Sleep and EASY Support for spirited babies

[Kirsten~]

Jenn, I've heard a few ladies on this board talk about a 2-1 transition as young as 8/9 months. I'm no expert (so Bec can correct me), but is it possible that he may only need one nap? You may be able to move around his A times enough to go to only one nap maybe? I'm starting to think that we might not be too far away from one nap (hopefully one long one!). The BT situation is tough. I can't believe that at only 8 months she knows when we are taking her into her room it means sleep time. Because as soon as I cross the threshold to her room, that's when she starts to freak out.

 I also keep thinking that I need to find some activities for her outside the house. I work FT, but I was trying swimming for a while on the weekends. She hated the coldness of the pool (she is also Touchy), but I've been meaning to restart that since she is now loving the bath. Not sure what your days are like, but maybe he could use a few activities to tire him out?

That still seems like a lot of NWs. When you say they improved with longer A times, how much did they improve?

[becj86]

I've heard a few ladies on this board talk about a 2-1 transition as young as 8/9 months.

Starting the transition, for sure - we did one full nap and a catnap of 20-30min at 8 months and went to one nap at 10.5 or 11 initially, then hit a snag and went back to two naps for a couple of weeks to recover him from some nasty OT and back to one nap for good at about 13 months.

I can't believe that at only 8 months she knows when we are taking her into her room it means sleep time. Because as soon as I cross the threshold to her room, that's when she starts to freak out.

This is really the key to the refusal - DS was like this around 5 months, it was crazy. I found having a quiet corner in his room for reading and giving him some A time in his room so he didn't associate it only with sleep, but also with other calm activities really helped.

I also keep thinking that I need to find some activities for her outside the house.

These don't have to be organised activities - L did really well with a trip to the park to explore or to the local pool for a splash/swim and even to the shopping centre to crawl/walk around in the air conditioning when it was hot. He now knows almost everyone who works at the shopping centre and they know him. These are all familiar places to him now and he still enjoys them because there's something new, new people, new lizard living in between the bricks or whatever, yk?

Agree that's a lot of NW's, Jenn. Can you link in your EASY thread so I can pop on and have a look at a bit more detail?

[jennfullwood]

Hi Kirsten and Bec,

Here is the link to the other thread where Katherine is helping me, I hope I'm doing this right? Not sure how else to link it.

7.5 mo spirited baby with high A time, how do I adjust EASY?

Caution...it's a long read. 

The NW's drastically improve with A time increases, although I've only been able to get rid of his EW for a one week span, right after we dropped the catnap early 6 mo and moved his A time up to 3H 15 m. He slept blissfully for 8 days and then started crawling. Everything messed up again bc I had to decrease his A time temporarily when he started crawling, adding the catnap back for a week or so...and then I've never gotten his sleep back. Went back to the 3 H 15 M routine, and he started short napping, so already needed an A increase. That's where we are now...a huge mess.

Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it SOOOO much!

[jennfullwood]

Oh, and yes, I most certainly think he's headed towards the 2-1 transition, but he couldn't make through the full day right now w/o a catnap in PM. I get easily get a 1.5-2 hr nap from him in AM if his A time is long enough...and then a 30-45 min catnap in PM...I just have to figure out the window to bedtime. He just seems to need a longer A time there in order to go to bed. I knew he was going to be fiesty when I was pregnant with him....he was all over the place then.  I do try to wear him out during the day, but he does a pretty good job of that himself. He goes all over the house. I have just had to childproof every single room. I do take him outside to play in the yard as much as the weather will permit. My family just has one car right now, so we aren't able to get out too much. Dad takes it to work. I know it would help if we could.

Any advice on how to medicate for teething so that I'm not giving him too much, but would like to keep him fairly pain free so we can best figure out this routine problem. I started giving ibuprofin yesterday as the tylenol didn't seem to help.

Thank you ladies!

[jennfullwood]

Hi Bec,

Can you give your input on this since you have a spirited one with long A times.

Last night my almost 8 month old woke up a 1am (I think due to teething). I gave more meds but it took 1.5 hours to get him back to sleep). Then he woke up at 6:15am ready to go for the day, standing and bouncing holding onto the crib rails and laughing out loud. I have a horrible habit of putting him in the swing to get him to 7am...I have been doing this forever because he has had this EW forever, but I stopped feeding at it when he turned 6 months old. He still wakes and is happy and ready to go. So I do use the swing to get to 7am out of desperation. He will not let me hold/rock him back to sleep...it agitates him and he pushes off me.

So he only had about 8.5 hours of sleep last night plus the time he was in the swing, so maybe 9.5 hours total. He woke up at 7:30 in the swing and was happy as a clam crawling around all morning. I put him down for AM nap early because I thought he would be OT. I gave him 3 h 20 min A time up to this AM nap. Normally we have 3 H 30 min A time, but before these NW's started again, he was beginning to give me 40 min naps with 3 h 30 min A times.

He slept 1.5 hours. I gave him second A time of 3.5 and I capped that nap at 45 min to maintain bedtime. He has been very difficult to get to bed the past few nights and he seems to insist on a full A time, even after a short 45 min PM nap. I got him up at 4:45 and planned to put him to bed by 7:15. I figured he would be tired after a short night of sleep. He would not go down at 7:15. It was 8:15pm before I got him to sleep, and that was with the pacifier, which I only have to use when he is not quite tired enough to settle on his own. We normally have no problems putting him to bed if he is tired enough. So he ended up with a 3 H 3 min A time after a 45 minute nap.

I had this same thing happen the night before, coming off of a 2 hour PM nap (we had a long night of excessive NW that previous night so I let him take a long nap...big mistake). He needed over a 4 hour A time (4 h 10 min) before I could get him to sleep.

His nightwakings have always improved when I increase his A times. Does this make sense to you? Could he possibly not be tired with these long A times, even after short nights? He is very spirited. I just cannot believe how quickly he goes from one A time to the next increase. I am always behind bc by the time I get him sleeping again, he's ready for an increase and he starts NWing all over the place again. I'm not sure even how to proceed from here...he seems so young for this. Depending on how tonight goes, I want to take a couple more days to make sure this is really the case. I just have such difficulty believing he could still handle these A times even after these short nights of sleep. Katherine is helping me as well. I just wanted to get your take on it too and maybe some advice?

Thank you so much,
Jenny

[becj86]

His nightwakings have always improved when I increase his A times. Does this make sense to you?

Yep, makes sense

I just have such difficulty believing he could still handle these A times even after these short nights of sleep.

This is why its actually pretty important to push enough - if you stick around with too-short A times and he isn't getting enough restorative sleep because of that, he will become OT and the only way to help it is to push the A time to get good naps and BT.

[jennfullwood]

Thank you, Bec. Same advice I received from Katherine regarding pushing through A times.

He slept till 4:20am this morning, resettled with paci, but back up at 5:00am. I just can't seem to fix the EW. The other NW's have gone away with the increase in A's.

[Skadiver13]

JennI just want you to know I am going through the EXACT same thing with my LO who is just shy of 7 months. He was ahveing NW/EW even though I'd just upp'd his A time about 3 weeks prior and he did 3 good weeks then it all went to hell in a hand basket. They been helping me over on the EASY forum as well to see if we could figure out what was causing the EW.  We've upped his A time to 3hr 15/20min, with a Full A time before bed and since he seems to be lower sleep needs and is barely doing a 10/10.5hr night we're pushing his bedtime a little bit later. I haven't read all your posts but it seems like discomfort might be waking my LO but he's just not "tired" enough to get back to sleep on his own. He woke at 4:30 this morning I rocked him and jiggled him for 45min before I got him back to sleep and rocked him till 6. BUT 4:30 is better than 3:45 which we were getting. So hopefully it's working..

[jennfullwood]

Hi Skadiver,

Thanks for posting. Good to hear some other moms are having similar issues. I hope you are able to get your baby's EW's figured out too. It's amazing how fast they change and grow...really challenging to keep up with them!

[Skadiver13]

It's very challenging.. It's no joke that just when you think you've got it figured out it all changes again. Sometimes I just want to give up EASY because some friends who don't follow it have babies that sleep through the night. But I know he's low sleep needs now and although he says textbook on the quiz I think he's just SUPER alert. I I also know with his reflux and with out that routine and this board I"d be so worse off than I am now. We're sticking it through.

[jennfullwood]

I hear you! I feel the same way at times because I have several friends with babies the same age as mine who have been sleeping through the night for ages now, and they don't have any routine at all! It is so very frustrating. But the book has taught me everything as a first time mom and I know it works well. I think my baby is just difficult to figure out.

[Skadiver13]

If you think about it though at this age they do have a routine, their babies just may handle variations and going off routine easier.  They probably get up at a similar time, eat at a similar time and nap at a similar time, but their parents just aren't as aware of it. If you think about it like that then you know that they aren't so different in routine but their babies are just easier. 

[jennfullwood]

Well, that is very true!! 

[Jessleigh]

Hey Jenn and Skadiver,

Just wanted to say I'm going through the same thing at 11.5months. My DD has always has low A's for her age so we're doing 3.5 here, but now i'm stuck in yet another OT or UT/OT cycle with short naps and EW's. Just when i thought things were going great something changed out of the blue and here we are again trying to up those A's without exasperating the OT. I definitely feel alone sometimes too as all my friends seem to have great sleepers. It's good to pop on here and find that I'm not the only one! You guys are doing a great job!

[NewMum79]

Hi all,

I thought I would join this thread as I have a 4mo spirited little girl! She is really testing me at the moment and I thought I would see if you had any wise words given that most of your spirited LOs are older...

We have just been through a tricky couple of weeks weaning the dummy (paci) and moving from 3hr EASY towards 4hr EASY, we have ended up at 3.5 for now. I have particularly been working on naps as she was a great one for power naps as I call them, rarely taking more than 30 or 40 minutes at a time. I have had some great support from Katie80 on the PUPD board through this time and we have made progress. She has forgotten about the dummy  and she has learnt to suck her thumb and transition some naps on her own. She still isn't sleeping through at night but I generally only have to get up once a night to feed and given that she is breast fed I think that's fairly normal. All good.

Or so I thought... this week she has been crazy! She has been fighting naps, yesterday she only had 1.5hrs all day! She has started fighting sleep at bedtime which she has never done. When she is awake she is manic - not crying particularly but shouting at her toys, arms and legs going crazy just FULL ON! I was thinking she was horribly OT but even after a good night's sleep (eventually) last night she woke up today in the same mood. What is the best thing to do, try to tire her out with activities or reign in the activities and keep things calm? How do you get out of one of these cycles?

I have managed to get her to nap for 1hr30 this morning by rushing in as I heard her stir to pat her back. Not great I know but seemed to work and at least she will have had a restorative nap and I got a break!

Thanks