Hello everybody.
My LO is almost 13 months. I started sleep training when he was very young, after reading Tracy's books that literally saved my mind in the first weeks of motherhood. From 6 months to about 11 months he used to fall asleep quite easily and to sleep quite well. He has been always on the low-side of the sleep needing. From 8 months he started to fall asleep independently, I just read him a book, gave him a bottle and put him in his crib, stay with him few moments and went away.
Two months ago he started to refuse sleeping, and wanted my husband and me stay with him until he was asleep or almost asleep. He started to stand up in his crib and when I put him back down he came up again and again. We spent hours like this. I think that this was related to the 2-1 nap transitions. Now, on one nap of 1.5-2.5 hours (except when we are in the car in the late morning, which makes him asleep in the morning so we have a shorter and later nap in the afternoon, or he refuses sleep in the afternoon), it is better: if we stay in his room until he's asleep, he stays down in the crib. Otherwise, if we go away before he's asleep, he stands up and cries desperately. What we do now is to stay in his room until he's mostly asleep and then go out of the room, hoping he does not wake up. If he's not very tired, we have to wait for 1/2-1 hour until he's calm. For example, yesterday evening my husband waited 10 min, then went away, he started crying and did not want to resettle, then I went in his room and, after putting him down four times, he stayed down and slept after additional 10 min. It is not always the same, some days he goes directly to dreamland, other days we spent hours putting him down and trying to let him sleep. I suppose that there is a combination of teething (when he's teething is much worst) and SA. I was thinking about trying WI/WO to teach him to fall asleep independently again. I would like to wait one or two weeks, as we have just come back from a holiday, when LO stayed with us 24/7, and now we started working again. Moreover, the next week he'll start again nursery and I would like he's adapted to it before starting WI/WO. My worry is that this could make things worst: when I went out from his room the other times he cried desperately, and it seemed to me that after I went out and come back he was really scared and needed more time to resettle. But I never tried to do it for more than 10 minutes, so I don't know how it is if I'm consistent.
I have to add that now it seems he's not attracted by his play things, he just looks at them for few mins and then goes away. In addition,it seems he does not like playing in his crib. When I put him there to play, he stands up and start to jump looking to me as to say "let me out of here". And when I try to go in another room he cries (even if the cry lasts for some moments, then he starts playing if he sees I'm not back). He used to like playing in his crib before the sleep refusing started.
Another thing is that he's just started walking (it's about one week now).
Thank you for your answer.
Barbara
