Having a major dilemma !

[Khyan & Sahria's mum]

As some of you might know Khyan has had illness after illness and although I am hanging to start sleep training (at the moment he goes into his cot really drowsy and patted to sleep) he just isn't well enough to start :cry:

I must admit that he is generally good with his night sleeping (unless teething or REALLY unwell) so in the past couple of weeks he goes down to sleep (has some trouble in the first couple of hours - mostly due to being overtired) and then sleeps comfortably till 5.07am EVERY morning  :roll:

This is where the trouble starts...

He cries every morning at exactly the same time and won't settle - not with patting or cuddling, the only thing that works sometimes is a bottle  :? now although I am questioning whether he truly is hungry I do admit that more than likely he is using the bottle as a comfort thing.

At the moment I have been giving a bottle 2 times in the last week and 1 x this morning.

If I don't give a bottle I normally try to get him to sleep for 1 hour (either cuddling or patting or both) and then around 6am give up and start our day (with a REALLY grumpy little boy) eventually he cheers up (normally after breakfast - he pretty much demands this as soon as we get out of his room - well he kind of asks for it as soon as he wakes at 5am) and plays comfortably till about 10am when he starts to meltdown  :cry:

Obviously he needs to have a sleep but he will only sleep ONCE per day no matter what !  and only for 45 - 90 mins MAXIMUM  :shock:

So if I allow a nap at 10am he will wake at 11.30am and will not want to sleep again till 5pm and this is way too late for a nap but also too early for bed - so I hold off till 6pm to put him to bed which means that he is really tired and then wakes every 45 mins till about 9pm when he finally seems to have caught up with his naps and will sleep thru.

If I keep him up past 10am and stretch it till 11.30am then more often than not (because he is overtired) he will only sleep for 45 mins and wake hysterical but won't go back to sleep  :cry:

I am so confused as I know the answer is PU/PD but I can't due to cold after cold  :cry:

Do I just give the bottle and deal with the whole lot once he is better and we can start PU/PD ?

I am lost for ideas, please help !  it just keeps getting worse and worse  :cry:

TIA

[sacmommy]

I have a few suggestions for you. The book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth is a great sleep resource on many of your questions, and I like most of his methods (some are a bit too baby-unfriendly for me, but most are very nice). I would definitely recommend getting this book, as he talks a lot about how much sleep babies need at different ages, and you will be able to see that yours (as I'm sure you expect) is not getting enough sleep.

Next, I'd try to push that morning nap back until a bit later. I find that my dd starts getting up earlier in the morning if I move her nap up (she's also been sick recently and so has been waking earlier, napping earlier, and all of a sudden she's up at 5 this a.m.!) Try moving the nap back in 15 min increments each day until its 30 or 45 min later and see if that helps.

I have also read that if you put your child down when they're over-tired, they actually won't sleep as long into the morning. I don't know whether I've personally found this to be true, but when you're in a bad sleep pattern, as you are, I would try anything! My dd at 11 mo was getting up early every day and I tried it all!!

Finally, what did actually work for me in getting rid of the early a.m. wakings was getting up exactly 1 to 2 hrs before she would normally get up (so if yours wakes at 5, go in between 3 and 4), gently resettling baby (shifting blanket, etc. - enough so you know you've broken they're sleep pattern but not necessarily totally waking them up), and after 3 nights, wait a few days and see if this gets better. This "Wake to Sleep" method is in one of Tracy's books, but I'm not sure which.

Good luck! I know how miserable it can be, but stick with it. It will get better.