My 13 month old baby is waking more now than when she was newborn!!! Help please!

[Melby]

Hi, My 13 month old baby is waking evey 3 hours and sometimes every 2! She has 2 naps in the day, each around 1 hour or less and then when its bedtime I make sure she is awake in her cot before I leave so that she settles herself. She usually sleeps until 9 or 10pm and then wakes every 2 -3 hours and then is up at 5am! I feel like a zombie and I am tempted to get professional help like a night nanny to help?
When she wakes in the night I usually give her a bottle of diluted oat milk. (She has a diary intolerance) If I give just water she doesn't settle as well.
I try and offer her as much food as possible during the day as I want to make sure that she is not hungery in the night. She also seems to have quite a lot of bottom wind.
All suggestions welcolme!!
I need some sleep Help!!!

The hardcore approach would be to offer water only, and tough it out until she works out that it's not worth waking you up for, and settles herself back to sleep. But, this may be too harsh for you though. In my opinion babies of this age that are eating well in the daytime, do not need milk in the night, in fact I think it makes their tummies gurgle which in turn wakes them up more. Hope you find a soloution that works for you, this worked well for my lo at the same age, but it's not for everyone.

Thank you. I will try just offering water and see what happens.

My DS is also 13 months and we've found that he's started waking in the night again. Partly that was to do with being ill from his MMR jab but also we've found on the days he has an afternoon nap he sleeps worse at night, so last few days i've not let him have an afternoon nap and so far so good. If he is so tired that he's falling asleep then i don't think i'll stop him but i'm no longer going to put him down for nap

Check out the wonder weeks

It's saved my sanity so many times in the last year. We're just going through the 55 week sleep regression, and I've found that putting her to bed earlier than normal has helped. It seems backwards, but it's working so I'm just going with it. Also, I make night times as boring as possible. I usually don't offer anything to drink (unless nothing else works), and I try not to get her out of her cot.

She seems to be coming out of it now, and has slept through two nights in a row. HTH

My DD was similar and I just could not take it anymore - I was still bf at night too, so knocked that on the head and sent in Daddy to settle her instead of me.
By the 2nd night she'd worked out it wasn't worth waking up for so little reward and started sleeping through.
Be tough. You both need the sleep.

i had a similar thing and worked out it was a developmentat leap from wonder weeks. Ds was getting up and needing solids (so much for not needing milk in his case, bf wouldn't do the trick. Took him crying downstairs and he went straight to the fridge. This happened despite of giving him high cal suppers). It was just a stage. Came out the other end of it sleeping through for the first (extended period of) time ever.
I did nothing to encourage this, it was just how he developed. Don't feel that they will only sleep through if you do sleep training. They all get there it's just that when varies. As i once read on here "one persons sleep issues is anothers developmental phase." i didn't want to do cc and dh is a nightmare if not well rested (i can cope as long as i have enough cake) so i just went with it, put my faith in him growing out of it and tried to get more rest during the day myself. It worked for us.

Agree with MFM and seeks. The Wonder Weeks is definitely worth looking up - get it from the library as there are only 2 more developmental leaps before the last one in the book (64 weeks and 75 weeks).

DS was waking roughly 5 x a night in the run up to the 55 week developmental spurt. At 13.5 months he spontaneously started to wake just once a night (at my bedtime - we co-sleep). I didn't sleep train or anything. He'd been waking 3-5 times a night since he hit the 8 month sleep regression.

I'd previously tried the resettling without feeding, and DS woke just as often - it just took longer to get him back off, so I went back to feeding again as it was so much easier.

You could experiment with moving to one nap too to see if it helps - if you do, drop the first nap, make the afternoon one earlier (starting somewhere between the current naps) and make bedtime earlier.

Sorry, I should have added my 13 month sleep regression links: here and here.

If you think she still needs 2 naps, try moving her first nap later by 10-15 mins every few days. That might stop the early waking. When they're transitioning towards 1 nap that first nap can be an extension of night-time sleep, and making it later gets them to add the sleep back onto the end of the night.

I do know lots of other people whose DC have started sleeping much better than ever in their lives once the 13 month regression is past. Not everyone, but quite a few.

I think DD has come out of this regression now. It's hard to tell as she now has a tummy bug. But even so, she suddenly started sleeping tons better than she has for months. As if by magic.

How are you getting on OP?

Wondering if OP’s child ever slept through the night because I am currently dealing with the same issue with my 3.5 year old and 14 month old.

i am not joking when I say i have not slept a single night uninterrupted since the day my eldest was born. The longest stretch of sleep I have is 3 hours. She sleeps terrible. Her sister sleeps terrible.

i am at the end of my tether I just want to disappear into thin air. If this carries on I don’t know…

please OP, tell me that after 10+ years you finally have some decent sleep!