It's not normal for a 13 month old to wake so often?

[HappyForRainbow]

I'm struggling with sleep for DS. He sleeps in his crib in the nursery but I have a single bed in there too which I/DH sleep on.

DS wakes every 45-90mins for the first 4ish hours of the night, then every 2-3 hours until he wakes around 4/5 and refuses to go back in his cot and ends up in the bed with me until 7. Every night. He stands up in his cot and screams or cries until I come. Sometimes because he wants a dummy, others it's still in his mouth! I have to help lay him back down and pat/shush/sing until he falls back asleep. Sometimes have to pick him up.

He doesn't feed at night, and eats well during the day including a pre bed snack. Had the same bedtime routine for months. Uses a night light and white noise. Not teething. But sleep is getting worse.

I'm not able to leave him to cry because that sounds like the only thing worse than getting no sleep!

But surely 10+ wake ups is not normal.

"he's not teething" I swear my kids teethe constantly for the first 18 months of their life (at least!) and during that time they behave exactly as your son does. DS is almost 19 months and he occasionally has a run of good nights but mostly there's still a fair amount of night waking. I co-sleep with him in a separate room to make it easier for all of us!

This really made me chuckle 😂

Hi @HappyForRainbow can I pls ask how you are getting on now a few months later? I’m having a terrible time with my 8mo, who has woken every 30-60 minutes since he was 4 months old. I have tried literally everything even Ferber training which didn’t stop the frequent wake ups. I co sleep for survival and am desperately hoping someone has a solution!

We're 20 months now and honestly still never slept through the night! But wake ups slowed to 2ish a night! Currently going through a regression though where we're up for 2 hours at 3am so that's fun!

It does get easier but you have all my sympathy. Do you have a partner? The only thing that made me survive was we started sleeping 1 of us in babies room and alternating every 2 nights so you'd always have some sleep to look forward to and catch up on!

As soon as I saw his age I just knew he was learning to walk!

Onwards and upwards eh op

You'll probably find that now he's having more exercise i.e.walking, he'll sleep loads better cos he'll be tired

We had this (4-8 wakes a night) until he was 3.5 years. Then solved it within about 2 days! Turned out he had lactose intolerance. We went to the dr about his digestion because it was a bit weird but not definitely weird and had always been like that. Honestly I can't remember the details, but she suggested eliminating all dairy and seeing if it made a difference.

It did!

And his behaviour during the day changed too. He went from being wired-energetic, to just energetic, meaning he had some quiet times too. It wasn't possible to see he'd changed because he'd just grown up with it and it was how he always was. Nursery staff who weren't in his room commented on the difference in him!

It was a very strict cut of dairy. He could have a hit by accident and it was fine but in order to control for accidents (someone living him something we didn't see), we had to cute lactose from everything. Eventually he could eat some cheese and yoghurt without issue.

I made clear to people who needed to know that it was a medically diagnosed intolerance (went back to dr so it was), not just me on a fad or something. The minute you say "my child has an intolerance" people think you're basically making it up. Mentioning that the dr was involved made it easier.

So it won't be the case for everyone but I had no idea it was possible really or it would show up in multiple wakings for years. Obvious as a possibility when you think about it though!

For my child it turned out to be huge tonsils adenoids which led to sleep apneaa! They woke crying or upset each time but I hadn't realised that's what it was.

They slept much better about a week after the op at 3!!

And yes I was exhausted.