Help with vomiting 1yr old?

[FeakAndWeeble]

My DS has gone to bed with no problems, in a cot in his own room, since he was 6mo; we could even put him up there awake after a last bottle and a cuddle and he would just lay and gurgle until he fell asleep. But in the past few weeks (he turned 1 2 weeks ago) he's started fighting sleep like mad when we give him his final bottle in the evening, and unless he is really, deeply asleep when we place him in his cot, he immediately stands up and starts SCREAMING. If we don't go to him (I've spent many minutes sitting on the floor outisde his room with my heart breaking telling myself he'll fall asleep soon) he vomits. Obviously as soon as this happens we go and get him, clean him up, and start the whole process all over again... But the thing is - once I go in to him and get him up, covered in sick etc, he smiles at me; he actually looks smug. And then he wants to throw himself around and play and mess about when he knows it's bedtime. I don't know what to do!! I can't leave him sitting in his own sick, and I can't have my life taken over by a baby who won't sleep! If I don't get my evenings with my DH I may actually lose my mind. DH is so stressed at work at the moment and I want the time he spends at home to be pleasant, not dominated by a screaming baby, a mad wife and sheets and sheets full of vomit. Please help, any advice would be wonderful if anyone has any ideas how to break this horrible cycle!

Can he walk yet?

No, just starting to take his first shakey steps whilst holding on to the furniture, but no walking yet.

If you can rule out illness and teething, at 12 months or so they go through an enormous development spurt which is largely bound up with them learning to walk. At the same time you see them starting to try and move along the furniture and starting those wobbly steps, their sleep goes to pot. It's normal. It's because their brains are busy. The key thing in your op which indicated it is the immediate standing up and then screaming at bedtime. They find it very frustrating indeed. It's important not to project adult feelings on them. They're not smug and manipulative. They're frustrated and upset because they can't understand why their brains won't switch off and that grin is relief when you come back. He thinks 'oh thank God mummy's going to help me'.

It's like when you start a new job or revise for and exam and your brain whirs and whirs and you just can't switch off. Except they don't know what's happening and you'll find their bodies climbing up and standing before they even know what's happening and it confuses them. They sometimes do it in the middle of the night too, seemingly they're still asleep and getting up, rolling about, thrashing, moving etc.

It's tiring I know. And frustrating. And annoying. But it passes. And amazingly, they go back to their normal sleep patterns. In fact sometimes they sleep better because the new skill exhausts them. Just do what you can to get through it. It's a phase and an important one and you won't get into bad habits if you just help him through it.

He's crying that hard and that much because he doesn't know any other way of telling you how frustrated he is with this little and quite amazing body of his.

Oh God I'd not even thought of that. He did that when he was learning to crawl; he'd suddenly cry in the middle of the night and I'd go in and he'd be half asleep, on all fours with his head rammed up against one end of the cot. I'm so comforted to hear that the sleeping pattern will return to normal. I'm very protective of it because it's pretty much the only thing we got 'right' from the off, everything else has been trial and error (he was very underweight and wouldn't take to solids, and the past 5 months has been spent trying every texture under the sun to try and find something he'll eat), but bedtime was so simple almost from when he was born so it's something we're pretty proud of. And because he's always been such a good sleeper we're not at all prepared for this, especially since he's now a year old - I always thought that bad nights were a problem when they were new, not something that happened as they got older.

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply... And for pointing out that I'm projecting adult emotions/rationales onto his behaviour. We'll try again tonight, and if he cries when he goes in the cot, I'll go in and give him a cuddle and we'll try again.

Bloody hard this parenting thing, isn't it!

Also would it be possible to dilute his milk, perhaps half water/half milk as this is what the dr has suggested for our DD1 whenever she is sick and very insistent on milk. I'm not sure how much going back in helps though - when DD1 was almost 2 her bedtimes had gone all out of whack due to changes (new sibling, recent holiday) and DH would try put her down at 9pm, then she'd scream till she was sick and continue this with DH going in and out of the room till midnight. If you normally put him to bed perhaps your DH could do it, and be firm and not go in unless he is sick or cries for longer than 10 mins as when I started to put DD1 to bed at 8pm, she cried for 10 mins and then went to sleep as she knew I wasn't going to go back in. Also is he actually tired before bed as if he's still on two naps in the day you could try switching to one?

I think we need to get rid of the afternoon nap - he goes to nursery 2 afternoons a week and doesn't nap there at all and bedtime is never a problem on those days. I tend to get cabin fever by lunchtime then take him out and about and he ends up dozing off in the back of the car by 3pm, and I think that's partly why he isn't keen on going off to sleep at 7pm (I'd happily make this a more flexible bedtime but DH is on the autistic spectrum and needs routine... He gets so stressed out if DS isn't asleep by half 7 that he's actually more work than the baby). My mum suggested that we leave him but he just doesn't stop.... And now he appears to have worked out that we're going to go in to get him eventually so he just carries on crying. Or vomits. Which of course gets us in there straight away.

Diluting the milk sounds like a good plan. He won't go back to sleep without another bottle which obviously isn't that good an idea when he's just puked everywhere.

It's really difficult. DD was never a good sleeper at all (luck of the draw) but ds who is approaching 7 months has slept brilliantly from the beginning. We always know when he's about to master something new because his sleep is markedly bad. Particularly refusing to settle and then waking a lot in the night moving around. Crawling, walking and talking were the biggest culprits with dd.

It's really very different to the habits of an older child who is choosing to behave a certain way and can be gently guided towards better habits. This isn't a habit. In fact it's remarkable how it appears suddenly and is completely out of character. A baby this young is at the mercy of their developmental needs and changes and they physically can't control themselves to the point of understanding or changing what their brain is doing to them. They're not manipulating you (though actually a baby being manipulative is a good thing, it ensures their needs are met when they're really very vulnerable indeed) or attention seeking, they're confused.

Something like naps are things you can adjust to try and make a difference though it's worth bearing in mind that less daytime sleep often means less sleep at night sometimes. Particularly when their brains are very tired out from the cognitive leaps they're making. Usually I'd recommend that you adapt to them and just wait it out/work round it but I understand that with a dh on the autistic spectrum, it's really very difficult indeed for you.

I couldn't leave them to cry. Because it's not their 'fault'. They have no choice. They're crying as it's their only means of communication and that horrid gut-wrenching feeling you get when you ignore them is your instincts, your inbuilt protective Mummy lion gene screaming at you to respond to your child. He vomits because he's worked up. It's just a matter of getting through it in whatever way works whilst maintaining as much routine as possible if that's what works for your family.

It's tough. And you're doing brilliantly. It'll get better.