Help with Gradual Withdrawal?

[kristeno]

My daughter is almost 11 m/o & we started the gradual withdrawal about a week ago. Then she cut a tooth & it's been a NIGHTMARE getting her to sleep for the last 2 days - bedtime & naps. Her sleep routine is: Diaper change, read books quietly, hold & sing until drowsy & lay down. We're at the stage where we stand by her, rubbing her back until she falls asleep. But yesterday & today, she just screams & screams when we lay her down. Hysterical & inconsolable! We pick her up to calm her & she goes to sleep immediately. I don't know what to do! She wants me to hold her the entire time she sleeps - we're taking a giant leap backwards!

[jessmum46]

It could be the teeth - is she having pain meds?  Any signs of illness?  Or it could be regression which is common 5-7 days into sleep training - kind of like they are testing just to see if the rules have *actually* changed.  Best advice in that situation is to stay consistent - but obviously only if you are happy she is otherwise ok in herself.  If's she's in pain or unwell then frustrating as it is I think you need to offer the extra comfort and get back on track again once she is better x

[kristeno]

I don't think she's in pain anymore. She's acting her normal self again. But I'm not sure how to get back on track! The first day, it took a long time, but she took to the gradual withdrawal well! Now, she's screaming hysterically, hyperventilating. I have to stop because we live in an apt & there are kids sleeping on the other side of her wall. I don't even know what to do. We get her good & drowsy & then lay her down, she screams immediately.

[jessmum46]

How are things now? 

We get her good & drowsy & then lay her down

This may be the issue, actually.  I know you are doing gradual withdrawal but at her age I think I would be aiming to get her into the cot fully awake - she needs to learn to get sleepy in bed rather than in your arms.  By all means stay with her and give her all the help she needs in her bed for now, but getting her in there awake will be the thing that helps you make the biggest step forwards x

[kristeno]

I completely agree! I would love for her to be able to go to sleep on her own! I just don't know how to get her there. We've tried PD & it makes it WORSE. She'll scream for hours unless she's very drowsy when she goes into bed. Then, she only screams for about 30-60 min.
And now, at this point, she has 2 routine wake ups that I can't break her from. She wakes every night between 1/130A & 430A. At 130, we can coerce her to go back to sleep, but at 430, it takes a lot of time & effort & she usually ends up in our bed. Not even wake to sleep helps. Will you help me come up with a sample routine of what her day should look like? I feel like I just can't get it right & this keeps happening!

[jessmum46]

Oh hugs, this age can be tough (we have a whole post on 10/11 month sleep going wonky....).  How about you tell me what you're aiming for right now, and we can work from there?  The only reason I'm not immediately giving a typical routine for this age is that some LOs will be transitioning or almost transitioned to one nap, whilst others may still be having two good naps.  It helps to know what she's doing right now and then we can come up with a plan x

[kristeno]

That all sounds fantastic!!
She's never been a great napper, but right now, we're at 2 naps of about an hour each. Sometimes we get an hour & 15 min from her. It seems she's trying to transition to one nap. But she's so cranky in the mornings that I want her to get a little sleep & I'm afraid to start transitioning her since she doesn't sleep at night very well.
Our ultimate goal is to be able to do our routine & plop her into bed & she'll put herself to sleep. I know we won't get immediate results, but that's the ultimate. For now, I just want her to be an independent sleeper & NOT wake up during the night. She wakes every night between 1/130A & 430A, but she usually wakes more than that.

[jessmum46]

So what time of day does she typically have her naps?  Could you post it in EAS format e.g.

WU 5.30
Nap 9-10
Nap 1-2
BT 7 or whatever she is doing?

It may be that tweaking the times of naps may help to sort it all out   It's likely that she will need 1 longer and 1 shorter nap in transition, basically the choice is keep a long morning nap and gradually push it later, with a small catnap in the afternoon to get through to bedtime, or keep an earlyish morning nap but gradually cut it shorter and aim for a longer nap after lunch.  What would suit your day best?

[kristeno]

Typically, it looks like this:

WU 130
WU 430
WU 9
Nap 1-2
Nap (IF she goes down) 430-5
BT 830
WU 1130

She tends to take a better nap in the morning. So I think the longer morning nap will suit her well & we can keep pushing it back. I would love for her to nap just after lunch, but that's tricky because she doesn't sleep well at night, then her sleep times are screwed up.

[jessmum46]

Looking at that I would suggest you are getting UT wake-ups at night, and possibly resistance at nap time for the sane reason.  She really has quite a short day for a LO this age, most will be stretching out to a 12.5-13h day before transitioning to one nap so if you look at it that way you have an awful lot of daytime still to play with for fitting two naps in   Does the 9am start suit you (in which case I'd be looking at a 9-10pm bedtime) or would you rather start the day earlier and keep BT at around 8.30pm?

I'm going to assume the 8.30pm bedtime for now but please feel free to change it if something else would work better for you

My suggestion would be to wake her at 8am - 11-11.5h in bed is plenty.  There's a danger being in bed for 12.5h overnight will rob her daytime sleep, even if the night is broken.  Then I'd aim for something like this:

WU 8am
Nap 12-1.30/2 (in an ideal world)
Nap 5.30/6 for 30 mins (wake her)
BT 8.30pm

The reason I'm suggesting that is that currently she has one 4h A time, then around 2.5 and 3.5.  Sometimes it's not just about total A time in the day, but getting it properly distributed so LO is tired enough from some longer stretches awake.  You may run into issues with CN resistance, it's common at this age.  You can AP the nap (car/stroller) or compensate with an early bedtime.  If it starts being a consistent issue then the options are to get on with pushing the one nap late enough in the day to get you to a reasonable bedtime without massive OT, or switch the day around to give a morning catnap and longer pm sleep which should avoid pm nap resistance.

Thoughts??

[kristeno]

That all sounds great! We will give it a go tomorrow morning!
My concern is if she doesn't nap in the morning, where do we go from there? How do we adjust? We will have to wake to sleep for the entire nap to get her to sleep that long because right now, we MIGHT get an hour & 15 min. But if we don't even get that, how do we adjust the day?

Another thing I want to tackle is getting her to sleep independently. Do we work on that after she starts sleeping better?

[jessmum46]

If she short naps in the morning then you do the best you can for the rest of the day and then try again the next.  If she is consistently short-napping the first nap then it may be she needs more A time before it - basically stick to something for 3-4 days, then post what's happened, and we can help you tweak it

I would try to get going again with your gradual withdrawal too - I would imagine some better independent sleep skills will also help the situation x

[kristeno]

I'm not sure what to do when she wakes during the night & for EW during naptime. How does gradual withdrawal work with that?

[jessmum46]

Where are you up to with settling her at bedtime now?  Basically you just do the same at any night wakings as you would when getting her off to sleep at the start of the night.  Nap resettling I would suggest to do similar but limit how long you try, nap resettling has always driven me mad Literally 5-10 mins max, if it's not happening in that time then I'd just get her up and move on with the day x