A method for communicating with a network is presented. The method includes receiving an assignment of first timeslots for uplink communications, and receiving an instruction to reduce monitoring to a set of timeslots. The set of timeslots has a number of timeslots less than a number of timeslots to be monitored in accordance with the assignment. The method includes receiving a negative acknowledgement of a data block previously transmitted to the network, and, after receiving the instruction to reduce monitoring and the negative acknowledgement, transmitting a new data block to the network before retransmitting the data block previously transmitted to the network.