Sleep issues

[crowny5]

Our youngest is 11 months old and since he was born has not been a settled sleeper. You hear of some babies that sleep for 4 hours plus from the start but this was definitely not the case with him. We were initially lucky if he slept longer than an hour and a half to begin with. He is a bit older now but we have still not managed to get him into a sleep pattern where he will sleep the whole night through. A typical night at the moment is that he will wake every 2 to 3 hours. He usually goes down at 7pm and is very good at this, and will wake up properly at around 5am!
We have used a dummy since an early age. This is used as a comforter when he is upset ans at night. Every night he is given his dummy. What generally happens is that each time he wakes up in the night, we give him his dummy that he has lost. This will usually allow him to go back to sleep but sometimes for only a short period of time. We rarely pick him up and comfort him as the dummy usually works. During the day he is given the dummy fairly often as it can be difficult for my wife to provide the attention to both him and his brother at the same time. Also at night we are conscious of him crying and potentially waking up his brother. We have been told about controlled crying but are yet to try this.

As these disturbed nights have gone on since the beginning, both my wife and I are really struggling with the constant tiredness. He has gone through the night maybe 3 or 4 times but not for quite some time.
It is worth noting that he is a healthy baby and usually a very happy little chap.

We are at a real loss at to what we can to improve the situation.

[Missgraeme]

Are there any other issues? U say u and your wife can't see to both at the same time between u? Are they in the same bedroom? Bf? Does he have supper?

[PlanBwastaken]

Sounds pretty normal to me, unfortunately - I've got one too, but she needs rocking to get back to sleep... Can you not take one child each and swap between them to get a break every second night? Doesn't really work if bf, but at least for part of the night maybe.

[crowny5]

No other issues aware of. are in different rooms but when the youngest wakes he cries very loudly and we are consciously trying to get him back to sleep asap. He has supper a few hours before he goes to bed and has milk just before bed.

[Tatlerer]

crowny you and your wife have my sympathies. My DD was never one of those magical sleeping babies either. She would never take a dummy though. When you say that re-inserting his dummy only gets him to sleep for a bit longer- is that because he's losing it again? Would you consider getting rid of the dummy? We did controlled crying with DD and it worked for her (and us).

[Coconut0il]

My DS2 is also 11 months and he still wakes a couple of times a night. We are co sleeping and bf so I feed him back to sleep. Any days that I'm very tired DP will take him downstairs at 5 so I can have a few hours uninterrupted. He normally has 10 hours like your DS, it used to be 10pm till 8am but it's normally 830 pm till 630 am now.

Lots of people recommend controlled crying or cry it out but neither of those are for me. I read an article earlier about tension increasor babies and that's definitely DS2. He would cry till he was sick. I know he'll sleep through in his own time but for now I just get as much sleep as I can when I can.

Coping strategies are what you need.. will your DS settle for both of you? Could you do a night each so the other gets a full nights sleep? One of you could go to bed earlier? Sleep later? Anything that gets you more sleep. He'll get there eventually.