Help!!! going insane about this short nap business!!!

[Tweakster]

Jo I knew he could handle 5 hours...that's where he is headed :-)  My Caleb won't let me down ;-)  Hope this is an upward trend for you and sleep!

[gavinsmum1]

Hmmm, interesting.  Two votes for UT when we've got those lousy 1 hour 15 min naps.  Jo, I'm going to start sticking to 5 hour A times and see what happens.  Just know that we are going through a yucky mess with you in trying to sort out the 'true' A times.  I feel so frazzled some days!!!!!

[*Becky*]

hmmm - we get a LOT of these length naps on 2 naps. One more vote for the one nap move. Jo - I am also pleased with anything over 1.5 hours. Just wonder whether it is sustainable when they first go to one nap i.e. how long will it take for OT to set in???

[gavinsmum1]

Jo, we did it! I pushed Jesse's first A time to 5 hours 20 min (we'd previously been doing 4.5 or 5 hours max) and he napped 2 hours 20 min today!  11:40-2:00! That's a record.  We haven't had a nap that long since he was like 4 months old!!  Just keep pushing things further with Caleb and you might be surprised.  I've totally been underestimating what Jesse can handle now that he's finally over his illness/ear infection business.

[*Jo*]

Oh that's awesome!!!!!! Wow 2 hours and 20mins! Fantastic!!!

We've got night wakings at the moment but I think it's due to molars as he also had 3 dirty nappies yesterday as well, the night wakings did start with the push in A time so I'm really hoping it's not that, however he's doing pretty close to 12 hour nights, was asleep at 7pm and up for the day at 6.40am with two night wakings where I had to pat him back to sleep.

LOL @ Wendy your Caleb mustve heard you beleiving in him

[gavinsmum1]

That's great Jo!  I vote for the molars as the cause of the NW.  Such a pain (literally)!
We're still on antibiotics here and yesterday he must have had two doses too close together as he had 6 poops!!!! Shocking!  We're also cloth diapering here, so that was not fun!  Our average here is 3 a day, so maybe Jesse's getting loads of fibre?  LOL!

[*Jo*]

we cloth diaper as well so its always a big fight over who has to change THOSE nappies!! lol

well i put Caleb down at 4 hours 55 mins today (too much i think) and we got a wakeup at 40mins, i went back in and patted him back to sleep, its been 30mins since that so heres hoping he does a decent nap, im also wondering how to keep OT at bay, how many days do you go before offering a 2nd nap and then how do you even put one in??

[babybarr]

We never really went back to the 2 nap days as DS would just refuse a 2nd nap regardless of the length of his first

I guess you may have to do something like a few days with the 5hr A time and then drop it back, however, 40mins are UT here too!! 

Maybe his teeth were bothering him during the light sleep phase of the nap time?

[Tweakster]

Yeah I was going to say the same, try a nap at a shorter A time - he might go longer, like 2 hrs.  If his nights are good really he may not get OT.  Also doesn't hurt to try some teething remedies before nap to see if that makes a difference.

[*Jo*]

I did give him panadol half an hour before naptime, he only slept a total of 1.5 hours but needed to be in bEd by 6.30 then was up at 5.30am! Grrrr so we are back to 5.30am starts again, if I give him two naps today then we will end up with a 10 hour night and never be able to get it back again, he does 10 hour nights on two nap days.
Do you think he's getting OT? I just worry because it's been three days and his nap hit shorter then I hadto resettle him (which I haven't had to do in months or if I have it's never worked) and then a 5.30am wakeup (triedfor 40mins to get him back to sleep) so this means his nap will be around 10-10.30!

[babybarr]

So he did an 11hr night then - which is not so bad.  I think at this point if you are keen to get that later bedtime you are going to have to push the nap to at least 11am if you don't want to do 2 naps.  I think at this point you may just have to push through the OT to *hopefully* encourage the longer nights kwim?

Do your clocks go forward soon?  Ours do here and I wondered if that may just help you out a bit?

[*Jo*]

flipping heck!! 50mins today!!! hes crying his little head off right now, im trying to do WI/WO to get him to go back to sleep, but i feel mean because its 11.30am and so its close to lunchtime, can i smack my head against a wall right now pelase?

[babybarr]

I assume you were trying for 2 naps?  What happened and how did he go down?

If you think he is OT then you need to just play catch up - whatever works for you.  The crying on wake up does sound like OT.  I do know how you feel and wish I could actually give you a hug.  It's so hard isn't it?  Keep me posted.

[*Jo*]

It took 20mins of WI/WO and patting for him to go back to sleep.... for 5 mins so i got him up, he had another nap in the afternoon at 3.35pm for 55mins and we went out tonight so have just put him to bed now at 9.30pm (the latest hes ever been up)

hopefully the latest he is up tomorrow is 7.30am so we can try again, think i might go back to 4.5 hours and see how we go as we were getting some good naps in there before this whole mess started up again. its hard to beleive its teeth because hes so darn happy while he is awake!

tomorrow is another day

[Tweakster]

its hard to beleive its teeth because hes so darn happy while he is awake!

Yeah but then they lie down in the dark and it hits them - like 'man these teeth are buggin' me' - I really think that is what it is.  Dropping back to 4.5 or even just 4.75 is probably a good plan for now until he's back on track.
You can hang him upside down and check on the progress lol ;-p