HELP!! 21 month old w/ new sleep issues

[bbandit]

We bought a crib tent yesterday.  We did nap time and bed time without it and he was fine.  We decided that he wasn't an escape artist to get out of sleeping, he'd just escape in the mornings or when naps were over so we weren't going to use the tent.  However, last night at almost midnight my husband woke him trying to put the gate at the top of the stairs and he escaped and wouldn't stay put.  We put the tent on right away and he's been fine since.  He actually thinks it's fun.  We keep telling him what a neat, big boy bed he has with a tent and he just grins.  

So, with the escapes last night and then having to put up the tent he was awake almost an hour (midnight to one).  He dozed on me a lot, but not good enough to consider it sleep.  He then slept until 7, which was FABULOUS.  But, I'm almost certain he just slept that late to make up for his interruption.  Anyway, his recent schedule...

5:45 - 6:15 wake up
5 1/2 h awake time - breakfast, play, some lunch before bed
11:15 -11:45 nap time for about an hour and 10 minutes (I will admit, that lately if we wakes at 6 or later then I try to push nap time to noon)
12:30 - 1:15 wake from nap
Bedtime around 6 - 6:30 depending on when he woke in the morning and how good his nap was. 

MOST of the time lately, he's on a 12 hour day.  I would like it changed to 11.  I have been told to delay nap time and bed time by 15 minutes every few days until the desired bedtime, and then his naps will adjust.  It's just REALLY difficult to do this without OT b/c his naps are short and his wake up time is so different everyday. 

I read about Wonder Weeks and am thinking that maybe this is developmental.  He is due for teeth (although I don't see any erupting), he is learning new words daily, and then of course there is the new trick of climbing out of bed.    So, if it's developmental do I just wait it out, or try to fix it?

[clairebear79]

It's just REALLY difficult to do this without OT b/c his naps are short and his wake up time is so different everyday.

Hi bbandit - no advice here but you wrote my exact thoughts.  We're also in very similar early WU, early nap, early BT cycle, except my LO is waking even earlier than yours!  And oh boy it is hard.  So just wanted you to know you're not alone in this!

Are you wanting to shorten your day to 11hrs or shorten your night to 11hrs???

[bbandit]

I am hoping to switch to 11 hour nights.  It seems like our 11 hour nights result in a 2 hour nap.  This 12 hour night results in an hour to an hour and 10 minute nap almost every single time. 

Last night was a 6:30 bedtime (which was actually a little late, but we had SO much going on) and he woke at 6 on the dot.  So we had 11 1/2 hours last night.  I'm tempted to just keep pushing nap to a set time (like noon) with the hopes that after a while he'll reset morning wake up too.  But, he's so inconsistent with all this that I don't know how to do it 15 minutes at a time like is usually suggested.  I'm leaning towards just setting the nap time and bed time and waiting for it all to "click".  I don't know...

[clairebear79]

I have this exact thought too.  I think I have to push the nap regardless of when he wakes.  Not easy when he's up at 5am though.

[bbandit]

No, it's not easy.  Even today w/ a 6 o'clock wake up he still seems so tired by 11 a.m.  It gets me so frustrated b/c I start to doubt the A times I've picked for him.  Are they too long?  Or is he just so tired before his nap b/c we aren't having consistent days?  A few days ago he fell asleep in the car at about 9:15 a.m.  Yes, he had woken up that morning at 5 a.m., but I still didn't think that he'd be so exhausted after just 4h 15m awake. Oh, I should also add that the day he took a cat nap at 9:15, he went back to bed at 2 p.m. and took a second nap...I had to wake him up after an hour and a 1/2.  How is it that when I give him a nap right in the middle of the day it's only an hour long, but the day he takes a cat nap and a second nap I have to wake him up in fear of TOO MUCH sleep???  It's crazy! 

[clairebear79]

LOL it is definitely crazy.  My LO is a lot younger than yours but this is exactly how our days go!!!!  2 naps - the PM nap is just waaay too late.  1 nap & its risking an OT nap.  I must say we've been doing some 1 nap days since August & its not often now that DS doesn't take a long nap, but I have also been there with the short naps & it sucks. 

Shall we push our naps out together?  I am convinced this is what I need to do but I'm not sure if I'm getting the right A to BT & maybe this is where I'm struggling.  Our day went WU 5am, Nap 11.10 - 1.30 (yes I held him out 6hrs before his nap) & BT at 6.30 but he didnt go to sleep til 7pm - just chattering.  So we are having 14hr days ATM which is just far too long.  What else to do though except hope for a later WU & keep pushing the nap out til its after lunch???

[bbandit]

Sounds like a plan!    I did push some today, but didn't make him go quite 6 hours.  I did 11:50 a.m., which was about 5h 50m w/ his wake up this morning.  Although, if I take in to account that it probably took him a few minutes to fall asleep then we were definitely approaching noon.  He woke up at 1:15, so depending on when exactly he fell asleep, his nap was about 1h 15m to 1h 25m.  A SLIGHT improvement.  He woke with a dirty diaper...which is also a reoccurring them around here lately.  It is time for bed right after lunch and it doesn't always give him time to do his "business" before hand.  I guess I'll start feeding him a light, super early lunch and then he can have a little more when he wakes up. 

It's just difficult b/c he seems so tired a lot of times that it makes me wonder if I'm going in the wrong direction??  It's usually a knee jerk reaction that if an early waking or short nap occurs to think they need LESS sleep, but often times they need more and are stirring b/c they are OT.  If these stretched naps and bedtimes don't help things out soon though, I might go in reverse and see what happens if I cut down his A time a bit instead! 

[clairebear79]

Its always there as a backup plan.  I think the idea with pushing the nap out is to gradually shift BT later & also force them towards overtiredness, so they start taking extra sleep in the early hours instead of waking early.  Or so I've been told.  I must say I did do this when DS was 11 months & waking at 4-5am & I was putting him down for his first nap at around 8am.  I never realised that by following his cues & putting down when he was tired, all I was doing was encouraging the EW.  So I pushed the nap out by 5 mins every day until it started at 9.30am.  And I cut it right back to 30mins.  It was a horrible time & he got very very overtired, but after about 4 weeks, suddenly he started to wake later.  I promised myself we would never go back to the early starts yet here we are!

How far do you plan to push your DS though?  I think I'm going to do another day with nap at 11.15am, and then I'll push it 15mins to 11.30 & see what happens.

Good luck for tonight.x

[bbandit]

Well, I THINK I'm going to push nap as close to noon as possible, but push bedtime a little more slowly.  Hopefully this will help prevent him from being too crazy tired?!  We'll see.  So, if he wakes up at 6 and I do a noon nap, I'm pushing him by a 1/2 hour b/c his usual A time is 5.5 hours.  To get him to a 13 hour day, I'll need to push his bedtime back by about an hour, so I'm going to take that a little at a time.  I THINK!  I don't know if that's a better way to do it, but for now that's the plan.  If I'm being very honest, part of that is selfish on my part.  I NEED him to go to bed by the time 6:30 rolls around b/c he's SO overtired that he's tearing the house apart, acting crazy and being so clingy.  With a nap of only an hour he and I just don't have enough down time during the day.  So, I'm doing the night time stretch slowly.  Once I see some nap improvement, then I'll go ahead and jump bed time closer to 7:30.  GOSH, I hope this works. 

I'm now worrying even more b/c my daughter got sent home from Kindergarten vomiting and now I have no appetite and a headache.   I sure don't want him to get the stomach flu and make things even worse. If it's not one thing, it's another!   

[clairebear79]

Oh bless you, sickness bugs are never nice.  Hope you don't get it too.  My DS has diarrhea atm but luckily he's fine in himself aside from a very sore botty.

WRT pushing nap - I think that sounds like a very good plan.  That is my aim too but we are taking things a little more slowly since my LO is a bit younger. 

And agree pushing BT more slowly is probably best to keep a lid on OT, at least until his nap extends.  We've made a boo boo today I think.  O slept almost 11hrs last night after a 2h 20 nap yesterday.  WU 5.50am.  I did nap at 11.20 & he slept 1h 40 which is usually an OT nap for him.  We did 6.30pm BT & he cried a bit which is unusual.  Think I may have been too late.  Here's hoping!

[bbandit]

Sorry I disappeared a couple of days.  The bug made it's rounds through my house.  After my younger daughter got it, I got it.  Yesterday was my older daughter and today my husband is down.  YIKES!  It's been an interesting few days in our house, to say the least. 

My son has had a couple of good days, and I'm wondering if the fact that he had a tooth finally come out has helped.  Friday he did an hour and 40 minute nap.  Saturday he didn't wake up until 6:30 and then took a two hour nap that started at noon!     Bedtime was then 7 p.m., with a 6 a.m. wake up today.  Not terrible, but not great.  I'm wondering if his tummy is bothering him again though, b/c he's been clingy and cranky today.  Also, at 11:45 (15 minutes before I planned to put him down for a nap) I found him asleep with his lunch in his hand!  So, we'll see how this nap goes. 

I'll be in touch some more when my house settles down.  It's going to take me some time to get things back in order!!  It's a mess and we desperately need groceries...the whole family being sick messes everything up!

[bbandit]

So, how have your days/nights been since I've been MIA?  We've had 6 a.m. wake ups for about a week now...which is fine.  I see that as a sign that we can start pushing everything back so we can get back to 6:30 wake up and 7:30 p.m. bed time.  BUT, the one hang up is he STILL hasn't adjusted his nap.  They are just barely over an hour long so we CAN'T do a 13 hour day.  He's doing 11:30 nights to make up for his short nap.  What gives?  I don't know how to get past this hump.  I've been forcing him to noon naps for quite a while now (at least more than a week) and it hasn't improved and hasn't allowed for a later bed time yet.  Not sure where to go from here....

[clairebear79]

Hiya are you all better now?  what time BT are you doing with a 12.00 nap???

WRT your 1hr nap, hmmm tricky.  It does sound OT.  I know when my DS started with the 1 nap days we had quite a lot of those & I think it was b/c I pushed him to do too many 1 nap days when he still needed the odd 2 nap day.  However, he was 12months then & your DS is much older so should cope with it better I'd have thought.  Could you try an even earlier BT & see if he will tack on extra at night or is that dangerous territory?!

We've been poorly too & so DS had 2 nap day as he was falling asleep at 9am!  All better now & due to bug we got some 12hr nights & so some later WU's at last.  He has also been waking around 6.30am.  So I pushed the nap on to noon.  Yesterday he woke at 40mins but resettled then I had to wake him at 2h 15, today he napped 1h 55.  I suspect OT is setting in though b/c yesterday he took 30mins to settle for nap & today same thing at BT & finally asleep at 7.30pm.  Surely he can't be UT??? 

[bbandit]

Wow!  Sounds like you've made some great progress.  If you don't think your little one is OT, then maybe it's some sort of separation anxiety?   I know my son is a little older, but about a month ago he suddenly started taking anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes to take his naps.  He would get mad when I left his room and he would cry and call for us until he'd finally cave in and go to sleep.  It was NOT fun, but it progressively got better and then it finally stopped.  

If you do think it's OT, what about trying a slightly earlier bedtime?  Maybe just 30 minutes?  I'm not sure if that will work for you or not.  My thought was that since he is younger, maybe he would manage better on a day that was a tad under 13 hours...maybe 7 p.m.?  

Yes, my son does seem OT to me as well.  It's tough to know exactly what to do b/c his is getting some teeth too.  The one thing that makes me feel that OT is not the culprit is that this problem started when he was on his old, much shorter A time.  We pushed it to a noon nap to try and avoid the early wake ups and fix the nap.  I'm thinking of going back to our 5 1/2 hour A time for a few days and see what happens.  Maybe I'm just expecting too much from him!  

His schedule has been to wake about 6.  
Nap at noon (I realize that's a long A time, but it was supposed to get fixed when the early wakes ups get fixed).  Sleep for an hour and 10 minutes.  
Bed five to 5 1/2 hours latEver at 6:30 p.m (although it's been as early as 5:50 p.m. since this all started).  

So, he's doing about 12 1/2 hour days and 11 1/2 hour nights.  I really still feel like if we could shave his night time down to 11 hours that he would tack it on to nap time, but we can't seem to get there.  I can't shorten his night suddenly b/c he gets OT.  

Thanks for listening!

*****Edited to add...Well, I'm wondering if OT and the noon push HAS been at least part of the problem.  I put him down at 11:30 and he's still asleep at 1:15.  He's waking up right now, which gives us a 1h 45m nap.  This is FAR superior to any nap he's had in the past couple of weeks.  I'm going to push for a 6:45 bedtime (if he doesn't seem to be OT) and that will give us closer to the desired 11 hour night!  Fingers crossed!!   

[clairebear79]

Hiya

I think thats a good plan to do the 5.5hrs A & see if that makes any difference. At least you are getting some decent length nights though - that has to be the saving grace.

We on the other hand were up at 5.30am.  DS is obviously feeling better.  So only 10hrs sleep.   We don't usually do 7.30pm BT, we put him down at 6.50 last night aiming for 7pm asleep but he chattered away for ages.  Who knows why.  My gut feeling is OT, but then I've had it suggested to me that maybe UT & he needs 5.5-6hrs A to BT.  I'm not convinced that is the right idea, esp with him already doing 5.5-6hrs in the AM.  He has been tired all day today & I managed to hold him out til 11am & he slept 11-1 so we're back to an early nap, early BT yet again.  Usually if I do 11am nap I'd do 6pm BT but decided to give the slightly longer A a try, but he had a horrendous temper tantrum at 5.50pm so I think we may have headed into OT territory.  PD at 6.15, took til 6.30 to go to sleep.  I really can't figure him out!!