, but once on track in a few days it won't take long to change that! I think that yes, 2pm was probably too early for his nap - I do think that 4 hours is too long of an A time for an 11month old who is in an OT cycle, but if he is well rested and not OT then it's not too long at all.  Sorry if I didn't clarify that earlier or if I said otherwise, I was looking at it from OT.  But if he's well rested then aim for 4 hours if that's what he seems to do.

I think that yes, I would definitely still wake him at 1030 this morning, and try him down at 230 for his second nap.  Fingers crossed he will sleep an hour for you, if not more.   An then I would suspect a 630 bedtime....and fingers crossed for a 545 wake up tomorrow....

Go to bed tonight with a positive attitude - you have done an amazing job so far!! It's hard spending the first year this stressed out, but you are lying the foundation for good sleep patterns. I remember getting so stressed about it all, thinking that it didn't matter, I would just let him sleep when and wherever and however and not care. But another BWer explained to me that it's not JUST about getting decent naps and night sleep, but teaching your LO what "tired" feels like, that when we are tired we go to sleep, how to go to sleep on their own, and when are appropriate and reasonable times to sleep.

 

[smahalik]

Still not working, still exhausted.  He was up at 4:45 AM this morning (he woke at 4:45, I went in his room around 5:15 and laid down with him and he fell back asleep from 5:45 to 6:30). 
OK, so here are the issues/questions I'm seeing for today: 
1) He still only took a 45 minute nap from 2:30-3:15 yesterday.  He was relatively happy when he woke up and didn't seem overtired, but it seems that 1 hour 45 minutes cannot be enough nap time during the day.
2) I'm confused as to why you recommended I put him down at 6:30 last night, as he woke at 5:00 AM yesterday (so would've been a 13.5 hour day) and has gone down at 6:00 for the past 3 nights.  This being said, I put him down at 6:15 last night as a compromise.  Obviously it didn't work.
3) Do I still put him down at 9:30 AM for his 1 hour nap no matter what time he wakes? 

I'm sorry to have to continue to pester you for the details, but I'm lost.  I understand your general method, but when it doesn't work out (e.g. his short afternoon naps), I don't know what to do.  Thanks. 

[Mashi]

Well if he went back to sleep, then 445 wasn't "up" to start the day, it was a NW.  I would have gone on from the day as if it started at 630. And 630 is an hour and a half later than what he has been waking at lately, so that's a massive improvement.   Judge what time he is ready for his nap, I probably would have gone for 1000ish if it were me, being that he slept quite a bit later in the morning than he has been.

For the 630 bedtime, what I had said was that hoping he would sleep until 230 and thus my best guess was a 630 bedtime.  You still have to know how to watch him, judge if he is tired and needs to go to bed and make that call.   And, I think that it DID work  he was up for the day at 630 this morning, not 500am.  So............. looks like things are working to me! A night waking is not starting the day, keep that in mind. Babies wake in the night for other reasons - pain, illness, OT, UT, nightmare, discomfort, and so on. Because he had a NW at 445 does not mean that he tried to start his day at 445. 

When in these loops I always tried to go to my LO as soon as he woke in the night to help him back to sleep as soon as possible, limiting the amount of time he was awake so as not to mess things up any more.  Once I got him back on track with things, I went back to leaving him to settle himself for a bit before I went to him.  Just a though.

[smahalik]

OK, I understand what you're saying.  Hadn't thought about it being a NW.  I just put him down for his morning nap at 10:00 AM and will wake him after an hour.  Then HOPEFULLY he'll have a better afternoon nap.  I have a feeling that getting that straight will have an impact.  Thanks!

[smahalik]

OK, so today is the first day I've really been crying about this in a while.  He was up at 4:45 AM this morning and wouldn't go back down for anything.  Does that make this an EW or NW?  After wrestling to get him to go back to sleep until 6:00 AM, I finally gave in and gave him to DH and told him I only had 4 hours of sleep (had to work the night shift last night) and needed to lay down.  I then sobbed uncontrollably for 1/2 hour.  I really just don't know what else to do.  He's up one day at 6:30 (yesterday, after his 4:45 AM NW), the next at 4:45 AM, I don't know when to lay him down or even feed him, really. 
If this is getting better, I really just can't see it. 

[Mashi]

Sorry that you're feeling so down about things - I'm going to ask someone else to pop over and see if they can spot something that I am missing. Sorry that I've not been able to help you sort it out...

[*Liz*]

Hi - popping over from EASY to see if I can help  .

EWs are very very difficult to deal with. I do think you have an early riser on your hands and agree that aiming for a 6am get up is reasonable. And it is also part of the territory with a lot of los this age, especially once they have started the 2-1 transition and OT is creeping in.

At the moment the worseing EWs are being caused by being more OT at bedtime with the short pm naps.

But I think your main issue in a lot of this is that long am nap - he is using it as an extension of his night sleep to catch up after the EW. Now obviously over the last few days you have put him down early and got a bit more sleep into him that way, but he is still napping at the same time as he is just soooo well programmed to do it.

So I think we have 2 options
1) Start cutting the am nap down even further and try and find the right A after it to get a good pm nap (I did this from 8-11 mths)
2) Start to push back the am nap so that the long nap is further from the night sleep.

What do you think would work best? I realise both have their drawbacks. If you could find the right A time to do a 45 min nam nap and then a long pm nap I think that would work best in terms of solving the EWs, as it is the best way of avoiding OT at bedtimes. If you think this would be a nightmare then option 2 is the alternative really. I recently switched from option 1 to 2 as my DS started fighting the pm nap regardless of now short the am was, and I couldn't get the am nap early enough as DS is a 'sleep when tired' kind of guy.

So the question really is what way you want to proceed?

I'm so sorry you are having such a rough time. Some los are just very prone to this really. Mine certainly is. We have battled EWs on and off for months really - and along the way I have learnt 2 things. Firstly they are almost always due to being OT at bedtime, and secondly how to pile the sleep in to reverse it as quickly as possible.

Let me know what you think, and then we can try and bash out the details a bit more.

 

FWIW I will just pop my routines down so you can see what I do - my lo is about 5 weeks older.

2 Nap day                                           1 Nap day
Awake 6.00am                                     Awake 6.30am
Nap 1 10.45 - 12.15                            Nap 11 - 1.30pm
Nap 2 15.45 - 4.30                              Bedtime 6.30pm
Bedtime 7.15pm

Now it isn't perfect, but these 2 days seem to be holding things together at the moment. If he is getting OT I move Nap 1 forwards to allow a bit more sleep, and still do the pm nap at the same time.

[smahalik]

Thanks for the reply.  I guess #1 is really my only option right now, as I just don't think I can push the AM nap any later than it is.  Today he woke at 4:45 and I put him down around 9:15.  And right now I'm only letting him sleep 1 hour in the morning.  I hate to shorten it even more, but it sounds like you think that's a good option.  I guess I'll try that tomorrow morning and see what happens.  Thanks. 

[*Liz*]

Did you get a pm nap today?

What did you do from 4.45am until a more reasonable hour?

[smahalik]

When he was up at 4:45 this morning, I spent until 6:00 AM doing everything I could think of to get him back to sleep.  I rocked him, repeatedly laid him down, laid in his crib with him, etc.  And he just wouldn't go back to sleep. 
It's 3:30 PM here right now and he finally went down for his PM nap (been trying since 2:30).  So now we've got this OT cycle I just don't know how to get out of. 

[*Liz*]

I'm on a different time zone to you so had gone to bed.

Usually the way out of an OT loop is putting them down earlier than you think you need to, and still going to bed at the same time regardless of a later nap.

What ended up happening yesterday afternoon?

[smahalik]

No problem, I know a lot of us are located in different places!
So he ended up actually having a good PM nap for the first time in a week!  He slept for 1 hour 15 minutes, from 3:30 - 4:45.  We put him down for bed at 6:30.
He was up at 5:15 this morning and I tried putting him back down but he was very wide awake.  Not great, but better than yesterday.  I went back to sleep after giving him to DH at 7:00 AM and DH said he was falling asleep in his arms at 8:50 AM this morning, so he put him down for his AM nap.  I woke him up around 9:45, so he had about a 55 minute nap this morning. 
Then I'll try to put him down for his PM nap around 1:30 or so.  How does that sound?

[mimi1017]

I could relate to you so much. I too have an early riser and just when I accepted 5:45 wake up now I'm dealing with 5:10/5:20. I noticed it started when I was keeping her up 4 hours from am nap, so I've cut down to 3.5. Waiting to see how it works :-/. I will keep following your post to see how you progress. Since you said W2S worked, how long before the habitual wake up would you stir? Did you stay there to hold him down until he would go into deep sleep again, or let him settle on own? I'm really considering this at the moment until I get a longer weekend to start shortening naps which I try to leave as a last resort. Hang in there, go to sleep early and pray that this will pass, that's how I try thinking about it. Also that despite these EWs we have good sleepers. I have a friend whose dd (with no routine) has an hour nap in the day at most, screams sporadically at the store at 9:00pm(hmm wonder why), in bed as late as 11:00 some nights, bfs at all hours of the night to be able to sleep, and wide awake around 3am some days.....ahhhh! Oh and she's a single mom. So when I see that, as horrible as it sounds, but it helps me keep level headed and thank my lucky stars that my dedication to keep dd on routine had been the best, with the exception of her being and early riser. Hth hun...let's hang in there.