Help, do I need a sleep consultant or sleep training?

[user7891011]

If anyone could offer advice id be extremely grateful! My lb is 1 in 2 weeks and sleep has been terrible since 9 month regression. I'm due his brother in July so I'm struggling, a lot.

Before this I've always let him sleep as much as he needs in the day and his night sleep has never suffered too much, he just takes what he needs. Now he has between 2.5-3.5 hours of day sleep across 2 naps. But nights are horrendous and he wakes every 1-2 hours. Sometimes goes back to sleep with dummy or bottle,sometimes is up for 1-2 hours.

He eats okay in the day but he still takes one full bottle at night, which is fine by me if he needs the calories.

His wake windows are 3-4 hours but bedtime is not more than 3 hours after last wake or hes overtired.

I'm not sure what other information to give but what would you lovely people suggest? Would a sleep consultant be any good or is there something obvious I'm missing? The dummy would ideally be taken away but I dont think I'm at a point mentally where I can go through that atm.
Thank you

My DS had similar from 10 months he was up for hours at a time in the night. I had been working hard on extending his naps in the cot so couldn't understand why if he went down well for naps and at bedtime, he'd wake for hours in the middle of the night. I couldn't work it out at all and was losing all hope, was sleep deprived, it was giving me so much anxiety. Until one day, he was woken up from his afternoon nap after 30 mins by next door drilling. Long story short, that night, for the first time in months, he slept through. Next day, I capped his naps to 2 hours total across the day and bar one night, he has slept through since then. May help to cap the naps, still taking into account his wake windows and see if it works for your little one too.

Thank you for replying. I'm going to give this a go!

I'll DM you my sleep training notes in the morning x

Sounds like too much sleep in the day. Mine had one post lunch nap at that age.

My DC had dropped to one nap by then, and we noticed a huge improvement in sleep at night. Sounds like it could just be too much sleep during the day so maybe just try and cap the two naps to around 45 mins each? Good luck!

Agree with the above. That’s a ton of day sleep across two naps at 1. If he still needs 2 naps maybe try 20 or 30 mins in the morning and 1.5-1.75h in the afternoon? I know if we go much beyond 2h of napping in the day my 10mo’s night sleep will be affected.

Also 3h is a really, really short wake window before bed. My DS needs a minimum of 4h to go to sleep easily but stay asleep - he might be waking a ton simply because he’s not tired enough due to too much day sleep and not enough awake time before bed!

Good luck x

Also sounds like too much sleep in the day. DS only has 1.5-2hrs sleep in one nap and a 18:30 bed time.

He does still wake in the night (briefly for a feed - still BF) but he's not 'awake' if you get me. He does usually do a 6hr stretch though. Granted teething etc causes chaos but generally.

I used a sleep consultant when my son was 9 months old and she was AMAZING.

She transformed, and saved my life within a week.

If you feel that you need to go down that road then just private message me and I can tell you more about it and give you her details.

I can't thank all of you enough for taking the time to reply. Today we've capped 2 naps to 1 hour each and 3.5 hours before bedtime. Anymore than that he just gets beyond himself and so overtired!

@adviceseekingnamechanger thank you so much I'll have to work out how to check dm's

Eep thanks this has reminded me I haven't actually sent them to you - doing it now!