16 month old sleep is even sodding worse since nightweaning

[toomanybirds]

Hello everyone, I am really hoping someone can help us with our 16-month-old's sleep, as it was bad, and has got much worse since we tried to nightwean her.

She is still breastfed and we co-slept and fed through the night until about a month ago. We have recently moved and are in temporary accommodation and have been travelling around seeing family. I appreciate things are unsettled for her currently and it might not have been the best time to try, but DH had some time off work so we decided to nightwean and get her in the cot about a month ago. Up until then she would feed to sleep and often wake up once in the evening, sometimes twice, then wake and feed two or three times in the night, mostly peacefully unlatching and rolling over once finished, but occasionally refusing to unlatch and staying attached for a couple of hours - this is what I got sick of, and what drove us to try to nightwean.

Our nightweaning method was to have my husband rock her to sleep and put her in the cot, then attend to any nightwakings before 5 am with water and same. Initially she showed some improvement - slightly longer stretches of sleep and went through once or twice to 5. From 5 she would come into the bed with me and would NOT unlatch, but would want to doze on breast. Fine, I thought, if sleep to that point was improving.

But after about 10 days to 2 weeks of this it all just went wrong. She started going absolutely mental for nightwakings, screaming hysterically for up to an hour, kicking and pushing against DH, etc. So I occasionally gave in and fed her in bed again - sometimes didn't have much of a choice if we were staying with friends.

She now does this furious screaming more often than not when she wakes in the night, and also has started to do at it bedtime too. Sometimes she will do a couple of chunks of 4 hours at night but sometimes she will wake up every 45 miutes, and scream at each and every one. Not only can we no longer rock her to sleep peaceably, but this whole nightweaning palava has also robbed her of the ability to feed to sleep - she wants to feed all night and will NOT unlatch and roll over like before - will scream immediately if I take her off.

Sorry this is so long, but I suppose in brief my question is this: Is there any solution to this absolute mess except sleep-training? I don't want to do CIO (no judgment, just not for us) but we are having to deal with a LOT of crying in arms right now. Going back to co-sleeping won't work if she won't unlatch and roll over. Rocking seems to be enraging her and is physically knackering - she's quite big.

Any advice welcome on what the best path is!

Sounds like you're having a difficult time OP especially with moving around so much. I think some sleep training would be beneficial here as I'm sure all three of you must be exhausted. We FF and our DS nightweaned himself but we did have the worst sleep between 10-16 months so feel free to discount this advice!

For us, this worked:
Self settling at bedtime - we switched the order so we stopped feeding to sleep to do bottle, teeth and then cuddle in the nursery. The cuddle was taking longer and longer to get him to sleep so we started to put him down relaxed but not asleep and leaving him to it. We had about 20 minutes of crying the first night, 10 the second and then that was it. I went in every 5 minutes to reassure him. It wasn't ideal but neither was sitting in a dark room for an hour while he fussed and got more worked up. Friends introduced a comforter which helped but we didn't want to do this.

In the night:
We used to pick up but stopped that in favour of a hand on the back. I think the self settling he learnt really helped here and this stopped fairly quickly.

4-5am wake ups:
These are the worst. We used to pop him in bed for cuddles/sleep but he just got very frustrated and annoyed and no one was getting any sleep. I think it's a confusing time as they don't have a clue about the time - with your DD if she can feed and doze at 5am, why can't she do that at 3am? She doesn't understand. For me we can get up any time from 6 but before that is night so I put in the same rules as middle of the night: no talking, staying in the dark room, staying in the cot with a hand hold for reassurance.

It's really tough to know what to do - we tried to minimise any upset but he sleeps so much better now and is much happier during the day, as am I!

I think you've confused her every time you've given in and fed her in your bed. She's realised that the furious screaming works very well so she's doing it! What is your living situation now op? I think going from bf on demand, co- sleeping to own room no bf is very hard for dc, does she have a dummy/comforter/special teddy? If you're reasonably settled I would sleep train, but very consistently- if you don't want to co-sleep then she never comes to your bed. You don't have to use CIO, in fact I don't think it's a recommended method at all any more. If you're still moving about then maybe shelve it for now?

Thanks both. Yoghurt - that doens't sound too painful, thanks. I just have a feeling it would take much longer for her - she has proven herself to be incredibly strongwilled thus far! - and I'm not sure I'd have the stomach for much longer than that. I do definitely need to to teach her to fall asleep on her own though.

I think you're right about confusing her, Indubious - I feel bad about this. She doesn't have a dummy (would never take one) and she does have a teddy but it hasn't helped so far. We will be settled in our new place next week so, yes we will shelve it until then although my husband will continue to do what nightwakings he can without her getting too upset. Last night was ok in that she woke at 11, 12:30 and 2:30, but allowed him to rock her back down fairly peacefully each time.

I think you're both right in that I need to teach her to fall asleep on her own but I'd like to do it in a reasonably gentle way. Problem is, even having her Dad gently rock her to sleep, which is pretty bloody gentle, has made her scream with rage because it's not what she wants! I would be ok with carrying on co-sleeping, but I don't want to her to be using me as a dummy all night. Maybe I should wean her completely? But then that timing seems kind of mean too, with the move, and starting nursery coming up. Argh!