Thank you so much for the help! Wow - I've been gone awhile! Things have been crazy busy around here - my in-laws are back in the house, my parents came to visit, my husband graduated from the university, etc. It's good to finally be back on the BW forum!
Becky, congrats and happy belated birthday to Logan! How exciting! Emma is coming up on 10 months this Saturday and it is truly amazing to see how she is growing! When we started EASY she was just lying there and now, almost 5 months later, she is all over the place, crawling and pulling herself up to stand! Craziness!
Have you tried shush/pat or PU/PD?
We've sort of done a modified version of shush/pat for most of her life. I've wanted to avoid PU/PD simply because months ago we worked super, super hard to teach her that night time was for staying in the crib and we would not pick her up out of bed. Now that she is sitting up in bed, though, maybe we could do put down??? Hmm... The tricky thing is, most of her nws are quite quick, so I don't know how that would work. Really we need them to not occur in the first place!
How is she going with replugging?
Okay. She is awesome at it when she is awake. When I come to get her after she wakes up she likes to sit up in bed and start grabbing the pacis... one in the mouth and one in each hand! She's a paci addict!
But at night (or at early nap wakings) she still wants us to put it in her hand for her. I don't know if she has trouble finding them in the dark, or if she's just too emotional to try. I've become hesitant to put them right next to her when I am trying to get her to go to sleep because she likes to grab them and play with them.
I guess maybe that is good practice learning that she can reach them in bed, though, so maybe I should just let her play for a few minutes and hope she gets bored quickly and goes to sleep!
Have you managed to add any A time to that morning A yet?
Yep! We're up to 4 hours now. At first I thought it was working some, but maybe not enough. We went from typically 1 hr 15 min naps to typically 1 hour 20-25 min naps. Now we seem to be slipping back to 1 hr 15 min. Does that mean we need another increase?
I do wonder about the stimulation thing. Most of the time we are home and relatively low key for her first A time. Actually, now that my husband is out of school, he watches her while I take a nap to recover from the night!
Maybe we should experiment with some more stimulation. I tried taking her shopping recently but that didn't seem to do it. I guess now that she is getting more mobile, she needs to be moving more, though, for it to be very stimulating. I just have to get up the energy to get out of the house and moving with her! If it worked, though, it would be worth it!!!
I think she does get OS fairly easily. I LOVE the quiet corner idea!!! What a valuable life lesson Logan is learning! And she does like a short wind down. Lately I feel like even the wind down isn't working all that well, though.
What did you all do for a wind down at this age?
I probably do need to hold back a bit when she yelps. At night I just kind of stagger in there in a sleepy stupor to get her back to sleep as quickly as possible so that I can sleep! And during the day if it's a short nap I'm afraid for her to get too fully awake. I'll make an effort tonight to hold back a little and see what happens.
Emma usually wakes up around 7:15. It's almost always between 6:30 and 7:30. This is great, except that as her A times increase it leads to a late bt, a problem I have suspected for awhile contributes to her nws even when her A times are good.
You're right I'm getting really tired of having to be there with her until she falls asleep. Plus, I want her to learn (er... re-learn, because she used to be good at it before separation anxiety kicked in) how to do the last stage of falling asleep by herself, because I want her to do this at night by herself. I read in sleeping for toddlers about the gradual withdrawal method and this is what we have started. We went from having our hand placed on her, to making it a very light touch, to having our hand just above her, and tonight I am starting leaning over the crib but with no hand out. The goal is to gradually take steps back and eventually out the door. Is this a bad idea if it is separation anxiety related? It feels really good to be actually taking some steps in the right direction!
Becky, when you would say goodnight and then he would cry and you would come back how long would you stay?
If she takes a semi-short first nap (1 hr, 15 min) she often wants about the same in her second nap. I keep struggling to know how to handle that scenario?
I do get really uptight about her sleep, but that's largely because it affects my sleep so directly. It's hard to relax when she wakes up after a short nap and I am dreading the fact that this probably means a rough night to come. I am surviving now on morning naps while my DH watches her, but when we move in a month he will have work early in the morning and that will all stop. I want soooo badly to decrease these nws by then! I'm actually surprised I've survived these last almost 10 months, because I'm a person who REALLY needs her sleep!
Bex09, thanks for the link! It's nice to know I'm definitely not alone!
I think you could be right about the catching up on sleep when it is good for a few days... kind of an OT/UT loop that lasts for a few days!
So next time she has 3 days in a row of good sleep, should I automatically increase her first A time of the day? Teething could also play a role. She seems to be off and on with that constantly! (8 teeth already!!!
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I keep wondering if her A times are even anywhere close to right! We are at 4 hours, then 3.5 hours, then 2.5 hours. This could be totally off though. It's hard to tell when everything is so messed up, yk?
Thanks again! I'm grateful to you all and BW for keeping me sane!
