1yr old won't settle at night

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Hi All

I hope you can help and provide some advice to a first time parent and my 15month old baby girl!!!

My little girl has always slept relatively well through the night. In the early days once the milk feeds dropped to a last thing at night and then first thing on a morning we would put her to bed at around 9pm and she would wake up at 7am-8ish the next morning wanting her milk. Even then when she woke up she would play in her cot next to our bed and wait patiently for one of us to get up and make her milk. And all was easy!! And then suddenly over the last month or so she has suddenly become really unsettled. I don’t know if that coincides with starting nursery or not.

As she started nursery we had to change her routine so she went to bed earlier. We would now put her to bed at 8am and wake up at 7ish. But it seems like now she keeps waking up and crying for no reason whatsoever! Last night we put her to bed at 8pm. She was sound asleep until midnight. And then woke up but was put back to sleep relatively easily.

But from 3.30am until 5.00am she would not settle. We use to be able to leave her in her cot, let her whinge a little and then she would go back to sleep. But now at 3.30 she woke up screaming. We changed her nappy and gave her milk but that didn’t settle her at all. At 4am I had her on my lap and she was looking around like it was 4pm, talking and babbling and wanting me to interact with her. I thought if I leave her on my lap for long enough she would fall asleep but this didn’t work. So back to rocking her to get her to sleep.

When she fell asleep I put her into the cot only for her to start crying again…this happened twice. Once she was asleep for 5 min in the cot and then woke up. it’s like she doesn’t want to be left alone in the cot.

I heard the term night terrors bandied around. Is this what this is?

I don’t expect to get a definitive answer to this but if other parents have had the same issue, what worked for you? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks!!!

Teething?

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Teething?

She had 4 teeth come through and nothing since....so maybe

Once you’ve tried changing, milk etc try giving a teething sachet, used to settle my LO back down

I think this is quite normal unfortunately. Actually, if mine did that I wouldn't really even think too much of it, but it sounds like she's been such a good sleeper until now that this seems really out of the ordinary for her. Any big changes will disrupt sleep, so it's very normal that starting nursery would coincide with sleep disruption. It will hopefully settle down in a few weeks. If she's only gotten 4 teeth, it also could be that as I'm pretty sure mine had almost all but the last molars by then. Sometimes they also do this around big periods of development, and there is a lot of language development that happens around then. Is she walking? Mine starting walking 15-17 months and that disrupted sleep too. There isn't much you can do but try co-sleeping if it will work and also get yourself to bed earlier. Assuming you have a partner, trade off on doing the early mornings so you both get some sleep every other day.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Once you’ve tried changing, milk etc try giving a teething sachet, used to settle my LO back down

Thanks i will try this

@mindutopia

Yeah it seems like she has been slow with her teeth coming through and she has jus in the last few weeks started taking her first steps.
Maybe it's a combination of all of these milestones start are disrupting her usual sleep patters.

At the moment our technique has been to snap at each other cos of lack of sleep..lol...I would advise against that technique for obvious reasons