I guess I’m looking for success stories to give me hope…
My 19 month old isn’t a sleeper. From when the day he was born, it became apparent that sleep wasn’t his thing. But it is my thing! I love sleeping…and I think I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact that he may never sleep well. Over the last 1.5 years I’ve tried everything I can possibly think of to help him sleep, and I’m starting to think I need to just let go of it and accept he will never be a good sleeper.
Our current situation: I’m sleeping in his room on a mattress on the floor, and have been for 6 weeks. This is so that I can resettle him quickly in his cot when he wakes up, which much to my amazement, works most of the time. Before this, I was rocking him at every wakeup, but rocking stopped working and I couldn’t put him down again without him screaming. He’s never been up for cosleeping, so sleeping by his bed seems to be a good solution. Last night he woke about 7 times, and was up for 1.5hrs when I failed to resettle him when he woke. The previous night was similar. Both days he had a 1.5hr nap, a disrupted night, and then the next day he was happy, energetic, taking 20+ mins to fall asleep at nap time and bed time…so I’ve realised that even with only 8hrs of sleep over night, he’s not tired!
I know for a fact that he’s low sleep needs - when he’s sleeping well, the maximum he will sleep is 11hrs in a 24hr period.
Has anyone had a terrible sleeper, and things have turned around?! Do I stop letting him sleep so long in the day and hope that an increase in tiredness stops the night wakings? He and me are a bad match sleep-wise, as I am high sleep needs, and he appears very much to be low sleep needs. Help!