Sorry in advance, this is long as I've tried to include all the relevant info. Short version - how do you stop a clingy 15 month old from waking up at 3.45am and refusing to go back to sleep?
I have a 15 month old DS. He's never been the best sleeper but I had been holding out hope that he would get better over time, but we're stuck in a rut and the sleep deprivation is starting to really get me down. I've put on loads of weight as I'm stuck in cycle of being too tired to exercise (even though I know I'd feel better if I did!) and eating too much cake and carbs to keep me going. DH is at peak grumpiness which isn't helping our relationship and patience levels are at an all time low, which is affecting our older DC. We need help!
So currently DS has a solid bedtime routine of going up for bath (or wash if he doesn't need one) and into pyjamas around 6.15pm. He then comes downstairs and watches in the night garden with a small snack and a small cup of milk (which he may or may not drink - he was a bottle refuser and wouldn't drink any kind of milk out of any kind of bottle or cup until I stopped breastfeeding a few months ago. Now he'll drink a bit of cows milk from a cup but not a lot at all.)
We go up to his bedroom at 6.50pm, he goes into his sleeping bag and we sit and have a cuddle and a story. Then lights off and into bed. I sit in the chair next to his cot until he goes to sleep, which is usually very quickly. I know in an ideal world that I would be able to just put him down and leave him (which I was able to do with all my other DC) but he has never reacted well to that, and with a 3 year old also needing to be put to bed, sitting with him is the quickest way to get him off.
On a good night, he'll sleep through from 7pm to about 5.15am. He's then up for the day. He does this about 30% of the time.
The other nights, he's been waking around 3.45am and just not wanting to go back to sleep. It always seems to be between 3.40 and 3.45 but we can't identify anything that is happening at that time that would disturb him. I've tried sitting in his room and resettling him like I do at bedtime. He'll sometimes lie down for a bit but eventually will just keep getting up and pointing to the door. I've tried cuddling him in the chair in his room, again he'll take it for a while but won't go back to sleep. If I bring him into my bed, he just rolls around being a pain and keeping both of us awake. He may finally fall asleep again after an hour and a half or so if this, but is then still awake for the day by 6am latest. If we don't
go into him at all, or just go in to resettle and leave again he gets really distressed and screams and screams.
One of the problems we have is that he is very very much a mummy's boy at the moment. He has quite extreme separation anxiety in the day, doesn't like it if I leave the room or hand him over to DH. When he woke at 3.40am this morning DH went into him and he screamed solidly for an hour until I went in and took over. DH is getting to the stage where he just wants to leave him to cry it out but I just can't stand it - listening to him for an hour this morning absolutely killed me and that was with DH in the room with him trying to comfort him. Also, I don't want the other DC in the house being disturbed by him screaming all night.
The other thing is that he seems to have a sensory issue where the only thing that comforts him is to do little pinches on me. When I sit with him at bedtime, I have my hand through the bars and he just pinches the back of my hand to help him drop off. That's not too bad, but when he's upset he really hurts and will literally be pulling at clothing to try to get to some skin. I know I need to stop this as I don't want him to pinch other children and think it's okay, but not sure how to do that.
Basically we'll fallen into a lot of bad habits, just to try to get him to sleep but he's still not playing ball. All of my other children were sleeping through 7-7 by this age, but I'd take him going 7-5 every day if at least it was consistent so I knew what to expect.
Any suggestions welcome! In particular, how on earth do we deal with these 3.45am wake ups?!