NW? 7months

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

DS has not reached any new milestones yet. He is really working hard on crawling. I believe I am prety much doing WIWO with him now, so hopefully that will start helping a little bit soon. His situation is probably similar to your DS's, I am always with him! We will keep working on that and hopefully some day it will get a little bit better. I just wish DS would go right back to sleep in the night! His morning nap was 1hr 20 min and he woke from his afternoon nap after 35min and I have not been able to get him to go back down so far. He is happliy playing in his crib so I am leaving him until he gets upset. I think he is still OT, so I am going to have to do another CN tonight and a early bedtime! Hopefully we will get to the end of this soon! I am getting exxhausted!

[~inbalance~]

If he is really working on crawling that could certainly be playing into things.  Hang in there!!  Like I said, it seems like forever at this point, but next thing you know the days have turned into months and you'll never believe how far you've come!  We found wiwo to be very effective, but it does take some time for them to get it, it definitely isn't an overnight solution.  Trust your insticts with the OT, I'm sure you have a good idea if he is or not. 

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

The afternoon nap ended at 30 min. I could not get DS to go back down. He seemed perfectly content after and was not fussy so I am not sure what to make of that. He went back down for a CN for about 45 min and then had a bedtime of 7pm. He woke once at 7:45pm and it is 9pm now and he is still asleep. So hopefully our night goes well. We have a kids Christmas party to go to tomorrow so it might be a mess, routine wise. Oh well those days happen although it does seem like it sets us back for the next few days. At some point, I guess we have to have a life too. It just feels like we are not getting ahead! I cannot wait for these to be distnat memories!

[~inbalance~]

I think that CN probably helped out with bedtime.  Hope the rest of your night was good!

I seem to remember that we always went through distinct phases of good and bad sleep.  Things would be good and I'd think yes!  We're making progress!  Then it would all fall apart and I'd be devastated.  After I started seeing the pattern I learned not to get so happy when things were good, but also not to feel all was lost when they weren't.  Such is the way with babies!! 

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

This is totally true. When he first started sleeping long stretches, I thought we were finally through all these NW's. Then a few days later, they started all over again and I was completely devastated. Now I am getting to the point where I am happy but know that it will not last! We had a good night last night. DS slept from 7pm to 7:45 and then from 7:45 until 4am! So that is wonderful. He then woke up at 5 and 6 and 7:30 for good. Nothing I can complain about there. I will continue to do the 2hr 20 min A time for this morning nap. What would you suggest for the afternoon nap since I only got 30 min out of him yesterday at 2hr and 20 min? Drop it back 15 min? But then I could not get DS to go back to sleep so was he UT? He was quite pleasant after he woke up from only napping for 30 min not cranky like he would usually be.

[~inbalance~]

That is tricky but I would almost be tempted to actually increase his pm A time, just a bit.  If he would not go back to sleep it could have been UT.  I think I've mentioned too, often my DS could do a bit more A in the pm than the am. 

Yay on the good night!!! 

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Okay! UT was sort of my suspicion too. I will try to increase the A time a little bit. His afternoons were taking a little bit more A time before. I was super happy with our night! Thank you again for your wonderful advice!

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Okay, so yesterday DS had a 1hr 20 min morning nap after 2hr 20 min A time. Should we be working on extending this nap time? DS was having a good afternoon nap ( he slept for 1hr 10 min after 2hr 30min A time, he did wake at the 30 min mark again but went back to sleep himself)until I had to wake him to go to the kids Christmas party . Ugh I hate doing that especially when I know that he is OT. We had fun at the Christmas party though. DS just loves the swimming pool. So our night last night was a mess of OT. No suprise there. He was still in bed by 7pm but that was a 3 hr A time after being woken up from a nap. So he just woke up every hour throughout the night needing comfort but he would always go right back to sleep so I think WIWO seems to be working. He did not get up until 7:30 this morning which is very promising for our day! I am just not sure if I should be working on extending naps when they are 1hr 20 min or if that is considered success? Thanks for your help! 

[~inbalance~]

Maybe give him another day or so with shorter A's since he may need to recover from the OT night.  Hey, at least he had fun so I think it's worth it!    If he's doing around 1hr 20min naps consistently then I think you should be able to start increasing A time again. 

I always hate waking DS from naps too, I figured it would be counterproductive because he was learning wake earlier from them.  But I think the opposite happens, they become disgruntled at having to be woken so strive to sleep more next time!  That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. 

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

I always hate waking DS from naps too, I figured it would be counterproductive because he was learning wake earlier from them.  But I think the opposite happens, they become disgruntled at having to be woken so strive to sleep more next time!  That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

I do hope this is true! Unfortunately we had to go into the city yesterday so our day ended up being a mess. It was an unplanned trip or else I would not have done those two days in a row. Poor DS is going to be an OT mess. That being said, he did sleep a 7hr stretch last night.

Ok so I will do another day of shorter A times as I think he needs to recover from the past few days like you said. Then depending on how our naps go, I will start increasing the A times a little bit again.

Is there a growth spurt that usually happens around the 7-8 month mark? All of a sudden none of DS's clothes fit him anymore! His snowsuit, his pj's, his hat...all too small...like overnight! (maybe DH did the laundry )

Why does it sometimes seem like DS has really bad OT night where he wakes up all the time and then other nights when he has to be OT, he sleeps for long stretches? It doesn't make sense or make it any easier for me to figure out whats going on with him! I guess babies haven't read the book and therefore do their own thing!

[~inbalance~]

One thing I have learned is nothing ever makes sense with babies! 

I think the *usual* growth spurt is 6mos, but my LO had one around 7-8mos.  I know because he had been gaining weight very slowly, then all of a sudden gained a bunch.  So that could be it for you too!

Don't have much time at the mo, but hope naps go ok for you today! 

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Yes, I think we must have just had a GS. Everytime I look at DS now, I have to do a double take. It seems like he just grew so much over night!

We had good naps today. The am nap lasted 1hr 45 min with no waking up! The pm nap was 1hr 20 min. He just seems so happy and energized today! Maybe tomorrow I will try to extend the pm A time if our night goes well.

Another question, what did you do if your LO fell asleep in the car before it is nap time? Do you adjust the A time at all? I went grocery shopping and DS fell asleep in the carseat for about 5 min on the way home. He woke up when we got home but then it was almost his nap time and he wasn't tired. So I left him up for about 20 min longer and then put him down. This gave us a nap of 1hr 20 min...do you think this was OT?

[~inbalance~]

That's always a tricky situation.     When DS was that age, I always counted car naps because he almost always fell asleep.     So I usually ended up driving around for a bit, then guessing at what A time to do.  I don't think it ever really worked. 

Now that he is older, if he falls asleep for a few minutes in the car I still put him down when I get home.  I used to think it was pointless to try, then one day I did try and he took the nap!  So it's always worth a try, even he doesn't seem tired he still might nap, I mean 5mins in the car really wouldn't count for much.  You never know!  Otherwise I think you did the right thing, it's so hard to tell but I think your judgement was good. 

TBH, having to go out was I think one of the main reasons we struggled with naps and getting into a good routine.  I always seemed to botch it up by going out, and DS would nap in the car or not nap properly.  In May, we got rid of one of our cars and since then I've more or less been stuck at home since DH takes the car to work everyday.  While it sucks not being able to go anywhere, it REALLY helped us get into a good routine!

Glad he had good naps today!!  Hope that means a good night and that the good stuff continues for a little while!!

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Yeah it seems like we have a good routine going and then the weekend comes and DH is home and we go out and do stuff and then come Monday, I start again all over. Things just start going well and then along comes the weekend again! I guess that is just part of life. We live in a small town so everytime we go into the city, we try to leave at a time when DS needs to have his nap so he gets the hour and a half in the car. But then he always falls asleep when we are driving to a different location and everything gets screwed up anyways. We just got a second car, so now all of a sudden I am able to go places. I have been lucky to not be stuck at home at all since when we did not have two cars, it was the summer time and I walked everywhere. I really don't leave the house that often. Usually for a couple errands around three times a week or to visit friends. I have a couple friends who are just starting to have babies so it is tons of fun. I am only 22 yrs old so most girls my age don't have kids yet! It is nice to be able to get out and see them although I am trying to stick to the routine and get DS settled into good sleeping habits!

DS is still waking up every 45 min after bedtime. He usually does this until about 9 or 10pm. I am just not sure what else to do about that or do I just accept it as a fact of life. He is always sleepy when he wakes and he goes back to sleep right away. Maybe we are just being too noisey. I try to make his last A time before bed the same as his other A times during the day. Is that typically right? I am wondering if he might be OT when I am putting him to bed? But the way his A times have been going, he would be going to bed at like 6pm at night if I cut the evening A time down any more and then waking for the morning at 5:30am! I don't want that! If I throw the CN in there, then he would not be tired to go to bed until like 8:30 which probably isn't good for him either, although the thought of sleeping in until 8am sounds good to me. DS generally gets up 11.5hrs after he goes to sleep seemingly no matter what time I put him to bed at.

[~inbalance~]

I do miss having my own car, but on the plus side it's good for DS's routine, plus the less I go out the less money I spend!  LOL  We live in a big city, too many places to go and spend money! 

My DS always did (and still does) best with a slightly shorter A to bed.  Actually, what worked was a shorter morning A, longer pm A, then back to a shorter bedtime A.  Not a lot shorter, just whatever you can manage.  I understand not wanting him in bed before 6:30, that is my cutoff too.  And I don't think a catnap is the solution either.

At this point you might just need to ride out the post-bedtime NWings, like you said it only lasts until 10 and he goes back to sleep easily.  It could be too much noise, it could be he needs more sleep maturing.  Obviously you've done a lot of tweaking and they are still there!  I could never figure them out either, those sorts of phases would just come and go but one day they did end.

I think I've asked this before, but will he settle on his own?  Maybe if you can leave him to it he'll get the picture and will stop waking so much when he realizes that you're not going to help him back to sleep.  I found with my LO I spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of crying was ok, and then letting him learn to resettle on his own.  I realized that even a loud cry isn't necessarily an "I need you" cry, and I could leave him maybe up to 15mins and he'd eventually resettle.  The more I left him to it, the less he woke.  The point is, it's ok if they're waking often, that's just what happens.  What you want is for them to put themselves back to sleep.  Maybe he just needs more practice.