13 mo awful sleep - help!

[ISaidDontLickTheBin]

getting to the end of my tether with 13 mo DC2 and sleep.

Evening looks like this:

Dinner 5.30
Bath 6.00
Stories, milk and winding down 6.30 onwards
Feeds to sleep from 7 onwards.
Wakes up hysterical about 40 minutes after falling asleep. Needs to be picked up and cuddles back to sleep.
Often wakes up again after a further 40 minutes needing cuddles etc. Can take much longer to settle a second time.

Then wakes up for the day any time after about 5.30.

I'm getting very little evening and massively early starts and starting to feel really burnt out with it. He won't settle for DH which isn't helping. I know I need to break the feeding to sleep bit but I'm so knackered I have no resolve. Plus I tend to do whatever stops the screaming quickest otherwise 3 yo DC1 gets woken up by it.

Help!

How is he after the second waking. Is it just the evening that are a problem or is he still waking throughout the night as well?

What are his naps like as well?

The second waking starts off hysterical. If I can cuddle him quickly enough he goes back to sleep fine, otherwise it's party time and he is awake and cheery for up to an hour

If he's had a wakeful evening he'll sleep through till about 5.30 or 6, otherwise it's a settled evening and a 3 am wake up for feed/cuddles. Then back to sleep till about 6.30.

He does 1 nap a day for about 2 hours from midday ish

He's a lockdown baby and pretty clingy at the moment (though does 4 days at nursery) - could it be separation anxiety??

It could be separation anxiety. Things that might help are sleeping with his sheets in your bed for a couple of nights before you put them on. It will give his bed a reassuring smell.

Have you though about moving the bedtime to 8pm as well? That will give him extra time with you.

Can’t help but can sympathise! I have an almost 7 month old who has always slept badly!! A 2hr chunk of sleep is considered good! He was up every 20 minutes between 1-4am last night, and no he hadn’t gone down and slept until 1am - oh no! He’d been awake every hour at that point!! Really hope sleep improves for you. I can’t take it anymore so have actually contacted a sleep therapist. I am broken.

I remember with my first they go in and out of having separation anxiety for quite some time, even at almost 4 my ds1 has nights that he doesn’t want me to leave!

It sounds to me like he might be overtired if he’s walking after only one sleep cycle, can you go back to 2 naps and see if it helps?

Thanks for the replies!

Have you though about moving the bedtime to 8pm as well? That will give him extra time with you.

No I hadn't thought of this actually. We've been trying to do bedtime with both DC at the same time so they have bath and stories together. And DC1 is wrecked by 7 pm! Might try doing DC1 bedtime first before even attempting DC2.

It sounds to me like he might be overtired if he’s walking after only one sleep cycle, can you go back to 2 naps and see if it helps?

I did wonder about overtiredness, and we moved bedtime from 7.30 to 7 (can't physically get it any earlier on work days). 2 naps a day were a horror show with DC2 - we'd spend way longer trying to get him down than he'd then spend asleep, particularly for nap 1. Then nap 2 would end up being too long and/ or too late in the afternoon.

So tonight DC2 just flatly refused to go to sleep at all until 9 pm, he got more and more overtired and hysterical. He screamed at me so much I cried