8 month old with long NW

[Gillian C]

Hi everyone,

DS is 8 months old and has been having a lot of trouble sleeping at night for a while.  He was STTN from 4-6 months (thanks to a combo of shh-pat and PUPD), and then everything went awry when we started solids at 6 months.  Since then, he has been having really long NW (1.5-3.5 hrs every night, alternating between crying, lying quietly, and chattering happily).  We have tried stopping solids, and it seems to help, it's worse when he has a cold or other illness, but it's consistent.  The rare times he doesn't wake, he is up at 5am.  We're really struggling, as my 3-year-old DD has also been sick and having trouble with sleeping at night (hopefully temporary!).

Our best thought is that it's related to solids, since it started after he started eating, but I don't know.  He loves to eat, and is enthusiastic about both mashes and finger food (we offer him a combo).  We are usually the ones who cut him off so that he doesn't eat too much.  He doesn't seem to react to any specific foods, unless this NW is a reaction we just don't recognize?

DS has also had trouble with naps, but we've worked really hard on those, and here is what a typical day would look like:

Wake 6am
E - 6:10 BF, 7:30 solids
A
S - 9:30 (may last anywhere from 25 mins to 1.5 hours, always woken after 1.5 hours)
E - 10:30 BF, 12:00 solids
A
S - 1:30ish (usually approx 1.5 hours, could be longer if first nap is short, could be short if first nap is long - total nap time 2-2.5 hours)
E - 3:30 BF, 5:15 solids, 6:00 top-up BF
A
S - we try for 6:30 (to combat the EW), but it's usually 7, we've started to offer him up to 5oz of expressed BM in a bottle at bed, and he usually seems VERY eager for it

NW can be anywhere from midnight to 4am.  He's getting better at falling asleep independently, and will fall asleep initially with PUPD.  He can *sometimes* be resettled from a second short nap, but not often.  No paci, no lovey.

I need to drop off DD at preschool between 8:30-9:00, and pick her up between 3:40-4:10.  So DS cannot sleep during those times - It's been a juggling act to try to keep him napping while accommodating her drives.

I'm worried because we're going on vacation in 1.5 weeks and will all be staying in the same room, and I don't want him to wake up DD.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!  Thank you so much for your help!

[lauradj]

Hi there!  I'm not completely sure if food are causing the problem or not.  I'm going to have one of the Solids mods pop over and have a look.  One thing I did notice that would cause an uproar with my DS2 is that there is a gap of 1.5 between BF and solids.  Usually we recommend 30-60 minutes and that's the longest my LO can go at the moment.  Do you think your LO might be getting too hungry and then eating too quickly?  I'm just thinking because you mentioned you always have to cut him off.  There is also an 8 month regression I believe that is just atrocious. 
Could it be that he's ready to be awake a little longer?  If you pushed that morning nap until 9:45, would that help?  I found my second child was ready to start the 2-1 much earlier than my first and eventually I stopped pushing the morning A time and just did a quick cat nap in the morning, with a longer nap in the afternoon.  At 11 months he currently does a CN in the morning from 9:30-10:15am and then a big nap from 1-3pm. 8 months might be a little young for that but it's something to consider.

[creations]

Hi, my guess is the NWs are more routine and development related rather than food.  I agree with laura that the gap between milk and solids may be a bit long (perhaps try 1hr rather than longer).  Most LOs are fine to self regulate the amount they eat so usually you wouldn't have to cut a LO off from his meal unless there was a significant decrease in milk intake (not sure as you didn't mention) so I'd either let him eat to his fill at meal times or if you feel concerned about drop in milk then when you 'cut him off' you follow immediately with a milk top up so that in that sitting he gets full.
The BT bottle you are giving, you say he is eager for it but not if he drains it.  Not sure if you are new to bottle feeding so forgive me if I'm offering info you already know, usually we'd say there would be 1oz left in the bottle which LO doesn't want, this ensures they have taken their fill.  If a bottle is drained it's time to increase the bottle (or perhaps increase the solids offered earlier in the day).

I'm worried because we're going on vacation in 1.5 weeks and will all be staying in the same room, and I don't want him to wake up DD.

Try not to worry too much in advance, whatever happens happens and you will all get back on track when you come home from your hols.  It's unlikely you are going to 'fix' everything in the space of a week if the NWs have been going on for 2 months already so you might be putting too much pressure on yourself to try to achieve this. I know you're worried about your DD being woken and I would be too in the same situation, but perhaps it helps to know we took DS to a hotel and the fire alarm went of at unwelcome o'clock in the middle of the night, it was the loudest, most piercing, head splitting noise I have ever heard...and DS slept right through it, this is the kid I can't even look at in his sleep or he wakes up.  So it may not turn out to be as bad as you think.

[Gillian C]

Thank you both so much for your prompt replies!

I agree, I think this is not food-related this time.  When he was 6 months, I consulted with a solid food mod because it definitely seemed to be food-related, but now, he doesn't seem uncomfortable when he wakes at night.  Just awake.  He chats happily and seems to want to play, and only gets upset when we try to put him back to sleep (and refuse to engage his playing).

To answer the food questions:
He definitely drains the bottle.  I'm not used to bottle feeding, so we'll increase the amount bit by bit and see how much he leaves.  He hasn't decreased his milk intake - if anything, he's increased it.  I'll try to time the meals closer to feeds, but we're trying to have him join us for meals, and that doesn't coincide nicely with his sleeping/eating pattern.  Can I just "bonus" nurse him before a solid meal?  We'll play with some timing for his food.  I suspect with purees, he eats too much at a time, probably because he was hungry.  We're dropping the purees almost entirely, and that should slow him down a bit.

Then to the schedule:
I'm wondering whether he just doesn't need a lot of sleep?  He used to be a good night sleeper and a terrible napper (30 minutes was a "good" nap).  Then we started playing with his schedule to get better naps, and it seemed to wreck his night sleeping.  We have noticed that if he takes long naps (more than 45 minutes), and especially if he takes more than 2 long naps in a day, his night is more likely to be worse.  I was reading about LSN babies, and dreading that we might have one.  But the symptoms are very similar to an OT baby, so I'm not really sure how to tell.  We can definitely start increasing his A time again.  The only difficulty with this is trying to protect pick-up and drop-off times when he has to be awake.

Do you think he's just OT?  Until very recently, his napping really was terrible.  We tried W2S at 25 minutes trying to extend it past 30 minutes, and all it did was shorten his default nap to 25 minutes.  Lengthening his A times did help lengthen the naps in the past.  What would an ideal schedule look like for his age?  Your CN looks very much like our regular naps.  We'll play with a few options and see if anything helps.

We're also upping his independence in going to sleep.  We had been putting him to sleep with PUPD, remaining in the room until he was completely asleep.  For the past 2 days, I've been trying more and more to let him put himself to sleep alone in the room, only intervening when he gets upset (rather than when he complains).  So far, so good!  We'll see if it changes the nights.

And thanks for the reassurance about the trip.  You're right, whatever happens will happen.

Thanks again for the support.  I'll see what changing his schedule can do for him, and post an update in a few days.

[lauradj]

I definitely understand your desire to have your DS eat with the family, it's such a social thing.  We've tweaked out schedule so that we eat on kid time now, it's just easier for all concerned parties.  If DH and I get hungry later, we have a bowl of cereal.
I'll attach the link for sample schedules for his age range below.  DS2's eating schedule looks like this:

6:45am- WU 4-6oz bottle
7:30am - breakfast
9:30am - snack (usually a fruit pack or oaty chews)
12:00pm - lunch
3:30pm - 4-6oz bottle
4:00pm - snack
5:15/5:30pm - dinner
6:45 - 4-6oz bottle
7pm- bed

chronological EASY samples, 7-9 months

[Gillian C]

Thanks for all the great information!  I've been adjusting his feeding to reduce the time between nursing and solids, and trying to gently increase his A time, just a bit.

The first night, he slept through until 5:00, and was calm (with PUPD) in his crib until we got him up at 6pm.  The second night, he slept through until 4, was awake from 4-5:50, and fell asleep just before I was about to get him up.  I let him sleep for an hour, and then woke him.  Last night, wow.  He woke up at 12-1:30, and 3-5, and then woke again at 5:45.  I thought he was up for the day, so I nursed him, but he (we) fell asleep while nursing until DD woke at 6:30.  His naps today have been wretched (25 minutes a piece), and we both took another nursing nap after his second nap because I was so tired.  I haven't nursed him to sleep in 4 months, and I'm worried I've undone all sorts of sleep training...  But what happens will happen, I guess.

I'm also working on helping him fall asleep alone in the room, returning to comfort as needed (but not responding to his complaining, just his distress).  Some success - I'm happy with the progress here.  Hopefully it helps at night!

I'm trying to keep his naps (when he sleeps through the 25 minute mark) to either 1 hour or 1.5 hours, not letting him sleep longer.  Maybe I should just let him do whatever he needs?

Any thoughts?  When he's awake, he is mostly calm, just lying there.  But then he screams if we leave the room.  Eventually he falls back asleep, but it takes forever.  I just don't know how to help him settle faster at night.  Or settle himself.  He used to do it by himself, and it's now been more than 2 months of this pattern.  But the wakings are not always at the same time (just eerily consistent in length, and he seems to "need" to get upset in order to fall back asleep).

We'll stick it out for longer, I know change takes a while to show improvement.

Again, thank you for your support!

[lauradj]

I do remember DS2 going through a phase like this and honestly, I held him until he was calm and then lay him down.  If he still cried I stroked his head head (it's what he likes) and Shhhh'd gently until he was calm.  Sometimes I had to pick him up again but usually if I just kept going he would eventually calm and go back to sleep.  A few nights here and there of feeding/holding/head stroking to sleep will not a habit make. 

[lily_layne]

I've just skimmed this thread over so I may have missed something important but the NWs sound similar to what my DS did around 7-9 months. I found that if I let him be, he would take aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to settle but if I fed him and put him down (awake - he rarely fell asleep feeding) he was asleep within 30-45 minutes so I started going in and feeding him even if he wasn't crying. He dropped the NF on his own around 10/11 months.

[Gillian C]

Interesting!  I've been debating starting up night feeding so I can change these NWs into APOP with a nursing prop.  I know how to fix a nursing prop, but I don't know how to fix this since I don't understand what it is!

Thanks for the reassurance and advice.  I don't feel like we've made any improvement with 2 months of PUPD, so I'm going to try nursing at night, especially while we're on vacation.  Fingers crossed!

In other news, he's eating like a champ and usually taking decent naps, and is also doing well with learning to fall asleep independently.  Now just for the NW...

I'll post an update after the trip.

Thank you all!

[lily_layne]

Enjoy your vacation!

[Gillian C]

Thanks!

We tried nursing last night, and I know it was only the first night, but it was terrible.  Almost 3 hours for him to settle!  I really hope this gets better soon.  I'm getting desperate to find a solution!  I'll keep on with the nursing a bit longer to see if that helps at all.

My new theory is that he get colds a lot (which he does), and that this makes him not sleep.  He's had a stuffy nose for a while.  Maybe time in the warm will help him get better.  Here's hoping.

More upon our return.  Cheers!

[Gillian C]

So sorry for the long delay in updating!  When we returned, DS got very sick, and then we all had to take turns with it too...  And by the time we were all healthy, most sleeping had sorted itself out.  I don't know what changed, maybe he just grew out of it, but we're all doing MUCH better now!

The only lingering concern is/was early wakings, but with the time change, that's become more reasonable.  (At least for now...  If it creeps back early again, I'll do some more research, and start a new thread if needed.)

Thank you all for your help!  It has made all the difference to be able to get reassurance and advice - so much self doubt and exhaustion, but your prompt and kind help really saves the day (or night!).

[lily_layne]

Thanks for the update. I'm glad things are better.