Getting very bored of NWs now.....7mo

[jessmum46]

Ladies, things are still not great after that one tantalising STTN.  Still these long unsettled trying to go to sleep but messing about NWs.  If I'm right it's UT I'm probably not pushing hard enough but could you please look and give me your thoughts?  I was trying to work on pushing out BT first before deciding whether to cut day sleep but now I'm not sure.  At the back of my mind is always 'am I making a horrible mistake and he's just OT?'  I woke him from all naps unless otherwise stated....mood is ok in the day for the most part.

4/1:
WU ?6.30 but heard at 6
Nap 9-9.45
Nap 13.10-15.10
BT 18.30
STTN

5/1:
WU ?5.50 but heard at 5.20
Nap 9-9.45
Nap 13.10-15.10
BT 18.35
NW 3.45-5.20 (fed at 5)

6/1:
WU 6.50 (woke him, we overslept a bit)
Nap 9.10-9.50
Nap 13.10-14.50 - woke himself
BT 18.35
NW 3-3.40

7/1:
WU ?? Heard at 5.15, 5.40, fed at 6, may have dozed a few mins afterwards
Up at 6.35
Nap 9-9.45
Nap 13.10-15.10
BT 18.45
NW 02.45-04.15 (fed at 4)

Today:
WU 6.35 (woke him)

[*Liz*]

Needs a longer A to bed..... So if you want the 6.30pm bedtime the first nap will need cutting to 30 mins I guess  .

Is he hard to wake??

[jessmum46]

Thanks Liz.....I'm happy for BT to push out to 7pm so should I carry on that way first?  In fact I should probably just jump to it right?  And then if still issues cut the morning nap to bring afternoon one earlier to allow longer A to bed?  He's not too bad to wake, I'm just in denial . He will pretty much just go to sleep when put down for bed so how he settles is absolutely no indication of how tired he is. 

[*Liz*]

Megan was like that - always just slept on body clock and then woke at night  . Took me ages to realise/admit it as well  .

Yeah just shift bedtime first and see... If he is ok with jumps then yes just do it  .

[michaeljacknnugg]

I'd shift bedtime out too. That first nap could be early as well - but maybe worth trying one thing at a time.

[LovelyLilyandJack]

I'm joining the party, if I may?!

We had very similar issues with Jack at this age. And for a while afterwards I'm afraid. I've never been quite sure what made them stop, but they did stop suddenly just after he turned one. I think I figured out in the end that we got less when he had more A time but they didn't really go away til one week we got really tough on resettling at night  (we got quite strict with WIWO). We obviously had some long nws as a result, Jack slept later in the morning and then cut his day sleep to around 45 minutes / 1 hour.  Since then we've only had one nw to settle I think. I'm pretty sure the drop in day sleep was a major factor.  At 7 months I think jack was doing around 2 hours, though like I say, we still got some long nws so it was maybe still too much.

In terms of things to try,  I agree that it's worth trying a later BT. I've found with Jack that a 13 hour day works best for us. Like you, if we weren't having long nws we had ews, so we've had to keep BT to 7ish. Jack was also on about 4 hours A at this age if I remember correctly. I think we settled on a short AM nap and long pm  nap. Although jack prefers longer mornings over long afternoons, I still had to give him one long A somewhere in the day, so we did a short UT morning nap  (30 minutes I think), then about 3hrs 15 to a long nap in the afternoon. Though a long nap for him was only 1hr 20-40. He then needed about 4hrs til bed I think. I know at one point at around 8 / 9 months I realised he couldn't sleep past 2.30ish in the afternoon without it affecting nights.

He's always settled straight to sleep for naps and BT as well btw. I think it's just him. And although jack has never done mega naps, lily  (also slightly lsn) did. I always had to cap her naps except for just after transitions. I think some LO's are good at self regulating and some are good at napping! And some are good at both if you're lucky,  but not mine!

[goldmom]

Hi LL&J, I kept thinking of  your J and was hoping you'd pop in to share your experience with Katherine!

Katherine, Didn't you used to get nw's at around 1 to 2 AM? Now they've moved to around 3? Actually they look like they're gradually getting earlier and earlier in the night (started at 3:45, next night at 3 and next night at 2:45) - there may be a reason for that gradual shift.

I know with one of mine (can't remember which, but I think it was DS1) I got rid of a 1:30 nw (I believe I was feeding at that time) and first he woke later at 4 am, but every night he gradually shifted back to the original nw/nf time. (I'm vaguely remembering this phenomenon, but not exactly). I think we just had to keep resettling to stop the nw, since it had been a habitual waking/nf (I think this was when we moved his nf to a df, so I knew he wasn't hungry at night then and now he was waking habitually; or this may have been DD and she was having at least one other nf earlier in the night, and I was trying to stop the second nf - and if it was her we did this at around 7/8 months).

I don't know if that info will help you, but maybe it'll just shed some light on the nw. If you are feeding sometimes just to finally get him back to sleep you may be enticing him to wake just in case he does get it. Or it could just be that it takes 2 weeks to get rid of a habitual waking/nf and you have to wait it out just a few more days. I know when I wean a nf I will try to do anything possible to resettle without feeding (any other APOP) and only feed if I'm so desperate (which you probably are - huge hugs).

The other thing I'm think of is if the nw is getting to the later part of the morning, is that the morning nap may be starting to cause problems by being too early, but I don't think your nw's are in that early part of the morning yet which would indicate that problem.

[jessmum46]

Blah.  Short night came to bite us in the bum - 1h15 unsettled nap . BT?  WU was 6.35am, WU from nap at 2.25pm x

[LovelyLilyandJack]

Yes, I meant to say that because being very strict with WIWO helped us too, that I probably wouldn't feed at nws at all.  Hard when he's still having one at 4ish though  - I always felt I had to be consistent and either feed at nws or not. So if you move BT back and maybe try extending his A time a bit, then by the time you've tried that perhaps he'll have dropped his nf, or will drop it with encouragement. A df never worked for jack so we were on one nf at 4am at 7 months too. He dropped it by himself before he reached 8 months. Once that's gone I think it's really worth trying PUPD without any feeds or anything. We also had to make our time in jacks room while we resettled much shorter and much more boring to make it really work.

Anyway, just another thought, prompted by goldmom's post....

ETA: Posted with you but I'd probably try and push to 6.45 for BT cos at least then you'll know where you are and hopefully he'll shift his BT quicker if you stick with it, but I tend to push Jack more than others cos I know he can generally handle it.

[goldmom]

I think DS2's last nap ends at 2:30 most days at his sitter. We still do bt at 6:45/7 (although DS2 always seems to do 11.5 hr nights, so he fell asleep last night at 6:50 and was up at 6:20 this morning). However, I do notice that he needs to comfort suck/nurse earlier on these days. So he seems extra fussy at 6 or 6:15 and I feed him then for longer than it would normally take him (trying not to let him fall asleep on me...)

[jessmum46]

Well after getting up from the silly nap B was totally happy all afternoon Delirious?!  But we made 18.45 bedtime without much drama....should rule out an UT waking from too short a last A time at any rate.

[goldmom]

Hope you have a good night tonight.

[LovelyLilyandJack]

Yes, that's what I always think when things go wrong. At least you know where you are then!  Fingers crossed for tonight  x

[jessmum46]

Ha! V brief cry around 10pm, short chatter just before 4am then slept until 6.25am!  I'll call that STTN . I'm going to have to accept this long A/LSN thing aren't I?!

Oh yes, and no feed

[*Liz*]

Yup  . My DD needed a super long A to bed, although overall I would say she isn't that LSN. She still sleeps a 12 hr night now, whereas DS has been 10.5-11 for a long time now.