10 month old sleep - any advice appreciated! I am v tired...

[Bobsmyaunty]

My 10 month DD has just recovered from a tummy bug which threw her off her normal schedule for everything for a couple of weeks & she didn't eat much at all. Prior to that - after putting a lot of energy into working with her sleep - she was doing some sleeping through the night and some night time waking (but was easy to settle with going in to reassure her) and ate LOADS.

Now that she's better her sleeping is rubbish! She's eats 3 good meals a day and 3 8oz bottles of formula but is waking between 11 and 2 and then is just AWAKE for an hour. I sit with her as she's screams if I leave, and then she drifts off after a full hour... then 10 minutes later awake and totally unhappy this time, downs 8oz of milk and then screams when I try and put her down again. After an hour of the awake period then an hour of the screaming period, I have just taken her in with me for the last couple of nights and she is instantly asleep. Part of the problem before was weaning her off co-sleeping so I am loathe to create that habit again plus I just don't sleep when she's in with me.

She's been sleeping more in the day to catch up (1 hour in the morning, 1 hour after lunch and 1 hour at 4pm) so worried this could be it. She's also started walking (whilst holding on to me).

Any ideas/suggestions as to what might be going on massively appreciated as I am exhausted after weeks of dealing with her unwell and now this!

Could she be teething? DD, 9mo has just had a week of bad sleep and yesterday we noticed two new ones poking through. Absolutely no other symptoms at all, we were really surprised when we saw them. Then last night she slept 6.30-6.30 again so I suspect they are connected.

That's interesting. She doesn't appear to be, but as you have experienced, doesn't mean it's not happening! What kind of bad sleep was she doing?

Well, she is a very good sleeper generally, but over the last week we had:-

• really light sleep, any noise would wake her. Normally she'd sleep through a hurricane
• waking around 12-1am, crying for us and then refusing to go down until she was cuddled. Then once put down she would start crying again. Took a bit of patting and gradual withdrawal to settle her. Realistically this only took 5mins but waking in the night is so rare for her that it was noteworthy
• proper, full-on crying and grizzling for at least 90mins around 2am. We'd check on her periodically but seeing us just made her cross so we left her to it. Of course it never occurred to her that her gums might be hurting or we'd have Calpol'd her up . Poor little bun. Then she slept in til gone 7am, almost unheard of.

Touch wood she seems to have gone straight out like a light again tonight so I'm convinced it was her teeth. If I were you I'd try Calpol (or Calprofen if you have it), it may be her gums. If it is, I hope those gnashers poke through soon!

Occurred to us. I'm sure it occurred to her!

I'd bin the 4pm nap, that's a recipe for night time sleep disaster! You might need to put her to bed earlier, but 4pm is way too late for daytime sleep.

Wd definitely agree with the above too. 3pm latest wake-up in this house.

That sounds really familiar stowsetter. She just developed another cold so that could be it.

I did a kind of gradual withdrawal over the last couple of nights. Basically not picking her up but being there - 2 hours of full on protest the first night and an hour the second. I was planning to progress this to leaving the room but she's been sleeping well tonight (I've woken early incredulous and happy).

I find it difficult to determine whether I should go in and - as you say make it worse - or if a bit of reassurance will help!

The 4pm nap, I hear exactly what your saying but she only does 45 mins at lunch and without the nap she's too hanging to eat a prope dinner. Been thinking I should maybe cut down the morning nap a bit though to see if she'll then do a longer lunch etc etc.

Thanks for all your advice:).