need nap help! 18 months old

[*Jo*]

ok, so we seem to have gotten over all the sickness stuff etc but now we are having short naps, nights are ok for now, hes sleeping 12-12.5 hours at night, yet his naps are skewiff!

yesterday he was up at 6.30am and nap was at 12.20pm, he woke at 1.10pm in a screaming fit (i have a post about this, asking if its night terrors etc) so i thought he must be OT, so today he was up at 6.10am (12 hour night) and I was out this morning, told DH to put him down at 11.30am, he said that he cried quietly until he fell asleep at 11.50!!!! this never happens!! so anyway, hes woken up 12.20, half an hour later! we left him to grizzle, then he started getting worked up so i went in to pat him to sleep, he lay there letting me pat him and I could see his hand playing with the blanket so I thought "you are not going to sleep with me doing this so im leaving" so i left and he starts crying..... HARD. now we are doing WI/WO...he is absolutely distraught, he sounds like hes demon posessed, he keeps choking and nearly vomitting, this has been going on for 45mins now. hes STTN so whats going on? theres just no way he can survive on 30mins of sleep for a whole day and we cant drive him to sleep for a nap later as we dont have enough petrol!

what am I doing wrong??

[LucySol]

i remember reading your posts about you having to pat him  lot recently,i wonder if he is just going into a different sleep cycle in his nap and stirring and instead of just carrying on sleeping he is wanting/needing you to pat him back to sleep?

in which case i think WIWO is the best thing to do.He does know how to sleep independently so he will get back there he is just putting up a fight!!! id keep with the slightly earlier nap tho just to keep OT  away for now .

[*Jo*]

Yeah I did wonder that too, hes just never been this hysterical and hes fine at nighttime. also the past few days that weve been putting him down for a nap he will cry for about 15-30seconds but go right to sleep and wake at around 50mins to 1 hour 20mins, today he went down a bit earlier and DH said he just cried quietly for 20mins which is really unlike him.

My heart was just breaking for him today though cos he had a friend here all day and he had to have his "fun" day ruined with 45mins of screaming and when he came out he just sat in my lap for ages before resuming play with the friend

[Tweakster]

Jo it does sound like you need a bit of retraining here.  He has to get back on the horse. 

Also if he's having that kind of long night he may not have the sleep drive for a nap at all - he could be tired but just not tired enough to settle himself for a nap.  At his age I wouldn't expect more than 13 hours in total.  Which doesn't leave him with much time for a nap.  Have you thought about cutting back his night a tad?  Say 11.5 hrs to start?

[koe2moe]

Hey Jo!!!  I'm jealous about STTN   12-12.5 night sleep!!! WOW...  perhaps due to the good night sleep, he needs a bit more A time before nap?  He's perhaps a little UT to nap longer than 30 mins.  Do you think it's likely? 

good luck!! xx

[*Jo*]

Wendy - if I start cutting his nght back then we will end up with a 5.30am start, I'm trying to get back to a 7am start yet I can't seem to push bedtime any further cos of these stupid naps! Now it's starting to affect his nighttimes as it's 1am as I write this and he's crying off and on

I am wondering if he's UT for the nap and then OT afterwards, 30 mins is OT for him though. I don't know, seems we've had so much "all over the place" in the last two months that we just don't know how to get it all back, and the fact he turned 18 months right in the middle of it all didn't help. Most people are dropping to one nap at this age, I'm nearly losing it altogether!!

So What do I do? I did a 6 hour A time and had him waking up at 50mins, I don't think I should push it any further than that though, what do u think?

Oh here he goes again, it's gonna be a long night.....

[*Jo*]

Koe2moe - no need to be jealous now, he was up at 5am, a 10.5 hour night

I went in there and thought i smelled a pooey nappy so i changed it and that was all she wrote, there was no pooey nappy (mustve just passed wind) so I put him back to bed and he was hysterical, screaming till im sure he was blue in teh face, again sounding like he was posessed! so i took him to our bed, which we never do, but he was calm and kinda fell asleep for about 10mins at around 6am, which he never does, to him our bed is a plaything and hes never settled in our bed. So for hte next 1.5 hours I drifted in and out of sleep as he quietly lay next to me, i dont think he slept, sometimes i could hear him playing wiht his hands but he didnt move around alot, when he did I would keep saying to him "go to sleep Caleb" but he never did. so do I count that as lowkey A time? we eventually got out of bed at 6.50am I have no idea what to do with the day now

[*Jo*]

ok im lost, i dont know what else to do, Ive just put him to bed for a nap now at 10.30am, obviously I left it too late as he is screaming his head off in his room now, literally he is hysterical.... Its breaking my heart, i go in to put him down, as he is standing up, and he grabs around my neck and clings on for dear life! and as I leave the room he is screaming with vengence!

I gave him pain meds at 9.50am just in case it was teething.... how do i deal with this?

Ive done WI/WO for about 25mins now, i went in and started patting him just to calm him down, hes absolutely exhausted, as soon as I left the screaming started back up again. I dont know what to do. I need some help please!!! Do i stick it out? it sounds like someone is stabbing him with a hot poker iron, hes intensely hysterical, but i cant keep patting him either, he knows how to get to sleep, what is going on here???
If i leave him he gets worse, if i talk to him through the door or go in to put him back down he gets worse, but I cant leave him this hysterical, that would be CIO!!! I feel like theres nothing else to do except patting and thats what we are trying to get rid of! unless he really isnt relying on the patting but is just in a bit of an OT loop, then if so, how do i fix that???

[Tweakster]

Jo it sounds a bit behavioural.  If he's not in pain from teeth or ill and he's just OT then he has to get himself to sleep.  As you say he knows how to sleep, he's not a baby anymore really, he's a toddler who knows that if he gets himself entirely worked up that mommy will come back and pat him.  I think you have to leave him to have his upset time, just do what you are doing through the door - he knows you are there and that it's time for sleep, and try to stay calm, I know it's hard.  If he knows you are this upset it will fuel what he's trying to achieve.  It's not CIO sweetie at this age, with an independent sleeper, it's just a bit of retraining and it's not easy :-(  We have gone through it quite a bit in the last month and the more it happens, the more I realize it really isn't CIO.  They have to put some of what we taught them to use and allow for self-soothing or we will undo all the hard work we put in in the beginning.

Hugs Jo, it sounds like you have had a really rough time lately with teething and his illness.  He's just a bit lost at the moment and needs you to stay strong and to show him the way :-)

What routine are you guys on at the moment?

[*Jo*]

routine??? haha thats a laugh!! lol

sorry, I got your post 5 mins too late, after 55mins of constant brutal screaming I went in and patted him, took 2 mins, he was exhausted! hes been up since 5am and its now 11.30!

Wendy, honestly it felt like CIO, it just didnt feel good at all. theres no way he should be screaming that hard for that long, his throat mustve been killing him, he was so worked up I dont think he couldve brought himself back down and the longer it took, the more OT he was getting. he wasnt going down a notch at all, there was no sign of him calming or settling, i think he was so hysterical he was at the point of no return.

so anyway, we were doing an A time of 5.5 hours, that was producing a 1.5 hour nap before the illness, after the illness it was producing a 1 hour 20min nap, then a 1 hour 15min, then 55mins, then 50mins, so we cut it down by 15mins and he cried himself to sleep for 20mins, usually he just goes to sleep fine then woke up at 40mins and 30mins. Of course I was ok with the short naps if the nights werent affected but lo and behold they always eventually do, so last night i gave him pain meds at 1am and he woke up screaming at 5am for the day.

He does have three Canines working their way through, two of them cut already, but like I said I gave nurofen well before the nap and he hasnt been acting in any pain during the day. I did ssee tired signs at 10am, but i figured that was too early, eventually he started getting a little unbearable around 10.15am so i think this was my fault for not seeing what he was telling me, he was blinking hard which i *think* is his sign for sleep. he wouldnt let me put the sleep sack on, wouldnt let me read him a story or cuddle him so he was already in OT by the time i put him into bed, roll forward 1 hour later of constant  demonic sounding screaming, Im patting him to sleep. even when I was patting him he would have little bouts of whimpering.

[*Jo*]

35mins later he woke up crying... Its now 1pm, hes been screaming for 55mins again, ive basically been doing WI/WO since 10.30am with a 30min break in between, thats over 2 hours of screaming in total, and we are going through lunchtime now so I will have to stop WI/WO soon to feed him, which means I feel like Ive actually just wasted all this time for nothing.

Im exausted and fed up, I just want to cry! He is once again absolutely hysterical. If i go in and put him down, hes back up to standing before I even leave the side of the cot. I feel really mad at him too, as well as sorry for him. part of me wants to just skip lunch and keep going to show him im not backing down and the other part of me wants to get him up and feed him....

[*Jo*]

ok i know im posting alot but I HAVE TO, im going insane if i dont write this as I go through it. I got him up at 1.05pm, gave him lunch, hed been screaming for an hour at that point. then at 2.30pm he started getting majorly grumpy and tantrumish so I went to take him to his room for wind down, he threw a fit, threw the book in my hands and started clawing at my chest. I put him into his cot and left, boy did he scream!!!! hes in there screaming now. I dont know whether to stay out of there completely or what??

I recorded him crying, i know its sounds obsessive but I dont know if this is too much of a cry to have had going for now yet another hour!!!!

DSCF0079.AVI

[janecharlotte]

Big hugs, has he calmed down?

For us, if I go in it makes things much worse. I tell DD (who is 17months) that I'm coming back in 10mins and if she is still crying I don't go in I stand at her door and tell her to go to sleep.

Like Wendy said I think a lot of it is behavioural, it sounds like Caleb has gotten used to you APing him and wants you to be with him when he sleeps. If he isn't teething or sick you might need to get a little tough and take the control back. Just my opinion as that is what we had to do and it was hard work but things are much better.

[*Jo*]

I stood at the door and said it was time for sleep, i went away for about 5 mins or so and came back, at one point i left him about 8 or 9 mins and it was just the same as if I hadve gone in. the weird thing though?? when i went in after an hour (because it was then dinner time and i had to get him) he hadnt been crying, there was no tears on his face, his eyes werent wet at all, which meant all that noise was just screaming. boy it sounded like crying.

He did it again when i put him down for bed (at 5pm!) screamed for about 3 mins, i thought "oh my gosh, here we go" and I waited but he just stopped after 3-4 mins. Because he had been up since 5am there was no way i couldve made bedtime any earlier really, so he ended up doing a 12 hour day on 35mins sleep, and i bet it felt like more due to all the three hours worth of screaming energy he used.

the only reason I quit with WI/WO today was because I had to stop in order to feed him or get him ready for bed etc.

when i did stand at the door and tell him to go to sleep he was screaming so hard he couldnt hear me anyway i feel so disheartened, WI/WO was never this hard before

[janecharlotte]

We had similar issues with naps (1x45min nap all day for weeks) and I found that I was so inconsistent with everything as we had such early starts that I had to make a plan and stick to it come hell or highwater. In the end I decided to get to a set nap time so went for 6A in the am to try and push the morning out and a shorter PM. I also decided that I didn't want to pat DD anymore as it was making things worse (she wouldn't settle anymore). The first few days were hard work, lots of crying but I kept popping back to reassure her. Some days it took 45mins-hour for her to settle although once she hit 6A she started settling for naps much easier and then we tackled bedtime.

Good luck, hope things settle for you soon. You guys deserve a break!