Anyone Want To Talk About the 2-1 Transition? Thread #14

[AliG]

Yeah, he's teething I think - top two. chewing his fingers furiously and rubbing his ear a lot, which happened when the bottom two were on their way. Last night he woke up sometimes every 20mins, which would indicate teeth for sure. He also seems to be testing out how much he can move around the cot. Hoping that's developmental.
Sticking with 3.5hrs A time and seeing what happens. I did that after the 40min nap yesterday and he did 1.5hrs in the pm.
Worried we might be developing a dummy prop. He has never needed one, doesn't need one to fall asleep at all. But when it comes to waking in the night or early hours, it seems to settle him pretty easily. Hmmm. It always falls out though and he doesn't wake.
oh, p.s. he's 8mths 1wk

[Laura_Lo]

Oh Ali, so yesterday's short nap could be because of teething! It's great that he had a longer nap in the afternoon. 3 hrs 40 mins was what DS was doing in terms of A time at your LO's age, so I guess 3.5 hrs should be good for you for now. Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn't tweak the routine too much until teething (or the worst part of it) stops. With DS, he had lots of NWs because of teething, I didn't know that (first teeth, first time mom here) and I continued tweaking only to make him too UT or too OT.

Re dummy - DS has developed a ferocious need to suckle while teething. He never ever had a breast to sleep association and he never nursed for comfort before, but during teething, it was the only thing that would calm him down. Otherwise, he would scream for more than 1 hr, despite being held, rocked, walked whatever. Suckling did the trick, but the dummy wasn't enough, probably because he was just too used to the dummy. So I'd say that even if the dummy becomes a prop, it's easier to get rid of than breast as a prop. Plus, at his age you can start teaching him to replug and then it stops being a prop, it's just a comfort item.

I'll be back later. Right now I'm trying to nap while DS is napping, had lots of NWs last night - don't know how many, as I was really tired and half asleep during them. I brought him to our bed and don't even remember how and when  Both DH and I were quite surprised to wake up and find a baby in our bed...

[scucci1979]

ali: I too think teething. these teeth can be a PITA.

Couldn't agree more that early bts are the way to go when on one nap.

I do think if I put her to bed UT, it leads to her becoming OT.  She slept for 30min that am, resettled for another 30min. I kept her up for three hours and she slept for 1.5hours in the pm. Put her to bed three hours later and she slept until 6am. i guess that is better then a 5am wake up. BT was 7:30am. I think she went back to sleep for 10min. (AP) put her down at 10am. A was 4hrs.  I am scared to see what kind of nap I get. It seems there is no consistency with her naps. I never know how long she will nap for. Sigh.  The only way for her to go down in the early mornings was to feed her. I stopped for one week and thought we were free from those feeds but she still wakes up. Maybe she is not developmentally ready and needs more solids. I have a post on the bottle feeding board.

Laura, I have noticed that when Alyssa is teething she too has a strong urge to suck.  I have to go, my toddler is driving me mad. I will be back.

[Laura_Lo]

Sabrina, hang in there! Somehow we will sort our LOs out, I promise you that.
The same happens with DS - if I put him to bed UT he will surely end up being OT. I prefer to put him to bed really tired, bordering on OT, as Jenny said. I get the best naps out of him when I see that his eyes begin to droop during wind down - and our wind down is short, 7-8 mins. I also find that a long wind down only energizes him more, leading to him becoming OT yet again. So what I do when he is UT for naps, I got this tip from Amy and it helped hugely... If during wind down he still fusses a lot and doesn't seem tired, I take him for a walk around the apartment and whisper nice things to him in a soothing voice. 5 maximum 10 mins of walking and he is ready to go to bed.
Hope you're having a good day and your LOs are not driving you crazy.
 
Oh, I forgot. Sabrina, how tough was it to wean NFs with your LO? I plan to do it soon and I'm pretty  terrified about it 

[scucci1979]

we got a two hour nap. I too am thinking that the best naps are whey her eyes begin to droop during wind down. I am aiming for a one hour nap in the pm.  thanks for the tips on the wind down, I will try that.
As for the night feeds. She dropped them on her own except for the last one. I am bottle feeding so I dropped an ounce every week. When we were down at 4ounces I just took the plunge and tried to settle her. First night it took 1.5hours and then by the third night it took 20min. She did one week and that is when her early wakings got even earlier. I think she is really waking up from hunger. Two nights ago she woke up at 5am. I didn't have energy to settle her so I fed her and she went back to sleep.  The other night she went to 6;45am, but we had a nw at around 4am. Last night she went to six am.  I don't know if I should just continue feeding her or just keep fighting this feed. I think it is a habitual thing for her.

[AliG]

Isn't that funny about the sucking/teething thing...? He was going completely nuts the other night, inconsolable, but as soon as the dummy was in, he passed out. I'm not goign to worry too much about it though at the moment, as he falls asleep independently no problem. It's only for re-settling (and because I'm that tired at the moment that I want to do nothing else in the middle of the night when all I want to do is go straight back to bed as soon as I possibly can!). But it's good to know it's normal.

I too do so tired bordering on OT for naps. If he doesn't virtually fall asleep on me as I'm about to lay him down, I know he isn't tired enough.

Today we had swimmign this morning, which always exhausts him. Did 3.5hrs A from waking, which included swimming and he did 2hrs. Did another 3.5hrs and my mum who was looking after him, had to wake him at about 50mins. He wasn't happy! Who knows what that all means for tonight though... And I'm on my own tonight. eeeeek.

[scucci1979]

good luck tonight.

we got a 30min pm nap and I couldn't settle her. she was so angry. I think it was b/c her sister stormed into her room right before I was going to put her down. She was so OS.

[MommaBrooke]

Arg...we had another pm nap refusal...and once again I wasn't able to AP to sleep to get any kind of nap.  I even tried again after a yawn at 4:20pm.  She had 2h am nap, so it looks like I will have to cap am nap at 1.5 hr, and hope that she doesn't start refusing pm nap with only a 1.5h am nap, because that would definitely be a mess.  We already had an OT wakeup, but I was able to settle her fairly quickly.  Keeping my fingers crossed that she's ok through the night, and that cutting am nap short works tomorrow.  She did 1.5h am nap + 45min pm nap on Friday, but still put up a bit of fuss for pm nap...

Hope everyone has a good night!

[scucci1979]

I would try capping it to 1.5 hours. I know it is hard to do.  
6:
we got a ridiculous 5:30am wake up this morning. I even tried giving her a bottle but she just chatted until 6:30am.  I don't know if it was an ut wake up or OT wake up.  I am so ticked off right now.  

here is yesterday
wake 6:30
nap 10"05-12pm
nap 4-4:30pm(sister was keeping her up)
bed 7:20pm

I don't want her days to be longer then 13hours.  If she decides to have along am nap this morning, I think I am going to cap it to 1.5hours. Now I don't know what time to put her down. I was thinking 9:45am.

update: went to sleep at 10am and then woke up at 11:32am. Aiming for a 3.5hour A time. This really sucks b/c I have now idea how to get out of these Ews. I know it is a phase and developmental but gee, they are really tiring.

happy mother's day to all you lovely moms.

[Laura_Lo]

Happy mother's day everybody! Hope your LOs will decide to give you really good nights, wouldn't this be the best present for this day? 

We are having all sorts of NWs right now but I'm blaming teething for them. Four teeth at the time is a big deal, I can see the teeth through the gums and the lower gums are very swollen too. Plus DS never handled pain very well. Being the spirited little creature that he is, I guess he feels pain more intensely.

Ali, I've just read your thread and I was wondering if you know why Karen advised you to give your boy a normal first A time and cap his nap. Just like you, I thought I would give him a short A time resulting in a natural UT nap and now I'm thinking that I'm doing it wrong... Jenny, do you have any advice as well? Maybe I should revive my old thread on EASY and ask about this? It might be the reason why I'm still getting NWs before midnight which with my DS is a sign of UT, not OT. Go figure. I'm often joking with my husband and say that DS is coming from another planet 

[AliG]

Yes, seems like she's getting enough daytime sleep doesn't it Sabs, so EWs not down to UT. And also not OT either it seems. We had a few weeks of 5.30 wakeups a couple of weeks ago and it is seriously hard I know.

Laura-lo, that won't work for me/him because if you do a full A time and cap the nap, the idea is you then cut the next A and they'll do a long one. But cutting A times doesn't work for him. Even if he does a short am nap (e.g. like the other day when he did a natural (teething we think) UT one), he still then did 3.5hrs A and then did a 1.5hr nap.

At the moment I'm taking each day at a time. Today he did two naps the same length - 1hr 20, so the day was quite nicely spaced out. Ultimately though, I think I'll aim for long am, short pm (which we are getting some days), as I'd rather know for sure that he's had at least one good sleep. Rather than risking capping it and then the next nap messing up. Also, it seems a nice gradual way of doing it. As, as their A time naturally increases, so the short pm nap will disappear. Like the CN did before. You see what I mean? Though obviously there will be that awkward period where there isn't enough time to fit one in, but there's too much time to handle. So, I guess early bedtime for a few weeks. Am I rambling?!

[Edesanja]

Forgive me if I'm getting confused with what you're talking about here.Laura, I'm not quite sure where Karen said that, and so I'm hesitant to comment and go against someone else's advice (especially when I don't know the context etc) but in both cases I'll share what I found with J, as far as I understand your questions!:

Ali, I've just read your thread and I was wondering if you know why Karen advised you to give your boy a normal first A time and cap his nap. Just like you, I thought I would give him a short A time resulting in a natural UT nap and now I'm thinking that I'm doing it wrong... Jenny, do you have any advice as well?

 Like you said Laura, it made sense to me to ensure that J did an UT nap for the short AM nap. So I didn't keep pushing the 1st A time out. Even at 11 months he was still doing 3hrs30 even though I knew he could technically do more. But I wanted that nap to be as early as he would go to sleep for so the day didn't stretch out too far.

Laura-lo, that won't work for me/him because if you do a full A time and cap the nap, the idea is you then cut the next A and they'll do a long one. But cutting A times doesn't work for him. Even if he does a short am nap (e.g. like the other day when he did a natural (teething we think) UT one), he still then did 3.5hrs A and then did a 1.5hr nap.

I also found that reducing A time after a short nap didn't always work. I'd often end up with another short nap. And I think this happens when the first nap was UT. If they were UT for it then they've had enough rest and should be able to handle a normal or close to normal A time. Of course this doesn't isn't the case for all babies and some will feel that they haven't had the rest they need and so you WILL need to shorten the A time.

Sabs, sorry you're still having EW. Are you open to trying the short AM, long PM to see if you have any better luck with that? Short AM, long PM generally helps with EWs plus you have shorter days than with long AM, short PM.

[~Karen~]

Laura - That's just what I did with ds1 and it worked but obviously do whatever works best for you 

[AliG]

Ladies, can I ask a quick question? Do you let LO sleep for longer during the day following a disrupted night? Or only if they have, say, less than 10hrs?

I had an amazing night when I was on my own - 7.45pm to 7.05am straight! But last night back to NWs again. I don't think he's OT, as he had great naps yesterday and that was on the back of that great night's sleep the night before. He seems to wake roughly the same time each night - around 6-7hrs after going to sleep, so 1.30/2am ish. Could this mean UT?? i.e. could 2hrs 45mins (approx) be TOO much daytime sleep? He doesn't get that much every day, but on a good day he does. And as he's been having a long am nap some days, I've had to wake him from the pm one, so he'd have more if he could some days!

At 4mths he was only getting about 3hrs 15mins daytime sleep, so I'm wondering if 2hrs 45 might be too much now. Such a guessing game...

[Laura_Lo]

Hi Ali, glad that you have a great night when alone and sorry to hear the NWs are back. I'd say that when teething, you're bound to have some NWs. I can tell you that when teething is really bad, DS can wake every hour for almost the entire night, even if medicated! Of course, your DS might be totally different, but I think that medicine mostly takes the edge of teething pain and they are still in some discomfort. Now, the fact that you get a habitual NW (approximately same time every night) might mean either learned hunger (do you feed him at that NW?) or an EASY issue, I think. Anyway, as the NW is habitual you might try w2s, it did work for us when DS was waking at the same time each night. 2 hrs 45 mins doesn't seem to much daytime sleep to me, DS was getting 2 hrs 30 at that age... But then I'm not an expert, maybe Karen and Jenny can give you a better answer. From my experience, UT NWs are usually long (1 hr or more) and LO wants to play or spend time with you instead of going back to sleep.

Regarding your question, I'm not letting DS sleep more after a bad day. Usually I'm giving him less A time (he seems to need less) and that brings the BT a bit forward too. This seems to work for us.

Karen and Jenny, thank you very much for your answers! I was afraid of doing this wrong and I really want to get a good EASY before (re)starting sleep training. This way I can be almost sure that NWs are due to him not being able to go back to sleep on his own and not to a "wrong" EASY. Karen, I'm not sure that the present EASY is what works for us, as we still get NWs, but on the other hand am quite scared of changing his EASY dramatically as when I've tried it, he started waking every hour at night. Although it did coincide with teething so it might have been this and not the routine change... I'm not sure...


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