My 16 month old is a terrible sleeper!! Please help!!

[CanadaCalls]

Hi all,

My God have I had a bad day!!

Maybe it is because I've had a bad day and I feel worked up, but at the minute, I feel like i'm at breaking point!!

I'll give you a quick brief of sleeping habits in the past....

From birth, slept through like an angel ( co slept as I was breast feeding)

Continued co sleeping as his bedroom developed damp & I no longer wanted him sleeping in the room. We moved house and now he has his own bedroom, so this is how each night goes......

I used to sit in the living room with him, lights out, TV off and cuddle him to sleep while he drank a bottle, then carry him into his bed, this never worked well as he was still waking up.

So, on the advice of my Health Visitor, I began laying him in bed with milk while I sat close to the bed, he would eventually fall asleep, sometimes after 10 mins, sometimes I would be sitting him his room for up to an hour.

Then he started crying if I wouldn't pick him up and was making himself sick.

I tried the gradual moving away from the bed closer to the door thing but all hell broke loose and we was both covered in vomit at least twice a night.

Now, I'm still sitting next to him in his room, but for some reason he is taking an hour and a half to fall asleep, plus sometimes vomiting through being upset ( tonight he got me twice!)

He wakes up after being in his bed about 3/4 hours later, I go in, give him some water and leave the room again and he'll fall back to sleep, an hour later he wakes again and this time there is no settling him, unless I put him into bed with me.......Please do not judge me for this, tonight I dont think I could put up a fight and defend myself.

Once he is in bed with me, he still doesnt sleep well and is constantly stirring and wanting milk or water.

If family members stay with us overnight, they all comment how restless he is in the night, I know he is, but I dont think I realise how bad as I must just pacify him in my sleep most nights!

He then will be awake for the day anywhere from 5:30am - 7am.

His bed time routine is short and simple, bath, bottle, kiss daddy goodnight and into bed so its not that he has a long drawn out bedtime.

Bed time starts at typically 7:30pm, but sometimes it will be 10pm before he's aslwwp.

Im going out of my mind and really dont know what I can do to make it better.

I dont agree with the crying it out method, I just dont know what else to try.....

All advice would be really appreciated!!

Is going back to co-sleeping for a while an option?

It might give you both a rest and he may be more settled through the night if he hasn't had the period of bedtime upset.

I'm not an expert but I know what it is like to have my DD wake up every night for two and a half years; I was working too. So the first thing I would say is don't think you can't cope because you can, even if like me you used to love your sleep! You have done the right thing by breastfeeding him when he was very little well done. Be confident that you will get through this.
Reading this though, I noticed that firstly he is having milk while lying on his back and therefore not being burped; as he gets older and it's cows milk formula this may be giving him indigestion? Secondly I notice that you are not leaving him on his own to go to sleep. He expects you to be there so the only way to change it is to - change it. He will cry, and its awful, but try and think of him saying 'I'm cross with you Mummy' instead of 'wah wah' cos at this age he can't speak. The rule is you go back in regularly to reassure him then leave again, it may take a couple of hours but you are spending that anyway and its getting worse....you will have three nights of hell and then they get the idea that they are not going to be picked up or fed. Is this what you mean by the 'crying it out' method? Isn't what you are doing now actually telling him over and over again 'You do not go to sleep by yourself?' I must say that I regret not being much harder with my daughter. I fed her when she woke up, too much and now she is overweight and has difficulty controlling her food intake. Is he getting enough food in the day? In the old days a child who is well and feeding properly in the daytime would never be fed in the night - they may get a spoonful of water if they woke up! My upstairs neighbour is French and her Mum came to stay last year when baby was a few weeks old; that was it; she has slept through from that day!
The last thing is something I remember from Penelope Leach's book; you can't have it both ways, baby will either go to bed late and sleep through till a decent hour OR will go down early but get up at the crack of dawn (like my DS did). You can't have 'both ends' as they need food more often than adults.
I wish you a heartfelt very best of luck; I remember how exhausted I used to be - of course now, I can't get my 14 year old DD OUT of bed....

Hmm you may want to look at the baby whisperer which is a sleep training method based on you staying in the room. I did it and it worked but there was still crying. You have to stick to ot rigidly though for all wakings...and I'm not sure what to do with a baby crying tjemselves sick... what gave me hope though was the statement in the book that there wasnt a baby that couldn't be tauggt to self soothe through this.. which made me stick with it.

Have you also looked at daytime naps. Some reckon overtiredness makes a baby restless at night but with dd the opposite was true and looong naps often caused a bad nights sleep.

This might not be what you want to hear but I also have a 16 months old DS and we'v n ever stopped the co-sleeping, actually I used to co -sleep on my own until DS was 8 months old and now we're all sleeping together with DP too, which is great as sometimes DP puts DS to bed or for a nap and sometime sit's me. I have noticed that since a few weeks he needs more time to go to bed (maybe another developmental leap) but by 8PM he's usually fast asleep. I'm in no way an expert but the vomiting sounds to me as if your DS is getting quite upset by having to fall asleep on his own. Especially as you moved house, maybe he needs the comfort of having someone with him all night to feel secure in his new environment?
I read recently Kiss me by Dr Gonzales who mentioned that the Japanese tend to cosleep with their kids until they're 4, so do many other nations. He reminds us that 50 years ago few poeple could afford a cot bed or a separate room for their baby and some Irish still all share the same room as well. Someone above recommended co sleeping, maybe that's what he needs right now? He's still tiny, not even 1 and a half. I read this saying which I liked: a Child who sleeps with his mother sleeps twice. Maybe just give him what he wants, and that's you!

Have you tried an earlier bedtime? DS has always been an awful sleeper, and I was never happy to let him cry it out. We finally seem to have cracked it (DS also 16 months). He has a 2 hour nap before his lunch. He has then got to be in bed by 6pm otherwise it takes him hours and hours to get off to sleep. The biggest thing for us was getting rid of his bedtime bottle. He now has a cup of milk sat in the living room with me, then to bed. He used to wake frequently through the night still for milk or water, since he doesn't have either in bed now he doesn't wake any more. It took about 3 nights, but has been fantastic ever since.

Oh, and when we got rid of the bottle in his cot, we started putting him down awake and just leaving him to it. I did have to do a small amount of controlled crying, but the longest I left him for was 3 minutes (I decided if I was on the loo he would have to wait that long so didn't feel too bad!!) and he eventually just fell asleep. Again, only a few nights of this made all the difference :)

Evening all!

Sorry for not posting sooner, been a busy few days, zoo etc. So what if he doesn't go to school yet, he can still have a great 6 weeks holiday! Plus I get to go to all the good places with him

So, I tried the crying it out method for 2 nights, standing outside his door and shushing him then going in after a few minutes, he cried, and , cried, and then cried some more. When it got too much (probably after about 15 mins of me going in and out to him) I caved and went and sat by his bed, which of course he then fell asleep within 5 minutes flat! Once he was asleep (still snivelling in his sleep) I then had to deal with my feelings of guilt

I had a good think about it, and I really dont want to hear or see him cry or get so upset that he vomits, so i've decided that I'll just continue to sit by his bed for how ever long it takes him to go to sleep, at least that way he goes to bed feeling loved and happy and I dont have to drink a bottle of wine a night to make my self feel better

I think I was just having a bad few days and if I'm totally honest, I think I listened too much to outside influences telling me that he should be sleeping through by now, he should be able to soothe him self to sleep blah blah blah! Yeah well your child shouldn't be eating chocolate for breakfast or biting every child that walks past him but you dont see me sticking my nose in

He's such a happy little soul and I wouldnt want to rock the boat when we've been so lucky with him so far, so for now, he shall continue getting patted to sleep and he will very much be joining me in my bed in the wee hours if it makes him happy, and me happy for that matter

Thanks for everybody's input though, very much appreciated and all took on board in my hour of need