10mth old sleep training into 4th week - advice please on night wakings

[Can6883]

Hi there, we've been ST our 10m old since 28 dec and while we've had significant improvement I'm not sure we're anywhere near the end of it 

We've gone from multiple NW to only 1 on a great night to sometimes 3 on not so great night.  Lately when he wakes its for an hour and hes not upset unless you leave him. ive tried GW, and also Depending on the time of NW (if more than 6-7hrs since last feed I'll give bottle to rule out hunger (he is a small baby - only just 8kg now and on the 3rd centile since birth). He has been teething - so I also make a judgement call on whether to use teething gel etc but I'm starting to think - after reading many of the other posts and the suggestions - that perhaps his day naps are stealing from his night sleep.

Currently he struggles A times of 2-3 hours and due to regular EW at 5:15am for the day, he is having 3 naps. Typical day would be:

EW. 5-5:30am (regularly wakes and poops could this body function that disrupts the sleep?)
E. 6am solids (eats like a sparrow)
A. Max would be 2 hrs although generally is ready after 90mins
E. bottle at 7am
A. Wind down routine
S. 7:30am or later if wakes up at 6am (usually 1hr 15mins)

E. 10am morning tea (fruit which he'll eat plenty)
A. Max 3hrs - If much past 2.5hrs he really fights it
E. 11am bottle before wind down starts
S. 12-12:30pm for 1 hour

E. 2pm lunch solids
A. 2.5hrs before he is very sleepy
E. bottle  before wind down (half bottles depending on solid intake)
S. 3.30-4pm for 50 mins but lately I've capped it at 30mins

E. 5pm dinner solids
A. 1.5hrs and he is getting very irritable by end of bath time
E. bottle for the night (full bottle)
S. 6:30pm - however he's been harder and harder to put down lately. The other night he took over an hour to settle - standing up and getting back down. Quite happy but loses it if I leave the room. I suspect under tired.....?

NW can start from 11pm on a bad night then it's every 2 hrs. Or on a good night it's around 1-2am with an eW of just after 5am.

I've always just put the Lo down when He's shown tired signs during the day. but I'm guessing I must be missing something...as I see that by this age they should be on 2 naps generally.

Any advice on how to tweak the routine?

[Layla]

Hi there,

Sorry your post has been missed. At 10 months, most are on 2 naps and the 3rd nap is probably not helping with the night wakings. Most can do between 3-4hrs A time between naps. I would work on pushing his morning nap until its closer to 9am so that you spread the naps out a bit and do an earlier bedtime as opposed to 3rd nap. So I would add 15 mins every couple of days until you get there and aim for something like this:

9-9:45 - morning nap (try and keep this nap short as too long morning nap and too early morning nap perpetuates early wakings)
1ish-3ish - afternoon nap (by keeping the morning nap short, he should take a longer afternoon nap)
7pm - bedtime

By eliminating the 3rd nap and pushing the morning nap (and keeping it shorter), he will hopefully add the extra hrs to his night sleep and start to sleep in a little later.

what do you think?

[Can6883]

Thanks for the reply.

The last 3 nights I've dropped the afternoon catnap and pushed out the morning nap (but not cut it short) and while he still has a couple of NW he has been waking at 5:30am - which would be just shy of 12 hours overnight sleep in total...so I've just got him up rather than persisting with PuPD. Is that the right thing to do?

AlSo with the first nap, should I push out gradually based on the wake up time? With the hope it'll eventually sort itself out? Eg if wakes at 5am aim for 8:30-9am nap time?

I have noticed however that stretching the A times he is so tired he will start rolling his eyes when having his bottle before bedtime - so by the time I've burped him he's no way able to stay awake for a story. I've tried twice before and he's just awoken like he's had a power nap and then I've had to really struggle to get him down. So tonight I just let him stay sleepy and lay him down virtually asleep. Hope this doesn't affect the last few weeks' effort!

[Layla]

The last 3 nights I've dropped the afternoon catnap and pushed out the morning nap (but not cut it short) and while he still has a couple of NW he has been waking at 5:30am - which would be just shy of 12 hours overnight sleep in total...so I've just got him up rather than persisting with PuPD. Is that the right thing to do?

Yes, if he's sleeping almost 12 hrs at night, 5.30am is not an early waking (well not for him  ) so I would do the exact same thing and not bother with pu/pd but you will probably have to start working on pushing out that morning nap

AlSo with the first nap, should I push out gradually based on the wake up time? With the hope it'll eventually sort itself out? Eg if wakes at 5am aim for 8:30-9am nap time?

Absolutely!!! 8.30am is still quiet early for a morning nap and ideally if you want say 7am wake up, you would probably aim to push the morning nap to 9.30am (so approximately 3.5hrs A at 10 months) but don't push all at once! So gradually start pushing the morning nap, add 15mins or so every couple of days and with that his afternoon nap will be 15mins or so later and with that bedtime will be slightly later and hopefully (fingers and toes crossed) his wake up time will start to adjust

Some babies really need to have that morning nap cut to fix up the early wakings but try pushing it first if you're not comfortable waking him up in the morning and see how you go with that. The morning nap is often said to be continuation of night sleep and as I mentioned before if its too early in the morning (or too close to the wake up time) or if its too long in the morning, it reinforces the early wakings.

I have noticed however that stretching the A times he is so tired he will start rolling his eyes when having his bottle before bedtime - so by the time I've burped him he's no way able to stay awake for a story. I've tried twice before and he's just awoken like he's had a power nap and then I've had to really struggle to get him down. So tonight I just let him stay sleepy and lay him down virtually asleep. Hope this doesn't affect the last few weeks' effort!

It takes time to get used to a new routine but please don't stress about him falling asleep almost asleep. I really don't think its going to mess things up for you and in fact the last S (before bedtime), I always BF dd before I put her down and sometimes (like today where she slept like rubbish) she falls asleep on the breast and it doesn't affect her ability to fall asleep independently at other times

Let me know how you go but sounds like you're on the right track!!!

[Can6883]

That's awesome. Thanks for responding so quickly!

I pushed his morning nap out this morning after we woke early (5:15am)
Today was day 5 of the 3-2 transition plan and his morning A time got stretched (unintentionally to 3hr 45min) where usually I've had him up to 3hrs. As a result he woke up 30mins into the nap - before I had a chance to wake him at 45mins!

So I ended up putting him down only 3hr 15mins (1pm) and then he slept for just 1hr 10mins.
It took a while to get bedtime and the wind down done as he was very hypersonic he just went down at 6:45pm - so pretty late considering his Early start.

Fingers crossed for tonight. Last night he woke 8:45pm, 12:10am (gave bottle), 3:50am and then up for the day at 5:15am!