Anyone Want To Talk About The 2-1 Transition? Thread #22

[RebekahDSC]

Just wish I could get back to sleep in between the wakeups rather than lieing there thinking - is he awake/has he gone back to sleep/if he is awkake how many hours night sleep has he had etc   DH thinks I'm insane!

Trinity, I SOOO could have written this myself! It's nice to know I'm not the only "crazy" one! I think this thread is very therapeutic, at least just to know we are not alone!

Well, we are back home from our vacation so it's time to jump into actively working on the 2-1 transition... especially since DD woke up this morning at 4:37am.  To re-cap, right now we are on two naps still, and our EASY looks something like this:
5:00 WU
9:30-11:00 Nap (Usually only sleeps barely 1.5 hour)
3:00-3:35 Nap (I wake her up at 30-35 min...reasoning explained below)
6:00 BT
BUT the specific times often get earlier and earlier everyday because she NEVER sleeps 11 hours at night anymore.  When she started waking super early and was starting to have way too short nights, someone suggested putting her to bed 12.5-13 hours after wake-up in order to encourage a longer night and avoid OT in the long run.  Usually we do BT about 13 hours after wake-up in hopes of an 11 hour night, but she still never sleeps 11 hours, so for the most part the days just gets earlier and earlier (until some random fluke happens and pushes bt later for a night but then she still wakes pretty early, sometimes a little later, but generally around 6am at the latest. The latest wu recently I remember was 6:20 but that was after a night full of nws).  Right before we left on our vacation, I wrote a post about our situation and a couple of you suggested switching to a 20 min am nap (40 min when we first start out) no earlier than 9:30am followed by a 3 hr A time and pm nap as long as she wants.  I decided to wait until we were back home.  Now that I've explained our situation I think a little better, does this still sound like the way to go?  Also, I have a few questions about how to go about it:

-Should the am nap be at 9:30 even if she sleeps later than 5am and her normal A time (almost 4.5 hours) would normally have the am nap be a little later?  In other words, is 9:30 the earliest time or the exact time for the am nap?
-Should the A time between naps still be 3 hours when we are capping the am nap at 40 min? How many days should we do the 40 min am nap before switching to 20 min? Is it a gradual switch to 30 min. first and then 20 or immediately from 40 to 20?
-How would you figure the A time to bed after the pm nap? Does it depend on the length of that nap? Or is it always the same?  Or do you keep a consistent BT?

Sorry for all the questions!  I just want to be prepared before we start!  This will be a big sacrifice for me at first because I like to get caught up on my own sleep during her morning nap, but if it works it will be more than worth it!!!  Thank you so very much!

[jingmommy]

Rebekah, for the first question, the answer seems yes and it seems to help reduce EWs in my case.  For second question, 40mins is a complete sleeping cycle and your LO pea balmy can have his normal A time.  If you cap the am nap to 30 mins, then you can try 3hrs for the second A time. I also have the question for the transition time for 40mins to 30mins to 20mins.  I thought it would take at least several weeks but for my LO it only took her a few days! One week from 40mins to 30mins; 3 days from 30mins to 20mins.  After 2 days of 20mins am nap, she started shorten her pm nap to 1hr today! So it seems it's about time to try one nap.  Way too soon!
For the 3rd question, I'll try to move BT 30mins earlier if LO does not nap well in the afternoon to avoid OT. 
Well, these are just my experiences and some I learned from this board.

[trinity33]

Hi Rebekah, welcome to the crazy club    Hope you had a nice vacation 

-Should the am nap be at 9:30 even if she sleeps later than 5am and her normal A time (almost 4.5 hours) would normally have the am nap be a little later?  In other words, is 9:30 the earliest time or the exact time for the am nap?
-Should the A time between naps still be 3 hours when we are capping the am nap at 40 min? How many days should we do the 40 min am nap before switching to 20 min? Is it a gradual switch to 30 min. first and then 20 or immediately from 40 to 20?
-How would you figure the A time to bed after the pm nap? Does it depend on the length of that nap? Or is it always the same?  Or do you keep a consistent BT?

As she's taking a fairly long nap at the moment in the am, I might try reducing it gradually, so capping at 1 hour, 40 mins, 30 mins, 20 mins. To me the aim was to cap it so that I could put ds down for a long pm nap without it comprimising bt - or having to cap the pm nap so short that I had to do ebt - as like you I've never had much sucess with ds tacking on nightime sleep. Having said that I know there are lots of ladies that swear by it and has really helped them through the transition  So that was just us.

I started off moving the am nap time around depending on what time DS had worken up, but with not great sucess, especially since he's at nursery. So decided to stick to the 9.30 pd, with the aim of him being asleep by 9.45.  I was then doing a bottle at 1.45 and then down for pm nap with the aim of him being asleep by 2 ish. This was generally getting us a 2 hour nap til 4. and then bt at 7.15/ asleep by 7.30.  I judged when to cap the am nap further by when he started taking longer to go to sleep for the pm nap. So if he was playing in his crib for 45 mins before going to sleep, I figured it was time to chop some more off the am nap. So his A time got longer by capping the am nap, rather than pushing the pm nap later iykwim.

For me switching round the long am short pm, to short am long pm, did help push the ew back a bit. Those pre 5am wu are evil! Keeping my fingers crossed for you if you do decide to take the plunge.

[jingmommy]

So DD surprised me again.  The 20mins am nap only worked for two days and today she extended her second A to 3hrs and only slept for 1hr in the afternoon. 
WU 7:15
Nap1 10:20-10:40
Nap2 2:00-3:00(put down at 1:20. Played in the crib till 2pm. So th second A was 3hrs already)
BT 7:00, asleep within 15mins
Is this the sign to go for one nap? I'm really not sure as she usually starts grabbing her eyes from 9:30am.  Should I cap her nap from 20mins to 15mins and keep second A at 2.5hrs still?  Really scared to jump to one nap as I know what's waiting us ahead.

[*Kara*]

Hi Rosie - as a rule, any nap less than 2 hrs is OT in the move to one nap.  Oddly enough, the best way to fix it is to push her A time a touch longer to get her good and tired to nap longer.  2.5 - 3 hrs is very common along with 11-12 hr nights for the first few weeks of the move.... once baby catches up any OT, naps generally move to 2-2.5 hrs and nights to 11-11.5 hrs.

I would push her to 1145am for that nap, if not noon

But his night sleep has been prettty good. I've heard him a few times in the early morning - but i'm pretty sure he's gone back to sleep as he hasn't got shouty until 6.30. So for example this morning I heard him at 4.55/5.20/5.45/6.15. I think the 6.15 was his proper wakeup one.

This is a sign that you do have some OT starting to build hun... in my experience a single EBT of about 30 mins will do the trick!

[trinity33]

Hi Kara,


After napping 10.40-10.50 yesterday he fell asleep in the car on the way back from nursery for 10 mins 6.05-6.15 and then kicked up a big fuss at bt, so didn't manage to do ebt. Fell asleep at 8.00 then slept straight through til 6. So a bit shorter a night than I would like, but pretty good.

As slightly shorter night put him down for nap today at 10.20 and he only napped for 1.25  so knew he wouldn't make it through to bt. He fell asleep in the car for 30 mins between 4.30-5. But again had big trouble at bt and he took an hour to go to  sleep - 8.15 

So the 20 mins capped naps had stop working for us and going to one nap has given better wu times. But obviously the late cn is throwing us out....do you think I need to push the nap time later in the am?

thanks in advance 

[*Kara*]

Absolutely... what time does he generally wake up?  You really want a minimum of 4.5 hrs A time before the one nap... closer to 5 hrs is ideal.

[trinity33]

Hiya, thanks for speedy response. Well since doing one nap the last few days 6-6.30 prior to that it's been months of 4.30-5.30! So today was 6 am so 4.20 A time til first nap.

[*Kara*]

Okay - so yes, you want to push that nap out... I would try 15 mins longer every 3 days until you get to 5 hrs first thing

[trinity33]

Great, thanks kara. Xx

[kthow3]

Hi all!

I had posted a comment that Kara was helping me with, but decided to move over here as it will be nice to have support from those going through the same issues... My 10 month old DS has been refusing his PM nap for the past week... and before that off and on for a month or so.  We tried capping the AM nap at 1 hour with no PM nap as a result.  This morning my DS woke at 5:45 (unusual for him), napped from 8:45-9:30 when we woke him, he was in his crib at 12:10 and an hour and 20 minutes later is still up there fussing (not crying!).  He seems unable to fall asleep, though he is soooooo tired.  He was tired when he woke from his first nap!  He is a high sleep needs baby and sensitive to lack of sleep, so this is not going to go well... 
Unsure as what to do at this point.  I am unsure if he will EVER take 2 naps again (this is what he did when he dropped from 3-2 naps- flat out refused the 3rd nap no matter what we did).  He is going to be massively OT if he only gets 45 minutes sleep today!  Obviously we will do a SUPER early bedtime, but we did that last night and he still woke OT this morning.  Not sure how to proceed from this point; any advice?  He had been waking about 6:30 with first nap from 8:30/8:45-10:30/10:45 with an afternoon nap at 2:30/3:00 and a bedtime of about 7:00... actually that was quite awhile ago as he hasn't taken a second nap in a bit.   

[trinity33]

Hi kara,

Well I thought we had a good nap routine today.
Wu 6
10.55-1.35 nap
Thought I'd do ebt as still pretty long pm, so in bed bt 6.50 and screamed blue murder til 7.40 :-( what do you think should I have still done normal 7.30 bt or was he ot and should have gone earlier?
I took him for a walk in the buggy between 4.30-5 to see if he wanted cn, but was bright eyed and didn't sleep. Did have eye rubbing during tea though.

Thanks for your thoughts, you were spot on the am A time :-)
 

[*Kara*]

Trinity - could be a touch OT at bedtime for sure.. it can be really hard for them to do two massive A times each day... my DD was the same... monster nap and still had a tough time getting to bedtime... I had a few days of 640pm bedtimes!  I would maybe limit his PM A time to 5 hrs for a few days while you are pushing his morning A time... as long as that nap stays a decent 2 hrs +

kthow - time to cap his AM nap to 30 mins if you are getting PM refusals

[oliversmommy]

Trinity - I so do the same thing w/ the early AM wake-ups - DS cries out and falls back to sleep, and I lay there forever listening.  DS is sleeping great and I'm exhausted!

Things have been going pretty well here - we've had a few days of long AM naps and no EW, although DS still cries out at night more than he used to.  However his AM naps yesterday and today were 50 min and 1 hr 15 min so I think I need to push his morning A time out again (which I just did a week ago!)  Yesterday was interesting - my mom babysat him in the afternoon and said he fell asleep in his stroller during a walk, for only 15 min, and then wouldn't go down for his PM nap.  I tried for an EBT but he wasn't tired and wasn't hungry for his BT nurse/bottle, so I kept him up a little later then put him down (after 4.5 hr A).  I figured I was in for a rough night or at least an EW but he slept 11.75 hrs!  Then today when I put him down for his PM nap, he fussed for 30 min - I finally got him up and nursed him to sleep to squeeze in a CN so he could make it to BT.  I'm curious to see how he sleeps tonight!

So I'm thinking the short AM nap/long PM nap may be the way to go . . . what do you guys think???
My only concern is that I go back to work in a couple of weeks, and I started taking DS to his new sitter for a few hours at a time this past week to transition him.  We are going to try a few half days this week, however his sitter can only do afternoons this week, and if he doesn't nap for her at first, then I'd rather him miss a planned short nap rather than a planned long nap.  So I may try to hold out for another week or so.  Although it would be nice to have the A times figured out by the time I go back to work (what am I saying - I have YET to figure out his A times!!! )

A couple of questions - (and I apologize if this has already been covered) - do I keep his first A time the same when capping the AM nap?  Also, those of you that have this routine ATM, what do your feeding schedules look like?  When do you fit in milkfeeds/solids?  Like Rebekah I want to be prepared before we start!

Hope everyone has a good night tonight!

[trinity33]

Thanks Kara - he had a couple of early morning shout outs and then woke up for the day at 5.30 today, so only a 9.50 night :-( I've said to nursery to put him down at 10.30 and let him sleep as long as he likes and if he does under 2 hours to offer him a cn....it's a new lady starting at nursery today and I'm not sure whether things will go as well     We struggle with ebt in the week too as we don't get back from nursery til 6.15/20 so by the time I've given him some cereal and done bath and bottle it's hard to have him in bed by 6.45, also he's never really got the hang of tacking on night sleep from ebt.  Oh well we'll see how today goes.

If he doesn't have a cn at nursery, would you try and keep him awake in the car on the way home or let him have 5/10 mins at around 6ish but still try and do as earlier bt as possible?