Our dd (aged 2.5, used to be a fantastic sleeper, going 7am-7pm. For the last 3-4 months however, she's been waking more and more during the night, and it's driving my dh and I mad!
She's pretty good at going back to sleep, once we've been in and sorted out whatever 'issue' she's got, but the regular wakings (up to 4 times a night) are making us all tired and cranky, and what started out as the odd night has somehow turned into a habit! I am pregnant with no 2 and my dh is out on the road a lot driving with his job, so we can't face this continuing.
There is no set pattern, although the waking up seems to start after about 11pm (she's fine during the evening). Generally there are a couple of hours between each waking.
She still has a daytime sleep (of up to 2 hours). We had wondered if this was affecting her night time sleep, but having tried reducing it to a sleep every other day, it doesn't seem to make much difference. If anything, she sleeps worse the night following a day when she's not had a nap, as she's so overtired she finds it hard to switch off. I know that she's likely to start dropping the daytime sleep sometime soon, but she finds it very hard to make it through the afternoon without one.
An added complication is that she has a kidney condition that makes her prone to urinary infections. As a result, we have to get her to drink lots. She's very good about this, but it does mean frequent nappy changes. She's now potty trained (hurray!), but of course is still wearing one at night. One of the problems though is that recently, her nappy is becoming sopping wet by about half way through the night. Not surprisingly she's waking and demanding that we change it. We have no problem with this, if it's necessary, but sometimes it isn't. Of course, you have to go in and check though!! What's odd is that this has only started happening recently, although I would say she's drinking the same as she always has. We have tried altering the timing of drinks so that she has the bulk of the liquid before 5pm, but this doesn't seem to make much difference. We wondered whether it has anything to do with her now being potty trained during the day, and therefore being more aware of weeing during the night.
She also has bad eczema, requiring liberal use of various emollient creams. One trick she's picked up is to demand that we reapply the cream several times a night. Knowing how uncomfortable the eczema makes her, we feel we can hardly refuse, but it's interesting that she hates us putting on the cream during the day, when it doesn't seem to sooth her in quite the same way!!
If she didn't have either of these things to contend with, I suspect we would have got really tough by now, and just settled her once, and then left her to shout a bit, but we feel a bit caught between a rock and a hard place!
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we improve (if not solve) this problem?