Very short naps with 10.5 mo DS and now EW!

[KayCee711]

Hi all,

I'm hoping that someone has some suggestions for my DS who is going to be 11 months in 1 week.  He has always had trouble with naps but up until about 1 1/2 months ago we had at least gotten to the point where they were 1 hour long (2 naps).  Now he is back to having 20 min, 30 min or 40 min naps and that is it!  He STTN on most nights but now has started waking early (5:30 am) no matter what I try!  I'm thinking that if I can get the naps fixed then maybe the EW will go away!!  We have a very consistent naptime and bedtime routine that, once started, he immediately knows sleep is coming and will go down in his crib awake without fussing.  But at that 30 min mark he just wants to be up!  I have tried shh pat which worked for maybe 3 days but no longer.  He was getting his second tooth a few days ago but it doesn't seem to bother him that much and I have tried giving him meds 15/30 minutes before putting him down to see if that was the problem.  He has also just started to walk but it has been almost 2 weeks now so I would have thought that the novelty of that would have worn off!  Sorry so long, just want to give as many details as possible as I no longer no what to do!!!!   Here are what his last few days looked like... all over the place I know :-(

Wake 5:30
Nap #1 8:25 - 9:05
Nap #2 12:45 - 13:35
Bedtime 6pm

Wake 5:20
Nap #1 8:50 - 9:30
Nap #2 12:55 - 14:10 (woke up after 25 min but I rocked him back to sleep and put him back down)
Bedtime 6:20
Nightwaking 3:45 - 5:10

Wake 6:45
Nap #1 10:10 - 10:40
Nap #2 15:30 - 16:30 (we were out)
Bedtime 8:00 (we were out a bit later so put him in the crib later and it took him 30 min to fall asleep)

This morning - 5:30 awake after only 9.5 hours sleep!!!!!!!!!  Yikes!!!!

Thanks in advance for all of your help!!!
Kim

[empowered mama]

hi there and welcome

perhaps he could use a little bump in his activity time?  It looks like his first A time is just under 3 hours and the typical A time for his age is between 3-4 hours.  Sometimes EWs can happen because the 1st nap is taking place too early and he might need an increase.  And they also can happen from OT, which I'm sure is taking place from the short naps. 

You can also take a look at this thread since your LO is around the age where the 2:1 transition might start taking place (though his A time will have to go up more before this happens).  See here: http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=95670.0

Also, you will want to consider shortening the A time after a short nap - otherwise your LO will be OT and perpetuate another short nap - make sense?

HTH!

[KayCee711]

Thank you for the welcome and the reply!  Sometimes I would think that I needed to extend the first A time but then when he was grumpy and whining to sleep after only 3 hours I would second-guess myself and put him down.  But I guess I was just perpetuating the problem.  It's nice to have someone else look at it objectively!  Thanks!

Yesterday was an off day because we had to be out for the day so he couldn't nap in his crib... but the best I could do was time the driving around his naps.  So both naps were in the car but there was some success as before he would even only nap 30 minutes in the car!  And this morning... 6am wake-up... getting there :-)  I'm not sure what to do with today's nap as he has swimming at 11 so we'll see how that goes!

Wake 5:30
Nap #1 9:25 - 10:45
Nap #2 2:45 - 3:25
Bedtime 7:00

Wake 6am!

Kim

[empowered mama]

Glad to hear of some progress

Often they tend to show sleepy cues and get fussy around the time they are used to going to bed.  It helps to distract them in the last 5-10 min, keeping it very low-key, in order to push the A a little bit. 

So that first nap was nearly 4 hours after wake up?  Is that correct?

GL with the swimming!

[KayCee711]

Thanks!  Swimming was fantastic - he absolutely loves the water!  He went down for nap #1 after 3:50 A time again... I naively thought he might go earlier and have a longer nap before we had to leave but he wanted nothing to do with sleep before drifting off after 3:50.  Unfortunately the nap could only be 40 minutes as we had to leave for the lesson but he woke up very happy which is rare these days!  Then I struggled with what should be the second A time because he wasn't showing sleepy cues but as you suggested I didn't want to keep him up after a short nap so that he got OT.  In the end he was up 3:45 A time and then napped for 1 hour.  In bed at 7 and stirred at 5:35.  I actually heard my husband's "no way!" before him :-)  But he tossed and turned for 10 minutes and then went back to sleep for another hour - so a 6:45am wake-up call this morning!  He might even have slept longer but he woke up with a poopy diaper :-(

Thanks for your help again!!!  I'm seeing some light at the end of this tunnel... unfortunately the light comes 2 days before we are heading for a week-long vacation with a time difference of 1 hour back... so 5:30 is 4:30am!!!!!  Yikes!!!!

Kim

[empowered mama]

Great news!  Good luck with the vacation and keep us posted