13mo never STTN, now I'm preggo/exhausted

[tahiranisa]

BACKGROUND: I successfully BW him to a good EASY around 7 months and stopped nursing to sleep but still had to stand over his crib for him to fall asleep. With teething and weaning and the pregnancy, things are just out of hand.

On a good day (very rare lately), here is how our schedule goes:
6:30: Wake. Nurse in my bed. We usually play in my bed till seven.
7:30: Breakfast
10: Nap 1.25-1.5 hours (He usually seems very tired by 9 but that seems really early. A time = 3.5hr)
12: Lunch
3:30: Nap (maybe catnap) 45 min - 1 hour. (A time = 4hr)
7:00: Dinner followed by bath which he screams through.
7:30: Start winding down. We say good night to things
8: Bedtime
1am: NW I try to nurse him but since getting pregnant my milk is gone... (20 min to get him down)
3am: NW (10 minutes to put him down)
5am:NW Attempt nursing (20 min to get him down)

OK, but today (and many days lately) went like this:
6am: Up
10: Nap (45 minutes - my husband tried to resettle him but no luck. I think I could have. A time:4hr)
2:45: Nap. He fell asleep in the car and I moved him into bed. 1 hr total. A time:4hr
7:30 started wind down.
8: Tried to put him down, couldn't. My husband took over and let him play for 20 minutes on the floor. He tried PD for about 10 minutes but LO kept looking over his shoulder to make sure DH was in the room.)
8:45 I went back in and it took about 15 minutes of PD for him to fall asleep. I shushed him over his crib for about 6 minutes and he is asleep now.
I am anticipating NW of every 1-2 hours after the BT we had.

I just don't know where to start. I am not sure which problem to tackle - resettling, EW, NW, weaning issues, SA. Help!

[tahiranisa]

Last nights NW were 11, 1, 3:30, 5:45.
I tried till 630 to get him to sleep but now luck.  He'd be settled and seemingly asleep then roll over look at me and cry.

So, not sure if his wake-up was 5:45 or 6:20 but either way by nine he was exhausted and miserable (typical for bad nights). So I just put him down for his nap. Maybe a miracle will happen and he'll sleep more than 45 minutes.  I just know I needed to change something!

[tahiranisa]

Bad idea. He's already up. He was drenched in sweat even though his room was cool and the fan was running. But he awoke happy which is very atypical.

[Sacifa]

Hi Tahiranisa,
I have had a very similar patern with my DD for quite a long time. She was OT and so we were getting rubbish nights with many NWs, rubbish short naps, which was adding to her being OT. The best way to get things to straighten up was to put her to bed not at 7pm but at 6pm or sometimes even at 5:30pm. After 2-3 days of early nights she was catching up on sleep and her naps were getting longer and the NW were disappearing.
I moved her dinner to 4:30-5pm, 15-20 minutes later very short bath, BF, book and bed. After 3-4 days, when she was getting enough sleep and everything was going well I started to move the bed time 20 minutes later every 3-4 days.
All works well until the next tooth, cold, pain, ache etc ;-)
Currently my DD is just short of 13 months and as a rule of thumb if she doesn't sleep for a minimum of 2.5hrs during the day, we do an early night. Otherwise I get NWs, EW and everything goes upside down within 24-32hrs.
Hugs and hope it gets better.

[tahiranisa]

@safica thanks for your post. I sort of went with that mentality today, I put him down for his second nap at 1:45 because he was so tired and figured I would just have a super early bedtime. Guess what, he slept for two full hours!(and so did I and dh! )
Then, I thought BT would be early but he wasnt ready till eight. Though we were reading and looking out the window from 7:30-8 doing our wind down. He went down at eight without a fight.
Maybe I will stick to super early  naps and then early bt to get him rested-up like you suggest. Thanks!

[tahiranisa]

OK, I think following his cues yesterday and having early naptimes helped a lot. Here is the recap from yesterday :

5:45 wake
6:30 out of crib
9 -first nap 45 minutes woke happy
1:45 -second nap 2 hours (his longest ever)
8: br
10:45: NW took 20 minutes to resettle
2:45: NW easy to resettle with milk
4: NW
5:30: NW
6:30: up

Now, I know its the same number of night wakings but he has usual times and for some reason it seems better to me that these were random. He missed his 1am NW! and had I not been working nights, I think he might have woken less in the early morning. dh got him each time so I wonder if he was waking to look for me.  also wake-up was a much more manageable hour!

This 11pm NW is new but has persisted for about five days. How do I make it disappear again. should that be my focus besides the overall goal of more sleep?
Thoughts? advice?