When days go horribly wrong...

[ecwinters]

Hi
My DS has been a 40 minute napper practically since day 1 (40 minutes is his sleep cycle).  Sometimes he'll surprise me and do a 1 hour 20 (or even slightly longer nap) in his cot, but otherwise I have to rely on using the sling to give him one longer nap per day.  However, even this isn't guaranteed to work. 

I have been playing around with his first A time in order to try and extend the first nap but nothing seems to work.  I am actually not sure what his A time is because whatever I do, he'll do a short nap!  I have been trying to push the A time for the first nap as I did this about a month and a half ago and I got 3 days of lovely long morning naps.  Then (with the same A time) back to 40 minutes.  I feel that his A times increase throughout the day but it's hard to tell as sometimes (like today) I get short naps whatever I do.

Today went horribly wrong!  I wonder if anyone could have a quick look and give me any advice?  This is typical of what happens quite often when I can't give DS a longer nap.

WU - 6:45 (actually woke up then)
Eat - 7:00
Sleep - 9:05-9:35 (I suspect this was an OT sleep as I pushed the A time too far.  However, he went down easily and did not give me tired cues.  Whereas, sometimes I get tired cues as early as after 1 hour 30.)

Awake - 9:35
Eat - 10:30
Sleep - 11:30-12:15 (I put him down with the aim of sleep after 1 hour and 45 minutes but he took a while to drift off to sleep.  He briefly resettled after the 1st sleep cycle but then gave up!  I left him for 15 minutes but he just lay there and sucked his thumb!)

Awake-12:15
Eat - 13:30 (we are doing a 3.5 hour EASY but had to move this feed forward as I didn't want it to clash with sleep time)
Sleep - 14:25-15:05 (I had him in the sling 20 minutes earlier than this but he didn't sleep.  He STILL only did a short sleep even in the sling!)

Awake-15:05
Eat - 16:30 (again, feed moved forward)
Sleep - 17:20-17:35 (I put him in the buggy to give him half an hour's cat nap so he wouldn't go to bed too OT.  He was really tired by this time.  However, he struggled to go to sleep even with the help of the buggy and didn't go down for ages.  I then could only give him a really short sleep to keep him on track for bed time and had to wake him up.)

Eat - 18:00
Asleep - 18:20

If anyone could please take a look and advise me on where I might be going wrong then I would be very grateful.  I will pull back the A time tomorrow for the first nap I think. 2 hours 20 must have been too much A time but 2 hours or slightly more still only gives me a 40 minute nap.  He also has a tendency to wake around 6 am and play around in his cot until I get him up at 6:30 (this morning was an exception as he slept until 6:45am) so this confuses me even further - I never know how much this contributes towards A time.

He can self settle, will be 5 months old in 1 week's time and is a touchy baby so everything needs to be spot on for him to stay happy!

Thanks very much!

[becj86]

Hi, I'd probably hold the A time at 2:20 and just sneak in at 25min to resettle with hold through the jolts if necessary - sometimes when LO gets used to an A time, even if he needs the increase, the first day on the new A time will yield OT 30 min wakings.

[ecwinters]

Thanks. Today he seemed really, really tired so I couldn't get him any further than 1 hour and 40 minutes of A time!  He did 50 minutes.  I think when he has really rubbish nap days he is then more tired the following day.

I read somewhere that using the sling to get a longer sleep would eventually help get them into the pattern of sleeping for longer.  But after 3 months of trying it hasn't worked yet.  I am panicking slightly as he's getting too big to nap in there comfortably.  He screams when I put him in, which is starting to put me off as I don't usually get screaming when I put him down in his cot.  However, it's still the best bet at giving him a longer nap to stop the OT.

Today he's just finished his 3rd short nap - 50 minutes, 45 minutes and 40 minutes.  Gone down well for all of them and woken up happy enough.  But he's clearly very tired and is yawning away all the time!

I have never tried holding him over the jolts - my guess is that I would wake him up if I touched him.  How exactly would I do this?

I have thought about wake to sleep but have never been brave enough to try!!!  I have never been able to resettle him after a nap has finished.  Today, I left him for 15 minutes after each nap ended but he didn't go back to sleep. 

I will try again tomorrow morning to stretch that A time.  I sense that he's probably just used to just under 2 hours as he's been like that for so long.  Last time I needed to stretch the A time he let me know by screaming at me when I put him down!  I don't want to get to that stage again so I will try and keep stretching him. 

[becj86]

But he's clearly very tired and is yawning away all the time!

He could well be overtired - that's not going to be fixed until you can keep him up long enough that he will be able to take long restorative naps. Have you tried changing activities when he yawns? It can also be a sign of boredom and he may just need a change of scenery

Good luck, hope the A time extension goes smoothly.

[ecwinters]

Thanks for replying.  Something occurred to me this morning - he's always awake for a while before I get him up (anything up to about an hour sometimes on and off).  Should I include this in the A time calculation?  Today, I could only keep him up for 1 hour and 45 minutes but then I realised that, as he'd been awake for 45 minutes before I got him up, his A time was actually 2 hours and 30 minutes.  Is that correct?  Or should I just ignore the time in the cot?  He only did a 40 minute nap anyway!

The 2 times I have had him do a longer morning nap recently he's managed 1 hour 55 minutes of A time PLUS about an hour awake, or dozing on and off, in the cot).  If I include that time, it's a huge A time! 

He did a long afternoon nap today as I gave him a lunchtime nap in the sling (for just over an hour).  This stopped him from getting so overtired and so I was able to keep him up for a decent 2 hours and 15 minutes A time to his afternoon nap - and he did 1 hour and 45 minutes (I woke him up eventually so he'd go down OK for bedtime).  I know long PM naps aren't really what people do, but he obviously wanted to catch up on sleep.  2 hours and 15 minutes does seem to be his A time after a restorative nap, which seems about right for nearly 5 months.   I just wish I could get that out of him in the morning!

[becj86]

That dozing time in the morning - it is so individual for each child as to how much that contributes to A time - for DS, I couldn't count it at all, some other babies its worth 1/2 - so if lying in bed awake for 30min, worth 15min of A time, some babies its all of it. Its probably worth keeping that capacity to lie in bed quietly for a while in the morning - could be good when you get to toddler years

If he's sleeping on and off, I'd count it as sleep and a sign that you could start to get EWs if that A time isn't pushed out.