EASY tweak...what do you do when your day consistently starts at 5 a.m.?

[Tweakster]

Finn is 6 months and on a loose version of EASY.  The reason it's not quite EAS is because his feeding is all over the map these days.  He sometimes will do a 4 bottle day and others only 3 bottles.  Some days he takes between 16 - 20 oz and yesterday he drained two bottles and had 16 oz before mid-afternoon    Nothing is consistent with this kid.  I am squeezing in solids once or twice a day where I can just now...he really has no interest so we are not forcing the issue at the moment.

A times are finally at a level where I am getting decent naps again - this week anyway.  We are using 2 hr 30 with wind down to have him asleep by 2 hr 45.  That has yielded 1 hr 30 min naps and he has been going off for his nap without incident or crying.  A bit of mantra or babbling, screeching the usual stuff but I haven't even had to shush/pat really at all. 

I worked pretty hard and his morning A time is pretty much the same as his other A times.  His final A time before bed is the longest...almost 3 hours (or more) some days because he just refuses a CN most of the time.  We are trying everything from stroller walks to driving to straight rocking but he just will not sleep until his bedtime.  Yesterday I even took him swimming in the hopes it would exhaust him and I could get a CN.  DH got home early and saw that I was trying for a CN, we decided to drive him around because it wasn't happening in his room.  Nope, he WOULD NOT SLEEP.  So he was up from 2 - 6 with no CN.

However, our days are starting at 5 or 5:30 a.m.  We leave him until 6 or 6:15 or as long as he will self-entertain in the crib but he is still awake at that time and counting as A time. 
So here is what a typical day might look like (yesterday):
Awake 5:30 a.m. - in crib until 6
A
E 7:30  (he will not eat until ~2 hours after waking - he just will not take the bottle - he's not interested)
A
S in crib 8:00 - asleep 8:03 - 9:30
A
E 11:30
A
S in crib 11:50 (followed his cues for this one) - asleep 12 - 1:45 (first 1 hr 45 min nap ever)
A swimming!
E 3:30
S try to AP CN - even tried feeding to sleep for this one!  went for drive at 4 - nope WILL NOT SLEEP
A bedtime routine started at 5:00
Bedtime (E&S) - asleep by 6:00 p.m.

Problems:
1)  A times are not consistent...I just get working with a good A time...and then try it a second or third time and it doesn't work.  This morning he was put in his crib at 2 hr 30 waiting for the sleep by 2 hr 45 which has worked almost every other day this week.  Yet he is in there babbling, screeching, and thrashing his legs on the crib mattress (latest game).  I don't get it!  It's now 26 minutes since I put him down and I think he might have gone quiet.  Yep he's finally asleep at 8 - meaning he was up from 5 - 8!  I hope there is no 30 min OT nap monster coming.

2)  Would his A time change depending on what time he woke in the morning?  I mean if he was up at 5 this morning would he have a shorter A time than if he got up at 6?  Like I know for me I am more tired in the morning if I am up at 5 rather than 6 - I have less energy.  Is it the same for LO's?

3)  He is normally doing about 10 - 11 hours at night.  We are no longer getting 12, which we were for a while.  But he is up at 5 or 5:30 no matter what time bedtime is and independent of day sleep.  He can have a textbook EASY day and yet still he is up at that time.  Could I try W2S is it just not likely to work given his length of night sleep? 

4)  What's the earliest you would put him to bed for the night?  I mean some days with no CN it seems like I should be putting him to bed at 5?  But will that just compound things??

I just don't know how to make this all function with starting our day so early.  Yes I know babies can be early risers and I accept 6 or so but 5 just feels like we are getting up in the middle of the night.  It's dark, there is no natural light to signal that it is day time...everything is quiet and I worry that we are waking our neighbours.  It's really hard.

[*Liz*]

((hugs)) Wendy. I started my day at 5am today as well. We are having issues with the 2-1 and I guess you are essentially having issues with the 3-2.

They do seem to extend their A's quite quickly at this age until they get rid of the CN.

I think you do need to start slowly pushing them to even things out so you don't need a CN anymore - but also avoid the OT bedtimes and short nights.

With the EWs - I never shortened the A. If anything I lengthened a little as if he is resting in his cot for 1 hr before starting the day then I didn't count all of that the same way as I would full awake time.

It isn't uncommon for them to start doing 10-11 hr nights during nap transitions. It is a real pain as it slows the transition down a lot. Usually due to being OT at bedtime.

People will say different things about what time they are prepared to put their los to bed. If you were to put him to bed at 5.30pm and it meant he would sleep until 5.30am ie an extra hour then it would be a good thing but if all it would mean is a 4.30am wake-up then I think you just have to go as early as you can bear. J very rarely sleeps longer than 11hrs at night, so I do not put him to bed before 6.30pm. That is still a 5.30am wake-up or even less sometimes and I honestly cannot bear to make it earlier.

[Tweakster]

Thanks Liz.  I never looked at the first A that way...I guess you are right...he's really just lying there playing with his crib toys and babbling...until he decides it's time for company then he escalates.  Very low key since it is still dark and he's not really moving around much.  I might try to push his morning A a bit more then...the first 30 minute nap or meltdown will tell me that I have gone too far...lol

That's interesting about the nap transitions.  I did not know that. 

Normally if we put him to bed at 5:30 he does the same...up at 5 or 5:30...mind you I think we have only done that once or twice...due to the scary unknown.  The only time we have NW (or very very EW) is if something is up...reflux, teething, hunger, or he has moved into a position he doesn't like and can't seem to get out of.  He has always been a great night sleeper...I feel like I am such a moaner because he sleeps 11 hours at night and I am not happy with it...but 11 hours at night doesn't help that much when it's the wrong 11 hours and you have to run a whole entire day from 5 a.m. and deal with short napping and feeding issues.  Everything is delicate with him.

However, I am going to keep pushing him...he has done well with some of the pushing of late and I can only hope that it continues to get better when he's mobile.  Or is mobility likely to cause a regression in A time?  He is pseudo-crawling at the moment...kind of pushing himself backwards actually but I suspect it won't be long until he figures out how to move his legs.

I guess my big fear is the clocks change and even though it is a month away I am worried that 4:57 this morning will become 3:57 next month.  But of course that fear is not rational or grounded because hey it is a month away and who knows what he will be up to by then anyway.  He might have 2 more teeth and be crawling.  Things change so quickly.

Hugs back at ya!

[mirabels mom]

i'm pretty much in the same boat here, too, ladies...still!!!     wendy, i feel for you...it sucks being stuck in the early to bed early to rise cycle.  and i too am afraid of what is going to happen with the time change. 

miss. m had a virus this week so i napped her 3x a day since she seemed to need it.  the fever broke today so i'll try to get back on schedule.  but...we are dealing with EWs every morning now, after only 10ish hours of sleep.  sometimes it takes her 1.5 hours to get back to sleep  .  or sometimes she doesn't even go back to sleep.  another  .  i'm not sure that she ever fell back asleep today...and, to add insult to injury, i got a 45 minute nap this morning.   

wendy, i think this is a very sensitive time for our LOs.  and as my neighbor (who is a grandmother to 4) said to me ages ago - babies just don't sleep their first year...well, the way we want them to anyhow.  i'm starting to believe that she is right.

let's keep checking in with each other on this thread...

[Mashi]

Hi Wendy!  I think that what you are going through is a very common scenario at this age as LO is preparing to drop that catnap.  I simply "put up with it" because I didn't fully understand in my sleep deprived state what I could have / should have done to beat it.  I do think that starting to push that morning A time is a real key - even 10-15 minutes in the morning and through the rest of the day really helps.  Once the evening cat nap is gone things really really really DO get better. 

I found that with the 11 hours of night sleep, for my DS it was under tired from having had the catnap.  It was like he was using the CN as his first part of nightsleep. 

With the transition to dropping the nap, one thing that I did was head out for a walk every day at about CN time and just pop into the shop for something we needed for dinner, etc.  A nice calm walk, no pressure to sleep, some fresh air for both of us.  It was an opportunity for DS to sleep on days when he wanted it, and if he didn't, then at least it was quiet, chilled, relaxed time away from toys and stimulation (other than "Oh! A truck!  Oh! A dog! ) but it calmed him down and helped to make that stretch. We did early beds on these nights, but not soooo much earlier that he still woke at 5.  Once I managed to nail the A time that he needed in order to still take a long nap in the morning, but also shift the day ahead AND give him enough sleep to make it through without the CN, wakeups gradually got later. Took a LOT of tweaking, fidgeting with things and patience, but it does happen quite quickly.

Even if you try 815 for his first nap for a few days, see how it goes and he might surprise you! xx

[Tweakster]

mirabels mom - Finn hasn't been sick yet so I can't imagine how that is going to play out the first time.  You did the right thing, they need sleep when ill so their little immune systems can keep ticking.  Poor wee miss m.  Hope she is better soon...and yes we shall ride the 5 a.m. wave together...and apparently it's going to happen again at the next nap transition lol.  Wahey.  Your neighbour is most likely right but I don't like to accept defeat lol.

Thanks mashi...that's a good tip about the walk during CN time and I think it is what I am aiming to do.  I have been doing it a lot but not enough.  Maybe if I literally make it like a scheduled event it might work for him.  It's going to start getting dark earlier too so getting out about that time might encourage him to take a quick 20 minute snooze...or as you say just a rest in his comfy stroller.  And then just extend out bedtime routine as we have been doing.  And that morning has to get longer.  Hopefully with a push at both ends (or as you say tweak and fidget hehe) it will get better.

I just hate hate hate any hour between 3 - 6 in the morning.  My body just cringes at the thought and I am so scared of those hours.  Anything before that and I can deal because there is still time to get more sleep before wake up...but otherwise I am worn out for the day and want to cry.  Sad isn't it?  lol

[Tweakster]

4:32 this morning.  I am running out of ideas...and patience...and possibly sanity.  We were in bed by 9 p.m. last night.  It's killing our alone time - we are both too tired to do anything.

DH ended up feeding him back to sleep because well frankly we are so tired.  However, Finn was able to sleep another 1.5 hours.  We were not.  Catching up on Heroes at stupid o'clock.

Please please let this get better soon.

Can you guys see anything with yesterday's routine which might have caused this:
Awake 5:00 a.m. - in crib until 6
A
E 7:00
A
S 8:00 - 9:30
A nanny arrived at 10
E 11:15
A
S 11:50 - 2 (nanny was here for this one so I gave her basic instructions of when to put him down and follow his cues...seems I paid her to watch him sleep lol)
A
E 3:30
A tried for CN at 4:15 - went for walk like mashi suggested...he was tired and rubbing his face in the stroller but would not sleep - was upset by the time we got home
E & S bedtime 5:40 - asleep by 6 or 6:10 I think

Is it the long A at the end of the day do you think?  What if we CN him at like 5:30 and then got him up and down for the night at like 7:30?  Might it help or just throw things out of whack?

Just grasping at straws.

[*Liz*]

It is the long A before bed leading to OT.

Have your tried for it earlier - like after 1h 45 mins A instead of doing the full A?

Otherwise you COULD put him down and wake him again - it would certainly give you an OT night and he wouls likely make a royal old fuss about it as he will expect to be asleep but then MIGHT reset him a bit.

I would try for an earlier CN first though.

Otherwise we need to try and slowly stretch those morning A times to closer to 2.5hrs so he can drop the CN 'officially' without such a hideous A to bed.

Sorry Wendy - the 4am wake-ups are a real killer - I have BTDT.

But I do agree you need to not keep bringing bedtime forwards as it just isn't working to extend the night - and there comes a point where you have to stop.

[sherry lynn]

Wendy - I just stumbled upon this. I felt like I have to comment because that is exactly what I went through when Lyle was 6 months old. It was horrible. In hindsight I know what caused it. Doing an early bedtime for too long. It works for some little ones and I believed so strongly in what people were telling me and in putting a baby to sleep when he was tired that I kept doing it.
So..... after a long long time, probably until he was about 7 months old I just kept doing the same old thing. Early first nap, early bedtime.
I'm not saying you have to do this, but this is what I did, I don't remember the exact order I can look it up if you would like. But I think I did the "set" bedtime first.
I say that loosely because I don't really do a set bedtime. Even now at almost 2 years old. But for this period of time I did because I finally figured out that my kid was never going to be a 12 hour a night kind of guy. That took me a long long time.
So I put him to bed at 7 and figured at that point that anything after 6 was awesome.
We did get OT wakings in the early evening hours, and some night wakings throughout the night, but you are already getting that. And I was getting that too, so I figured there is no difference. For us the catnap was a constant battle. So there would be times that he would have 5 hours A time before the early bedtime. So I figured, what is the difference between 5 hours A time and 6 hours A time in a 6 months old baby, they are both ridiculous. Is he really going to be more OT. Not really.
I think it took just a little while for the wake up time to creep forward to something a little more reasonable, closer to 6. Not always 6, but more often and the 4 o'clock nonsense went away.
Then to break the next EW cycle I had to make the rule of no nap before 9am.
And then EW went away for a quite a while when we finally dropped the catnap for good.

Nap wise your day looks good. He got a good amount of sleep today. That is awesome!!! At least something went right, right?
So you just have to figure out how to push that day forward.

Once his day got pushed closer to 6 I stopped doing the set bedtime and went back to doing bedtime based on how naps were etc. Mostly because my son is super prone to OT.

Sorry to blab

[Tweakster]

Please blab...anyone hehe.  I need all the thoughts and tips I can get. 

Yesterday was a right off because we went to my mum's for the day.  After his 4:32 wake up and back to sleep in the morning - he woke again at 6:20.  So we just got him up for the day:
Awake 6:20
A
E 8:30
S 9:00 - 10:00 (I had to wake him here to leave for my mum's...that was not good...he was a bit ticked off)
A drive to my mum's, naturally he did not go back to sleep in the car seat as I had hoped...
E 12:30
A
S 1:00 - 2:00 (he managed to get to sleep at mum's after some major shush/pat by DH - and screaming the house down)
A
E 4:00
A
S 5:30 - 6ish in the car on the way home - CN
Bath & bedtime 6:30 - 7 - he was asleep by 7:30
NW 3:12 (expected since OT - soothed back to sleep by DH)
Awake for the day 5:49

His day sleep has been 3 hrs on the low end up to 4 hrs this week due to what I think is growth spurt.  That 2 hr plus nap is something he only does when he is going through one.  Normally it's bang on 1.5 hours.

Ok so what I am aiming for is - set bedtime and no napping until after 9 a.m.  He's a bit Touchy with sleep and OT but I feel that we have to try something because what is going now does not work and is starting to get a bit habitual for my liking.

[*Liz*]

I think your plan is worth a shot Wendy.

TBH I think I do similar to Sherry. I push the first A hard and then don't allow a bedtime earlier than 6.30pm. My little man DOES NOT do 13 hr catch up nights. Common for a refluxer I think, as they don't eat as well as other babies during the day so can't really store the calories for mega nights.

In fact I am doing similar through the back end of the 2-1 transition. Wasting time at the end of the afternoon with a walk or something and then bed at 6.30pm. Yesterday he did 6hrs A to bed  but went down without too much fuss, no NWs and slept almost 11.5 hrs. Some babies just don't work the same as average (although I did get lucky last night TBH)

[Mashi]

I think the no napping before 9am is a perfect plan - but I hesitate on the setting bedtime strictly. You may have to roll with it a bit and if bed is 6pm rather than 630 because of a messy nap, don't risk an OT night to keep him up that extra 30 minutes, iykwim?

[sherry lynn]

Will you be able to get him back to sleep if he wakes OT from the first nap? At that age - most of the time I was able to get him back down. So that was good.

The problem with a 6 or a 6:30 bedtime is if you KNOW that he will not sleep more than 11 hours than you are looking at a 5 or a 5:30 wake up, guaranteed. And you end up in the same exact boat as you were in before. That's ok, as long as you aren't upset about it. There are times I've put him down early knowing he'll probably wake early, but I wanted him to have a more restful night - but I excepted that I would get an early wake up. When you are in a huge string of early wakings it feels a little bit different. KWIM?

If he's touchy you could try a slower approach, maybe move up that first nap by 15 min every three days, until you get to a strict 9:00 first nap? That never worked for us because he would always wake at a different time so I just went for it.

[Tweakster]

Thanks so much Liz, Sherry, Mashi - you have given me something to work on...and hope which I need just now.

Here's what we got so far:
Awake 5:49
Out of crib at 6:30
A jolly jumper, playing with me on the sofa, crawl practice - active
E 7:15
A DH got up, solids & bfast with DH at 8:15 - walk around block outside
S 8:50 -

We just kept him up to 8:50 - DH took him outside as a last ditch to stay awake slightly longer - he fell asleep in the stroller barely making it out of the house lol.  So we got close.  I'll push a bit more each day.

Sherry I do know what you mean, with a Touchy I really can't push out bedtime too far but I think he can manage to 6:30.  I'll start there and hope that we start to get a change.  And I can manage a 5:30 - with him quietly in crib to 6 or 6:15...normally DH is up at 6 anyway so we start our day then.  DH would take him down with him while he eats in the morning and I can 'sleep in' until 6:30 usually when DH has to leave.  That extra hour or 45 minutes means a lot to me.  I was wrecked from 4:30 yesterday though.  That has to be stopped somehow.  I have no illusions of getting to 7 to 7 - nice thought as it was.  So 6:30 - 6 would be grand...if we can get there.  I know he can do 11.5 hours.

re: getting him back down from an OT nap...I can if I AP - shush/pat just wastes time and riles him up...but I can normally rock him back down.  Should I be steering away from this or just doing it in the interim?

Should I be bothering with the CN at all then or just pushing through with changing up activity and keeping him occupied until bedtime?

Liz a 6 hour A lol  what a star J is!

[~Jen~]

Wendy - I've been following your post and although I will leave the advice up to the experts just wanted to send some hugs your way and let you know it DOES get better. 

It is so painful to drop the CN but once you are there, naps just seem to get better and the EWs get fewer and fewer.  It would be nice if the naps got better BEFORE you drop the CN to allow you to actually drop it... but it seems LOs like to challenge us. lol.  Hang in there.. It won't be long now.