5.5 month old EW and NW

[Jodie_247]

My LO's night sleep hasn't been great lately. A week or so ago he began be very difficult to resettle after waking between 3-4am. I would feed back to sleep but the sleep was so light if I put him in his cot he would wake and not re settle unless he was sleeping on me. It has gotten worse the  last few nights he  has been waking 1-2 hours after bedtime (I bf back to sleep) and has also been waking between 2-3am for 2 hours! He falls back to sleep after the 2 hours only if he is latched on then slowly unlatched after at least 30mins sucking. He stays in bed with me.

About 2 weeks ago his WU moved from 7am to 6am which isn't such a problem for me (though i'd prefer 7 of course)

Our EASY looks like this:

E  6am wake and BF
    7am solids
S  8.15-8.30 sleep for between 30-45 mins
E  9am wake and BF
S  11.30 sleep for 45 mins
E.  12.15 wake and BF
     1.15 solids
S.  3pm sleep 45 mins (every now and then 1hr)
E.  4pm BF
     6pm BF
S.  6.30-7pm

Dream feed 9.30-10.

Prior to the NW and EW he was either waking at 3am for a feed and then sleeping through to 6am or sleeping to about 5.30am and then would sleep on boob until about 6am.

He has always been a short napper FYI. He isn't great at self settling either. 1/3 of the time he self settles. 1/3rd time I pat for 15ish mins and 1/3rd time it's pu/pd. I don't think it's always OT orUT that makes him difficult to settle some days. I think it's just his personality.

some days get pushed back a bit if he has taken a long time to settle for one of his naps or because I have delayed a nap to fit in with a car trip, for example. On those days bed time remains the same and the A time leading up to bed is shorter and more manageable.

Any tips? The NW and EW are the biggest issue. I really can't sleep when he's in bed with me. I just lay there and close my eyes. Of course if you have any tips to help with the short napping i'd love to hear those too.

TIA!
     

[lolsyb1982]

Hi there 

It sounds like the beginning of the 3-2 to me and the need for an increase in A time. I've attached a really handy link for average A times Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!

A 45 min nap is an undertired nap so I would increase his A time by 15min every few days to see if it lengthens. That will then mean you can work on dropping that 3rd nap.

It might be useful to have a read through of this information to help with dropping the 3rd nap All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months

If you have any questions I'll be here to help 

[Jodie_247]

Thank you. I'll slowly increase his A times and hopefully that will help with night time sleep issues!

Do you think his short naps will make it difficult to transition to 2 naps? He has always short napped. Never slept longer than 1 hr during the day except when he was a newborn. Should I wait until he can put at least 2 sleep cycles together until I transition to 2? Otherwise he would only be getting 1 1/2hrs naps during the day :/

[lolsyb1982]

short naps can make it more tricky but they might not righten themselves until it's dropped so it becomes a viscous circle.
Hopefully a longer A time will mean even if he does wake after 45 mins he'll be more inclined to go back to sleep and you can resettle.
If you do get 2 short naps you will probably want to go for an EBT to try and prevent too much OT building up (although it's often inevitable with any transition and is a case of gritting your teeth and pushing on with it)