Wake to Sleep - he beat me to it!

[ej020575]

Hello

We've got a DS who has habitual wakings at 4.50 every morning which means 5-6am are spent trying to keep him from waking!

We decided to give W2S a try for a few nights and first one was last night. I set my alarm for 3.50 and when I went into his room he'd already started stirring (quite a lot) so beat me to it!

What do I do in this situation? He ended up waking at 4.40am but went back to sleep (with Dummy) and slept through till 5.25 where he started trying to wake properly - so I view this as success!

Should I make it later than 3.50 tonight? His cycles tend to be 45-50 mins (I know this from his daytime naps)

Thanks!

[Layla]

What is his daytime sch like? How old is he?

[ej020575]

Hi

He is 6 months old on Wednesday. His schedule is roughly this:

4.50 - 6am - Dozing really whilst we try and keep him asleep
6am          - E (Bottle of formula 6oz)
6.30am      - E (Bowl of Porridge)
8am          - S (1hr ish, less if at nursery)
10am         - E (Bottle of formula, takes about 4oz)
11am         - S (1hr ish)
12pm         - E (Veggies)
2pm           - E (Bottle of formual, 6oz)
2.30pm       - S (1hr ish)
5.00pm       - E (Rice and Fruit)
6.30pm       - Bath, very good bedtime routine
7.00pm       - E (Bottle of formula, 6oz)
7.30pm       - S
10pm          - E (Dream Feed)

As I've mentioned on another post, I know naps are a problem but we have been working on these for the past three months and have managed to get up from 20 mins to 1 hour ish.

It's also been mentioned about how much solids he's on, but again Health Visitor is aware of this and has recommended the above in terms of E. He is 22 pounds - big lad, but it's all in proportion.

He did it again last night at 3.50am (stirred himself quite considerably), then H did W2S at 4.15am. He then started trying to wake properly at 5.15 with H managing to keep him down until 6am.

3.50am is obviously when he starts to come out of his deep night sleep. I am at a total loss then to try and work out when we should be doing W2S - before 3.50 or after 3.50??

Any ideas would be gratefully received!

Thanks

[Layla]

I honestly think this is more of an EASY issue rather than habitual waking. At 6 months, he should be able to stay awake for about 2.25-2.5hrs. Its great that you have been able to get him to sleep for up to an hour, but the thing is he is awake for about 4hrs before bedtime & this is a very long stretch for a 6mo. My 1yo does that now and a minute over & we get early wakings.

I would suggest you work towards something like this:
6:30/7am - wake for the day
9am - morning nap
12.30-2pm - afternoon nap
4.30/5pm-5:15-5:45 - catnap
7pm - bedtime

Looks so pretty in writing but before you come to this schedule, I would suggest the following:
* bring the bedtime up all the way to 6 pm the latest. By doing this, you are giving him an opportunity to have a full nights rest. At the moment he is only getting about 9.5-10hrs (if he's sleeping from 7.30-5am) & 3 hrs during the day. So about 13hrs in totla, which is the average for a toddler. It might seem counterproductive but usually the earlier bedtime allows him to get more sleep at the front end of the night (which consists more of deep sleep=restorative sleep). When he wakes in the morning, even if its at an old time of 5ish, he's had more sleep at the front end of the night and should be better rested & easier to stretch in the morning & during the day. I would do the earlier bedtime until you can get him taking his 1st nap around 8.30/9am. Try stretching him in 10min increments so that he doesn't get overtired & add 10mins to his A time in the pm & for the catnap. Leave the early bedtime until things start improving.

I don't think w2s will work in this case because he's not waking out of habit. He's waking because he is overtired from being awake too long before bedtime. So you really need to space out his naps & give him some more A time during the day. I think this is something you can only do once he is better rested cause if you try and stretch his A times now, he will probably get even more overtired.

How does he go to sleep for naps and bedtime? Is he using the dummy?

Layla

[ej020575]

Layla

Thanks so much. I am soooo sorry, I forgot to paste in the schedule that he does actually have a cat nap from 4.30pm until 5.15 ish.

More often than not his daytime sleep does add up to 3 hours ish (nursery days slightly less), it's just his nighttime sleep doesn't add up to 11 hours!!!

He's done it again over the weekend, 3.50am on the dot he stirs quite substantially and then starts trying to wake any time between 4.50 and 5.15am. 

Naps and bedtime it's in his sleeping bag, dummy in, down in cot awake and he drifts off nicely in 2-10 minutes. Never had a problem there.

He's not very reliant on his dummy. He does need it to go to sleep, but if he stirs and does the open mouth/fish thing looking for it, we don't give it back to him as much as we possibly can. He seems ok with this.

The schedule you describe towards working to sounds perfect! Where do I order it?!

Again, any ideas you have would be great.

Thanks

Emma

[Layla]

Start with adding 10-15mins to his A time until you have him taking the 1st nap at 9am & so on.... I read somewhere that its just as important the time the baby is napping and not just the amount of hours. So if on 3 naps, they are best taken mid-morning, early afternoon & early evening.