We need help...running out of ideas

[Tweakster]

Sherry you have a good point.  He did used to be a terrible napper and I do still think of him that way.  His nights were always reasonable, he can manage 11 hours but he has always always woken between 5 - 5:30 (sometimes earlier!)  Then all of a sudden he started throwing out these 1 hr 30 - 1 hr 45 min naps with me barely trying.  What does this mean??  What do I do about shifted sleep, once the teething has stopped of course?  Do I have to cut day sleep even more??

Our best day: he gets 3.5 during the day and 11 at night = 14.5 hours.  He's never really done more than that.  Personally I think he's probably chronically OT but luckily even with his Spirited-Touchiness he is still mostly manageable and goes with the flow fairly well.  Thank goodness for that bit of Textbook thrown in there.  We have been trying for 5 months now to adjust, tweak, push here there everywhere but the end result is pretty much the same, 14 or so hours.

[sherry lynn]

I personally think, that 14 hours is a good amount of sleep. But, that might just be me.

I think it's bedtime really. I think you have to find a way to get a later bedtime, and then you'll get a later wake up. When Lyle was Finn's age we were doing the same thing 6/6:30 bedtime, until it finally dawned on me that I couldn't really expect him to wake up later until he went to bed later   But, it took a long long time for that to become a reality for us. Really it was a matter of the A times stretching out and the day becoming a 13+ day.

On our good stretches we still get one EW a week. I have no idea why, but it's just a pattern that emerged. But, I don't know if it will give you any hope, but I do think he will out grow it.

But, I do think that the food and the teething is a factor. Since he will go back to sleep some nights, it seems that the food is more of an issue.

I honestly don't know if I would mess with the days while you know that food is a factor    It might just make things worse because he will still be waking because of hunger.

[Tweakster]

Sherry you were right about the grumpy afternoon :-(  He did 8:45 - 10:40 and I was hoping for an hour this afternoon.  Maybe I should have woken him at 1.5 hours??  I got a 30 min OT nap :-(  Meh.  I put him down at 1:30 - thought it would be ok.  Sigh.  Now he's generally upset and nothing is pleasing him.

He is not eating well today either, but when he does he decided he doesn't want me to feed him the bottle...!  Maybe I am doing it wrong and hurting his teeth?? lol  I've dosed him twice with Tylenol and Oragel and given him the mesh feeder with ice several times. 

Anyway, probably not the best time to tweak, no.

[sherry lynn]

Huge hugs

For us the only time Lyle was like that with feeding it was teething related.   I hope that's the case for you and I hope that tooth comes out quickly.

[huntersmummyinoz]

on the food thing, have you tried purees on toast? i'll try and pop over to that thread later.

you've prob already tried this but are you giving teething gel just before the bottle?

also, he could be off his food more because teething often seems to flare up their reflux, well it always does with hunter anyway.

does the waking hourly happen mainly before midnight or continue all night? most OT waking seems to happen before midnight (with the exception of OT EWs) but waking regularly ALL night tends to indicate pain.

[Tweakster]

Hi there Kirry, yeah we've tried everything.  He will mush the toast about in his mouth (making a face like he just put you-know-what in his mouth) but not swallow anything.  It all ends up collecting in the pouch of the bib.

Yep Orajel before and after bottles, but there is a limit on the tube about how many times a day you should administer.  That said, I am sure it's not going to hurt him if we exceed it slightly.  I've dosed him with Tylenol during the day and we gave Motrin at night.

His reflux seems ok but I am definitely not going to reduce the thickening which we had planned for this weekend.  I can't deal with that too.

The NW is not consistent, some nights he will be awake a couple of times before midnight, he normally self-settles.  But it says to me that he's sleeping a bit restlessly. And then other nights we don't hear a peep, he will sleep through and pop awake at like 3 a.m., which is when we usually feed him because we tend to presume hunger when it's random like that and we know he hasn't had a good amount during the day.  But we always always have EW.

Although re: the hunger, a couple of sleep books I have read have said that hunger would not wake them at this age.  By 8 months physiologically it is just unlikely to happen.  He's waking for another reason and wanting food for comfort.

Last night he slept through until 6:30 - 4:38 - DH was going to go in and W2S at 4:00 but we slept through the alarm.  He went in at 4:38 and Finn was already stirring and waking.  Ugh.  We had to leave him in there until 6 because there is no way we are getting him up at that hour.  He fussed off and on and then started kicking off at around 5:45.

Do you guys think I should just push out bedtime period?  I mean his A's are all over the place because of teething and just because he is generally an unpredictable kid.  I had some success with getting his nap times fairly routine and he seems to get tired at the same times now each day.  So it's like having set naps really.  For the most part it works.  I wonder if just pushing him to a set bedtime would help?  It would probably cause some OT for a bit and NW but maybe he would just get used to a later bedtime?

I just feel like we are always going in circles because we fall back on early bedtime so often I do think it is compounding the EW for sure.  I thought once the CN was gone life would become a bit more normalized with longer nights.  Nope.

[Mashi]

I agree that by 8ish months or so LOs don't really wake from hunger.  But I would say that is true for a baby who eats adequately during the day - and it sounds like you say Finn isn't, with either milk or solids? So, I think then that it still may be a possibility.

With lots of teeth popping through in the past few days I do think that probably contributed to some of his NWs, for sure.  But if he is still having them and he's not got another few coming through, then they are prob caused by something else.

I do think that you should push bedtime out, but I would start by pushing the day in other places first, if you can.  So perhaps not the first A of the morning becuase if it goes wrong then you have gotten him OT right from the start. But try with pushing the afternoon A out before his pm nap and see if that gets you further ahead in the game, and then can push bedtime out. But I do think that with the early beds there will always be early wakes...but it DOES get hard to push bed later when you have the early wakes !

[sherry lynn]

Wendy - that is exactly what I did with bedtime, at almost exactly this age. It worked for us. I'm not saying it was a magic cure, but the wake ups become much more predictable at around 6. But, I'm afraid to say, yes, I think you should do that because I don't want you to end up in OT hell. At the time we were having bad naps and bad EW though, so I figured I had nothing to loose. The first day I did he he was up from 12:30-7:30. I figured at this age what was the difference between 6 hours an d7 hours really. They are both ridiculously long.

Somebody gave me this advice on spirited babies and it seems true for Lyle. The A times either have to be perfect, or way past their normal A times. I think that is why any 15 min increase idea has never worked for us. So for us saying, I'm going to put him to bed 15 min later every 3 days never worked. However, doing it in larger chunks, for the most part, have.

[Tweakster]

Yep you both summed it up.

The drawn out 5 - 10 min every 3 days doesn't work for Finn either.  I have to just mold him into more of a routine and he responds nicely, or did before he started teething again.  Dicey with the teething but as you say we have nothing to lose really...I mean OT is OT, hard to make a kid more OT as you say.  These EW are really doing a number on him too, he's not happy about waking and in fact he's not waking happy. 

He's not eating well at all so I have to be careful with that.  He's had like 7 oz in total today.

Oh and did I mention it looks like we are buying a new house and selling the one we are in?  It means showings and open houses all the time for the next month lol.  During which we have to be out of the house.  Oh and to top it off, we are going to UK in 4 weeks to see the ILs. 

Sleep is not going to be possible until at least January.

[sherry lynn]

*huge hugs*  

[huntersmummyinoz]

totally agree with mashi and sherry. just wanted to add when we had crappy naps and bedtime kept getting earlier and earlier we started doing a 'bedtime window'. basically bedtime was 7.30pm on a normal day but if he busted a nap then we would allow up to 30mins earlier for bedtime, no more. hunter was an 11hr night sleeper from about 5/6mths regardless of bedtime so that really helped us get some consistency. yes we did get some OT NW when we started out but things settled after a couple of weeks. we also used a set nap window for the first nap of the day, so same idea, ideal nap time may be say 11am but if he had an ew then i would put him down at 10.30 but no earlier and that reallly seemed to help stop the ew setting in. again, he would usually wake after 35mins and need resettling but after a while he just got used to sleeping at that time. i was always a bit more flexible with the second nap tho. does depend on your bub's temperment as to whether or not this would work of course but when i did this with hunter the whole day was pretty crappy anyway so i figured it couldnt get much worse

hugs hun, hang in there

[huntersmummyinoz]

just want to add to the above post for others reading along - i certainly wouldnt recommend this for a younger bub than 6mths and also wouldnt suggest for a bub who has had no regular routine previously. hunter had been on a good routine when things went crazy so i knew what he 'should' be able to handle. also, as i said it really depends on your bubs temperment as it can lead to an OT cycle.

[Tweakster]

Kirry I absolutely agree.  The only reason we are heading this way really is because he is old enough now to sleep through the night (in the end he took a reasonable amount yesterday, demolished his bedtime bottle - thank you Motrin), he's meeting his nap requirements (3 hours) most days and we know his temperament enough now to know what works and what doesn't.  He was on a great routine until DST, we've always had EW but never quite as early.  Since then we are at a loss.

Plus, we have to get him napping 12 - 2:30 by 12 months...it's what they do at the montessori he'll be attending.  Already got a post and tips on the Naps board so it does mean we will have to have a later bedtime since we'll be picking him up a bit later after work.  It's only 4 months away so really we need to have a plan of attack now.

So last night he only made it to 6:45 before completely becoming unhinged and then was up at 2:00 (self-settled) and then again at 4 (we topped up Motrin and 2 oz back down).  Up on his own accord, happy! at 6:30.

We are going to stick at this for a while I think.  Even if it means we will be zombies for a bit.  I think it's the only way to fix it...

[sherry lynn]

Wendy - I think that's a good start

[huntersmummyinoz]

IMHO i wouldnt worry about the one nap at preschool now as he will be much closer to being ready at 10/11mths.

sounds like he had a good nights sleep tho