If I don't get more sleep soon ...

[FrozenNorthPole]

... I shall be forced to move a bed into my office.

DD2 has co-slept since birth (falls asleep bfing, gets transfered to cot, moves into bed with us when she next wakes until morning). She feeds perhaps 3 or 4 times per night (I sometimes don't notice as she just latches on as I sleep). She is about to turn 1.

She has been exhibiting moderate separation anxiety during the day when with me (though oddly not at nursery, which she started a couple of weeks ago). It manifests in typical stuff like crying when I leave the room / move across the room away from her / don't pick her up immediately. This whole thing is probably made worse by the fact that she drinks very, very little during the day when away from me(won't take expressed BM, cows' milk or water) so is 'reverse cycling' by feeding loads at night, plus is desperate to feed from me nearly all the time. She has also had cold after cold since starting nursery, which I know is typical but which has made her sleep even worse.

The current problem, apart from very frequent waking, is that she will wake for a 2 hour period in the middle of the night and just want to play. We don't play with her - we try to be as boring as possible. I can't work out what triggers her to wake up so completely for so long. She doesn't nap especially well at nursery yet - she has anything between 3 short naps (20 mins) and 1 long nap (1hr) each day.

DH leaves next week with the army and I would love to begin putting in place some measures to help DD2 sleep better. Can anyone suggest any (reasonably gentle) ideas? I do not want to night wean, nor to stop bf'ing all together. I cannot put her in her own room because she will eventualy have to share with DD1 as we don't have enough rooms. I also can't hand her to DH to soothe her because, as mentioned, he's about to leave.

Thanks so much for any ideas or advice that you can offer.

I think the long spell awake in the night (if it's relatively recent) is either overtiredness due to poor daytime sleep, or the 13 month sleep regression. My DS reliably does this both when overtired and when in a sleep regression, and is doing it now at just under 13 months. That is caused by them working on a big developmental spurt.

Separation anxiety is often worse in the run up to developmental spurts too.

Hopefully she'll get better at napping at nursery - friends of mine were saying their nursery told them it took many babies a month to start taking good naps there.

Naps of less than 30 mins don't refresh babies properly, so are equivalent to no naps at all, so I'm not surprised she's overtired.

I find that when DS is wide awake at night, he gets drowsy again 1.5 hours later.

As early a bedtime as possible (and as late getting up as possible) will help reduce overtiredness. The developmental spurt is at around 55 weeks (from their due date) so once that's past, that part of things will hopefully calm down.

How many naps a day (& how long) does she have when she's not at nursery?

AngelDog, thank you

Hm, she was five weeks early so that means .. (counts on fingers) ... okay, so maybe a couple of months of this to get through yet. I can do a couple of months.

I agree about the overtiredness. Looking at her nursery diary her naps tend to be getting longer (gone from 20 minutes to around 40) but there's still not many of them considering that she's there for about 8 hours of the day. She can manage anything from a single hour long nap to three twenty minute powernaps. Her problem is that she wakes very easily (e.g. I cough quietly) so I suspect that's curtailing her naps at nursery. Her older sister does quite a good job of curtailing naps at home too

I think you make a good point about an early bedtime. DD1 goes at 7pm so maybe I need to start trying to run their bedtime routines concurrently rather than consecutively. This might be easier to do with DH away as I can move up to my bedroom and have her in the cot earlier, without feeling like I'm deserting DH downstairs.

I feel like I'm being punished (rightly) for lazy parenting in the early days. DH was away with the army then so I just co-slept and kept her downstairs with me when she fell asleep because it made it easier when there was no-one else around to help out.

Ah, I think it's probably overtiredness rather than the 55 week spurt as I think the fussy period before the spurt usually lasts around 1-6 weeks.

Well, 40 mins is a whole sleep cycle, so that's progress. :) They do come into light sleep after 15-20 mins and are easier to wake - my DS wakes at this point in the car / sling if it's not moving, or if someone is talking loudly.

Most babies that age have 2 naps, a shorter morning one and a longer lunchtime one (DS was doing 30 mins + 2 hours although he was ready to drop the morning one as it was making bedtime too late).

If she's only having short ones, she probably needs 3 naps though, maybe 3 of them every couple of hours.

I'd try to get her to bed maybe 2 hours or so after she last woke from a nap - you'll probably need to be flexible about the exact time but any time from 6pm is good for an overtired baby IME. I've no idea how you do bedtimes with 2 children on your own, though!

Have you considered using white noise at home to help block out some of DD1's nap interruptions?

'Twasn't lazy parenting in those early - it was just sensible!