14 months super EWs again

[anna*]

Yay! Great update!

[Jessleigh]

Ok so we're back to aping naps. :/. I need to stop this. Just feel so powerless to know what to do sometimes. I just keep doing it BC I wanted my nights back. But it's not helping things of course.

My problem is that she is rarely consistent. I can never figure the correct A time. This has given me such a headache that I resort to aping BC then I don't have to worry so much about missing the window.

I guess I just need a game plan.

I've been doing the set 10am nap. Once I got 1hr 45mins. Other times its been 35mins, 1hr 15mins or 1hr 20. So confusing.
Then I do a pm catnap.

BT has been 7/7:30. With the last A time being 3hrs from catnap

I've gotten WU from 4:50 to as late as 630 which was glorious. This am she woke at 5 but went back to sleep on her own til 6:10. Yay!

So I guess I just need sown support. I'm planning on doing what you first suggested which was nap at 10 for no more than 30 mins than 2nd nap at 1:30 and hope for a long one.

If I get a short one I will try to resettle with wiwo. If no sleep ill do an EBT of 6 or earlier if she's really falling apart


My fear is that my nights will get worse again. She's finally sleeping through again and not screaming her head off at BT. She is so sensitive to OT.

I also fear that ill misread her cues and she'll scream for hours BC she's Ut or Ot. I honestly get nervous at every nap watching the monitor at the 30min mark hoping she'll keep sleeping. It's exhausting. Such a waste of energy.

The other thing I have a hard time with is waking her after 30mins especially if I've just done 30mins of wiwo to get her to sleep. Just seems cruel. You know? Guess I just need to get over that one. ??

Deep breath. Ok. Thoughts?

I'm starting tomorrow. I am DONE with APOPing!!

[Jessleigh]

Also the first A time seems to be quite long for her. She often wants to sleep by 9. Rubbing eyes yawning etc. but I guess trying the set 10cat nap can't hurt.

I just googled sample schedules for 14 months and ALL of them had only 2-3hrs morning A time! This makes me second guess things even more!

Too much information these days.

[anna*]

(((hugs)))

Well, I think if you stop APOPing, then you won't need to be doing 30 mins of WIWO to get her to sleep, yk? It's really not doing you any favours. I know some 14 month olds are having 2-3hrs of morning A time but is that still the case if they're waking in the 5am hour? Reasonable if they're waking at 7am. And, even if they're having a 2hr A time at 14 months, it definitely won't last long because soon they will be on one nap. Pushing out the first nap is pretty much the standard first 'remedy' to try for EWs. FWIW at 14 months my little girl was already on one nap (she's by no means low sleep needs) so her day was

7am awake
11.30am nap ~2-3hrs
2pm awake
6.30pm asleep.

[Jessleigh]

Ok willing to try it. She was in bed at 7:15 last night asleep by 7:30.
Woke at 5:55. So she's still not getting a good 11 plus hours.

She was cranky all morning yawning. Pulling ears. Finally put her down at 10 and she screamed for 30seconds and now is babbling/fussing. We'll see how long it takes her. Typically when she acts like this ill get 20mins of babbling before she starts screaming again. I feel like she's always OT! Crazy.

A 12.5 hr night would be a miracle!

[Jessleigh]

So given how she was acting this morning, I'm either completely misreading everything or she was OT.

Btw, she hasn't had a consistent stretch of good independent naps since 11 months old. Then she was doing 3hrs A time. 2 good naps lasted a week and then we went back to 30 mins BC I put her down 15 mins too late one day and we never recovered.

Either I am always doing something wrong (so tired of feeling this way) or she's a just super touchy sleeper.

Ok. End vent. We'll see how this week goes. Thanks.

[anna*]

((((hugs)))). I think we all know that feeling of 'doing everything wrong'. You're really not (I hope you know it, deep down). Some kids are just hard to nap/sleep at various points, and you're in screwy territory with the 2-1 anyway. There's a great support thread going (Support Thread for 2-1 Nap Transition cont'd pt 5) with a load of mums going through the same thing for hand-holding and general moral support.

I'm in two minds really. Part of me thinks just go for 1 nap cold turkey and ride out the OT. At some point it has to start working in your favour, at least in being more likely to be able to resettle a short nap, and she's in the age zone where most are making the switch from two to one.

Are you going to use WIWO for the independent sleep thing?

[Jessleigh]

Thanks. Really helps to hear.

She only got 40mins of sleep total today. Refused 2nd nap. I'm totally ready to try 1 nap tomorrow.

I put her down 3hrs from CN. She was cranky and yawning. She cried for 10 seconds then babbled and rolled around, sat up, stood up, layed down, etc for a WHOLE HOUR. O man.

So when she finally started crying I did wiwo for 15 mins and realized there was no way this child was going to sleep. Just counted the hour of crib time as her rest time.

Put her to bed at 5:45. Fingers crossed til morning.

Ill check out the 2-1 board. Thanks.

[anna*]

It's hard when she's Ewing though right. I'd normally say stick to 4.5hrs A time bit you really have to get to at least 11.30am to do one nap. What do you think?

[ZacsMumme]

Hugs. I agree with Anna, I would work on that first A time. Really your in a 2-1muddle and to get out I think you need to do 3 things. Pick a long nap ie long am or pm, push the A times out and be consistent.

Is she more likely to do a good am nap or pm? - for us Z would short nap for both if I did a short am so I pushed the am A out to 4 hrs and let Z sleep as long as he liked. I also APOPed if I had too to encourage a long nap. Then we did a CN in the car with a short A to bed.

We can help you come up its a plan if you like Hun? X

[Jessleigh]

Thanks ladies. Rough night. Woke screaming a few times before 10. Then up at 4am. Babbling til 5:10. Back to sleep til 5:50.

I had a lot of time to think in the wee hours of not sleeping.

First I realized she is definitely not ready to try one nap. She is so miserable in the mornings and could easily nap by 9 although I've been stretching her til 10.

Secondly, a short am nap just gives us a short pm or complete refusal.

Third, I was so enjoying the later schedule when I was aping the naps.
I think the hell of waking up at 4 BC of OT is just too much for me right now. The pro of aping the CN and am nap extention if necessary is that I get a consistent schedule and good nights.

So I've concluded that BC we're already in a mess with the 2-1 that to add dropping the aping to the mix just makes things too messy for me. She is just SO sensitive to OT and schedule tweaking takes months for her.

So for now, I'm continuing to do what zacsmumme has described as that is pretty much what I was doing before.

She goes down fine for the am nap 99% of the time. Then it's a 50/50 chance of whether or not she takes a good long nap on her own. And she almost never will take the 2nd nap on her own.

Thanks for the help. I hate feeling so flighty with me decisions but after really looking at the pros and cons I think my best bet is to hold tight to 2 naps and ap when I have to to save our night sleep. As a stay at home mom I have the time so I might as well do what keeps us all the sanest for now.

Hopefully when she's ready to do 1 nap I can work on independent sleep.

Jess 

[Jessleigh]

So doing something like this:

WU 6
A 4 hrs
S 10-11:30/12 (ap to extend if necessary)
A 3.5-4 hrs depending on cues
CN 3:30-4
A 3 hrs
BT 7

This is basically what she had been doing before yesterday's attempt at doing away with the aping.
Look good?

[anna*]

Looks good to me! Main thing is that youer' happy with it.

[ZacsMumme]

I agree, looks good Hun, just gradually push the AM out closer to lunch once OT has eased and your ready for the transition

[Jessleigh]

Thanks so much!