Sleep trouble

Jason was not a particularly good sleeper when he was an infant. Eventually we weaned him from night feedings and did the Ferber method to help him sleep through the night. He did wonderfully! Eventually we got into a great cycle of going to bed well at 7:30pm with just a story and hugs and kisses from Mom and Dad then waking up between 6 and 7am. He was taking a nice 2 hour nap around 11am. Even changing him to a big boy bed a couple of weeks ago did nothing to change this great sleep cycle.

You may have noticed a general past tense sense to all this information. Recently Jason has been refusing naps. He doesn't want anything to do with them at all! Even saying the word nap will incite vigorous head shaking. We lay him down and he screams and screams until we come back in and get him. Since Ferber had at one point worked very well for us we tried it again. This entailed letting Jason cry for 3 mins then checking on him, laying down and waiting 5 mins, then extending the waiting 7 mins and eventually 10 mins. It was suggested in the book that if he wasn't sleeping after a half an hour to get him up and maybe try again later. Our stubborn child wasn't going to give up easily so after a half hour of crying I did get him and he completely passed out on my shoulder within 3 minutes.

The next day we thought maybe he didn't need to nap as early so I put him down later in the day. There was a little bit of fussing, but it went much better than the day before. Normally I don't check on him for naps in case I wake him, but today I wanted to be sure he wasn't asleep on the floor or anything. I peaked in and he wasn't in his bed. Instead he had climbed out of his bed, over his diaper champ, and onto his changing table where he had passed out. I tried to take a picture to prove this oddness, but he woke up before I got my camera. So I got him settled back in his bed and back to sleep.

So maybe the issue was that he was getting too much sleep during the night and didn't want to sleep during the day. I mean most days he was sleeping 11 hours at night. So I nudged his bedtime back to 8pm instead. Great idea, but it didn't work out as planned. It was now dark outside as Jason was falling asleep and he didn't like his room that dark. There is a nightlight on his side of the monitor, but it has a timer function and Jason was unhappy when it went off. He woke up and fussed around midnight then completely woke up for the day at 5:30am! GRRR! Well that was this morning so hopefully he will nap great this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed for us!