confused about EW and 1st nap - w2s??

[trimbler]

Hi, my DS is getting better at settling/resettling himself generally although we still have big probs with short naps and OT by the end of the day. If it's been especially bad we'll bring bedtime forward a bit. Usually he's just so tired by the end of the day that he'll go to sleep pretty quickly with minimal complaint - much better than previously But he does seem to be waking around 5am more often now - not crying, just cooing to himself and fidgeting - seems perfectly happy and we probably wouldn't even know about it if we weren't in the same room (hoping to stay in the same room until about 6 months as per FSID guidance but we might decide we need to move him out earlier!). Anyway, on the one hand it doesn't seem too much of a problem as he's happy and sometimes does just drift back to sleep. But sometimes he doesn't, which means I think he's already a bit tired when we get him up at 6.30am, the last couple of days he hasn't then taken a good feed and seems to need his first nap earlier than when he wakes around 6:30. He also wanted a top-up feed before the nap since he hadn't fed well before - which was ok, only he'll then be so OT he only does 30mins! Although today he managed to resettle himself after that without me having to go in   Other days he might drift off just before 6:30am - once I just let him sleep the next 45min cycle, but after the later wake up he wouldn't get to sleep for his first nap at all   Do you think I should try w2s for this EW? Do you think it's probably caused by OT?

Sounds like I'd better go to him now...

[Tweakster]

HI there, it's hard to say, there are so many causes of EW.

Could you post the entire routine for us.  W2S can work for true habitual wakings, when LO is just 'stuck' on a wake up time.  It's like a reboot to the system.

[trimbler]

Yes sorry should have done that to start with! This is a fairly typical day but with naps a bit unpredictable it's not always the same...

early waking - not really the same time every day, sometimes gets back to sleep before start of day, sometimes not...

Up and E: 0630
S: 0800 (on average - usually 30-45mins but sometimes we get a few more 10min blocks of sleep)

E: 0930
S: depends on last nap, usually starts between 1030-1100, sometimes in sling, duration as above but more likely to resettle for longer if in sling

E: 1230-1300 (start time varies according to previous nap)
S: again depends on last nap, usually starts between 1330-1430, sometimes in sling, duration as above...
(A: often some activity time here after short/early nap)

E: 1545-1630 (start time)
(S: catnap 30-45mins very rarely actually happens!)

E: 1745-1830 (start time - earlier if catnap failed to happen)
S: bed (gets to sleep) between 1830-2000 depending on the rest of the day!

E: dreamfeed 2200-2300

Gotta go now!

[trimbler]

Oh dear - terrible day today! Lots of NW/EW - sometimes I'm not sure which, esp when it seems pretty continuous noises from 0430 onwards... So up at 0630, seemed tired early (not surprisingly) and got to sleep for 1st nap by 0745... only 30mins and the rest of the day just went to pot - the 1st nap used to be the only one we could at least get some consistency on, but we've completely lost that with the EWs and just guessing from there on...

[Tweakster]

Hi there, it's really hard with EW.  You don't want to put them down too early because it just reinforces the EW but put them down too late and you might get an OT nap.  So yeah it's really tough.

I think at 4 mths most LO are moving to a 4 hr EASY cycle in that their feeds are starting to space out and they can handle more A time, nearer to 2 hrs.  But there is a transition. 

So what I would do is anything less than 11 hrs sleep I would try to resettle as a NW.  Then work on the routine during the day. 

Has he hit the 4 mth growth spurt yet?  That causes all sorts of chaos.

[trimbler]

Ok thanks - not really sure how to resettle since he wakes happy and half the time I can't really tell whether it's waking or just light/noisy sleep! I just know he hasn't had enough since he's still yawning and I can hear him turning his head from side to side as he does when he's trying to get to sleep.

I know we need to be thinking about 4h EASY but he just doesn't seem to be able to manage the A times yet. We don't have much to go on, but the last time he had a decent nap was just over 3 weeks ago - the A times were 1h 15min before the first nap (waking at 0630) and the next day after a good nap in the sling he had an A time of 1h 20min followed by a lovely 2h nap. But they were the first good naps in over a month and after that we just had 45min naps - tried to start pushing him gently to 1h 30mins to see if this would solve the problem but then we just had a run of 30min naps, so we figured that was too much for him... Now we're just all over the place as we don't even know when we're really starting the day

Having said all that, I'm pretty sure that metabolically he doesn't need feeding every 3h and has gone 4h a few times when we've been out and delayed getting home or something. He does tend to get very distracted during feeds and it does feel like 3h is usually too early to feed him - I'm sure he could easily cope with stretching to 4h during the day and dropping a feed. However just at the beginning of this week he suddenly started feeding long and very well for a couple of days - so I wondered whether that was the 4 month growth spurt?? Or is that more likely to show up as lots of hungry NWs?