Back at work and 11 month old still waking in the night!

[Irons]

I've tried all the hints and tips in the books :Gina Ford, Baby Whisperer, magazine articles - I've read them all! I've followed a bed time routine since she was 5 days old and we have no problem at bedtime. She goes down happy, plays for a bit in the cot then falls asleep. Every night is different. Some nights she might wake once or twice and just want her dummy and some nights she might wake and not go back to sleep for an hour, either playing or like last night just crying for an hour! I try to settle her and comfort her, I've tried doing this with her in the cot but she gets so worked up she cries so hard she loses her breath. Its just something every night and like I said no night is the same.

I just don't know what else to do. This has been going on for the last 6 months now and people keep saying its a phase. The other thing is she wakes every morning at 5am for milk and I have to settle her back to sleep after that which can take up to an hour. I need to stop with the 5am milk but don't know what to do. I'm doing it at the moment just so I can actually get some sleep!

ds was a great sleeper and slept through the night from about 10-ish weeks then as soon as he started nursery and I went back to work he woke up during the night from about 7mths until about 4 years!

dont like CC and couldnt cope with sleep deprevation & fulltime working so gave into it.

bought a super king sized bed so we had loads of space for him and black out blinds for our room so he didnt get the idea it was nearly morning time.

if he thought it was time to play, dh would be banished to the spare room and ds would normally settle with me.

after a while (about 2-ish) he got used to coming through, sneaking under the covers and settling to sleep himself.

Thought we might have cracked it last week - 3 nights of sleeping right through in a row!
All gone to pot again now though

Oops, it always goes like that! Just when you think it's getting better........

I'm remaining optimistically quiet because we've had 4 very good nights. One little disturbance last night which I can't really blame her for because I can see a new little tooth coming through. Nothing a little Denitnox won't fix.

What did you do differently on those 3 days when it was going well?

It was all down to the naps I think. On the days she slept well she'd only had one nap - 2 hours in the early afternoon but then thurs morning she just seemed shattered so I let her have a sleep. So then she didn't have her afternoon sleep until late, didn't settle at night until late so was then tired again the next morning!

Plus the neighbours have been pretty loud and I think she was a bit uncomfortable in the heat.

Hey ho. Glad you've been having better nights - hope they last!

You know I think you're right because the last few days she's not had much daytime sleep. When she's at nursery for her 2 days she only had 1.5 hrs sleep during the day and she sleeps really well on those nights.

Thing is I like her having good naps during the day because it give me time to get things done!