Help! I need to get my SPD kid to nap etc. without nursing.

[crunchy_mommy]

DS (almost 2.5yo) is the world's worst sleeper. He woke up every ~20 minutes throughout his first 2 years and then FINALLY started sleeping longer stretches -- now he sleeps about 6-7 hours straight some nights!! (With lots of "encouragement" lol) So I suppose I shouldn't complain... BUT... I can't take the constant nursing in the early morning and during naps. He sleep-nurses for about 4 hours straight in the morning and will ONLY nap while nursing (except on the off chance he falls asleep in the car). It's disruptive to MY sleep/work/productivity, but that's less of a concern than how uncomfortable his latch is and the fact that I kind of hate nursing him. In other words, I wouldn't mind as much if he slept on me without nursing -- though I would prefer he sleep beside me or even by himself for naps!! I'm at my wit's end and because I can't stand nursing, he is NOT getting enough sleep now and not napping barely at all (but still clearly NEEDS the naps).

He never enters a deep stage of sleep where I can unlatch him. He clamps down most of the time which is incredibly painful & hard to unlatch him from (and impossible to do without waking him!) Every time I unlatch him, he gets sooo upset and if I just try to soothe him other ways he gets even MORE upset and ends up waking up completely, often HOURS before he should be up, and no chance at getting him back to sleep.

It's at the point where I almost want to wean him just so I can see if that will get him to stay asleep. Except that I know he DOES need to nurse some still so I'm really not comfortable doing that to him, it will just create more problems... but I keep refusing to nurse him because I can't take it anymore. I don't mind nursing for 10 minutes (or even half an hour) but I can't take hours of it and clamping down... *sigh* I can't figure out a way to talk about it to him either -- like a "rule" that would make sense to him. If I tell him he can't nurse 'til he wakes up, he just wakes up early. I'm so confused and annoyed and frustrated.

[APToddlerMama]

What about cutting the nap? My son is three and we cut his nap shortly after his second birthday out of total desperation. It sounds like a horrible idea, I know.  You are probably thinking you desperately need him to nap so you have time to recharge and think he'll be a total mess without it too...and he might be.  It took DS probably a solid month to not have meltdowns at dinnertime until bedtime.  In the end though, it was totally worth it.  He "needed" the nap, but everyone needed the overall sleep, peace, and less fighting about sleep even more.  We found that he went from napping about an hour a day and sleeping 6-8 hours at night (so 7-9 total hours of sleep in a 24 hour span) to sleeping 9-11 hours at night with no nap.  Every single sleep book I've ever read says when kids get over tired, blah blah, they sleep less, but that just wasn't true for DS. 

Other ideas with the SPD...do you have a weighted blanket?  It didn't work for us, but I know sleeping with one works for a lot of kids and increases how long/deeply they sleep.  With my son, his symptoms of SPD dramatically decreased when we pulled dairy and gluten out of his diet.  Have you read The Out of Sync Child? 

It is really okay to put some limits on nursing.  He may just really like nursing, or he may need the sensory input from sucking.  Is there another way you might be able to fill that need?  We did the paci with DS because I simply could not be a human pacifier.  There are also chewy tubes you can buy, fruit leather, straws, gummy type candy, bagels, licorice, etc that may help him get some of that.  Good luck!

[crunchy_mommy]

Thanks! We did try going nap-free and it just didn't work, I mean sometimes he can skip the nap & we just deal with him being a little more volatile but other times he NEEDS the sleep. I wish he'd stop napping because there is nothing restful or recharging about it for either of us!!!

We do not have a weighted blanket but I will google it! He doesn't like anything on him when he sleeps really but maybe it's that our blankets are too lightweight?

He does seem to do a little better on a mostly gluten-free diet (he has always been dairy-free, we are vegan, and I am 100% GF so he gets minimal gluten) but not huge enough to seem worth totally removing it again.

I am considering trying a paci, although I'm not sure how it would go over because he doesn't tend to respond well to things like that. I am able to set SOME limits on nursing now, but when he's sleeping is the tough part.