3-2 not working ...what now

[jujububbles]

I transitioned my ds from three naps to two in the past 6 weeks. But it has made no difference whatsoever to the length of his naps and by extension improving his night time sleep. He will be 8 months next week and hasn't slept all night since he was 3 months old. He has a little tooth peeping through. I hoped that when that happened it might help -it hasn't. In terms of his activity time I try and do something with him every day we very rarely spend all day in the house. When he was a little younger taking him to baby group in the morning would mean he was so tired he would sleep for two hours. That doesn't work any more. The most he will nap for now is 30 - 45 mins. Sometimes (very often) I'm so tired that for his morning nap I'll put him I'm bewith me as I know he will sleep for an hour and half.

Typical routine is
7/7.15 bottle
9.45 cereal
10/10.15 nap until 11.30

11.30/11.45 bottle
12.30 lunch
3.00 bottle
3.10 nap in own cot until 4.00 if I'm lucky

5.00 dinner
6.45 bottle
7.15 bed time routine
8.00 asleep in bed

He will usually wake around an hour later and again around 12.30 at which point we put him into our bed and if we are lucky he won't wake again until 5.00.

He used to sleep all night but that seems like a distant dream.

[Layla]

How long have you been putting him to bed with you? I wonder if you might be a prop and it would be better to do all naps in the cot and deal with night wakings in the cot rather than taking him to bed.... At 8 months, you would expect one longer/one shorter nap as a lot of babies start to show a preference for this leading to the 2-1 nap transition.

[jujububbles]

He's been sleeping with us from nearly day one.

When I do put him in his cot for the first nap he will usually only sleep for max 45 minutes.

[Layla]

It all depends on what your goal is... if you would like to have him sleep in his own cot (day and night), you will have to stop co-sleeping and taking him to your bed in the middle of the night and resettle him in the cot. It won't be easy and he will cry but you'll be there with him, teaching him, a method which is different to cry it out, where you leave him to sort things out on his own.

Here is the link to the pu/pd method, How to PU/PD (inc age adaptations) which is what you'd use to sleep train him. His naps will be short in the cot but eventually as he learns to self settle on his own, his naps should improve.

HTH and let me know if you have any other questions

[jujububbles]

So I'm on day 1 of trying to get baby to self settle in his own cot. Not going well at all. I guess I don't know what to do to get him back to sleep after he wakes 45 minutes into his nap. Do I pu/pd? Saying certain key words as suggested in the article seem to distract him more. When he wakes he's not crying he's more ready to play and nothing will get him back asleep. A few times I thought he was going to sleep and 5 seconds later his eyes popped open. I just wish I knew what to do. At what stage should I stop trying to get him asleep? I stopped today when it was his normal wake up time. Dh is in work all day so I'm on my own.
..feeling so lost

[Layla]

Hugs, its going to take more than just 1 day to see improvement. You're trying to change the co-sleeping association and it can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to see improvement (it took us about 2 weeks to sleep train and mine were much younger than your LO).

If he's only taking a short nap in the morning, offer the afternoon nap around 3.5hrs later and if he wakes 45mins into the nap, try to resettle him for another 15-20mins and if he doesn't return to sleep, I would probably do 30min earlier bedtime.