Blending out of montage causes state machine to reset

I’m having a problem with montages and state machines.

Whenever my character reloads the alternate branches on this graph runs, playing a montage slot, aim or hip. The problem is that whenever my character is in aim there is an animation hitch that looks like my character is resorting back to the entry of the state machine because it replays a readyaim animation first (lining up the gun with his eye) before it can get back to aiming animation (static aiming position). It looks bad because the reload animation already has a ready aim like animation in it so the character has to put the gun to his eye twice. I didn’t expect this since that wasnt the pose that I last cached. I’d appreciate any ideas how I can make the montage and the state machine play nice together?

same issue - did you resolve?