Desperate....again. Please advise on sleep....again

[Melaine]

First of all- yay to you for nursing for 17 months! Are you wanting to night wean or would you be ok with maybe one night nursing at a time determined by you? As far as the sleep, it sounds to me like there is a strong possibility he is overtired. Early wake ups often signal being over tired. I know that sounds strange. Also, a sleep cycle is 45 minutes so those short naps that he is getting are probably not refreshing him at all. We had to move to naps that are at least an hour and a half (two full sleep cycles) to get really well rested. What does your schedule look like as far as bedtime and nap times? If you are really desperate and wanting change, you might need to overhaul your schedule a bit. If you want to post more details, I can share with you what worked for us. Good luck to you!

Well, I'd like to move towards completely weaning so I can get on meds. But sleep is more important than weaning at this point. We have always been very consistent with schedules and have tried tweaking them but have never had any actual sleep success with DS. I have read straight through Ferber a couple times and used it to get him back to his crib from co-sleeping but still haven't had the real turn around I'd hoped for.

Our schedule is:
bedtime 6:30
waking at 5 (obviously NOT what I want but not sure about CIO at that hour of the morning?)
nap at 9 (have tried variations, 9:30 or 10)
nap at 2 (have tried as early as 1)

Feedback welcome!

ETA: responding to a few more things, he doesn't care about any lovey I have found. He does sleep with one but completely ignores it. The girls loved theirs! But they weren't BF!

He isn't a stroller sleeper and really doesn't sleep in the car much either. DH says we need to CIO at 5 and I guess so he just wakes up seeming so AWAKE at that time.