HI Williams Mom,
So I have read all the notes and I truly think all of Michelle's advice has been wonderful. To add a few things though:
1. It is impossible to extend Taylor's naps now that she is older. pat/shush, pu/pd, wake to sleep and all the other techniques that worked like a charm before she was 6 months will absolutely not work on her. I have tried pu/pd for 45 minutes days on end, and it just ends up with a very sad and tired baby and mommy. When taylor reverts back to short naps, the ONLY thing that fixes them is adjusting awake times and once we get the right A time going, she goes back to normal. so it sounds like william may be like Taylor, so he may not respond to "extensions". Which means you have to move on with your day and try for tomorrow.
2. I strongly believe that at 9 months he can handle a 3 hour A time and just needs a little extra help from mom to adjust his internal biological clock. Right now at 8.5 months our a times are:
3 hours in the am making first nap at about 10 am. She will usually sleep for about 1-1.5 hours (I don't let her sleep longer than 1.5 hours as it will affect her afternoon nap).
3.5 hours in the afternoon making her 2nd nap about 2:30/3:00 pm. She will then usually sleep till 4ish and bed at 7ish.
****For the last 3 days she has been taking a 30 minute afternoon nap :evil: I racked my brain and remembered that most of the time at this age a 30 minute nap is because they were overtired. So I put 2 and 2 together and rememberd taht she has been doing a lot of stuff developmentally this week (sitting up on own, standing up on own, crawling for real), so by the time her 2nd nap came around she was overtired. Today I shaved 15 minutes off of both A times and voila! A 1 hour 15 minute am nap and a 1.5 hour pm nap!
So the moral is that when sick, learnign something new, etc., A times may need to be readjsuted for a few days.
SO, I think you need to stick with increasing A time, which by the way, are you doing it 15 minutes every few days??? If not, and you are trying at the 3 hours straight away he will get overtired and will have a battle. So slowly increas the A time to the 3 hour goal over the next week or so. Also, keep the extra A time VERY MELLOW. Walk outside, or around the house. Play on the floor in his room.
Also, like michelle said, it can take 2 weeks to reset a clock, so please give it some time.
That is all I can think of right now. Let me know if you have any other qusetions.
I did want to say that I think it is awesome that you are working so hard at trying to do what is best for ds. You sound like a great mom!
