almost 1 year old and still waking 2 or 3 times night - help advice am soooooo tired

[foxy1]

hello

i have a son who is almost 1 and wakes 2 or 3 times a night. i need some advice on how i can get him to sleep through as i feel so tired. i have been breastfeeding him and want to wean him on to cows milk soon as well. I feed him in his room and then put him in his cot. He sometimes wakes about 1 hour after being put down. last night was 11 , 2 and 5, i feed him then put him back in his bed.

i think part of the problem is that he suffers from eczema and really really scratches his head in particular when tired and at night. i think this wakes him up. he gets so upset by it and have been to doctors and have bath oil, shampoo which stinks and creams etc. have asked to be referred to hospital dermatology unit as want to have blood test done to see if he is allergic to certain foods.

any advice would be appreciated. thank you

No advice I'm afraid but just wanted to say you're not alone. DD is 11 months and wakes several times a night (twice on a good night,up to 5 times on a bad one).
Know how you feel.

Sorry I can't help more {{{}}}

Have you tried settling him with no feed? or giving him water instead of milk?

I think some babies are just like this. It's tiring at the time but like everything else it does pass.
Is there any way you can catch up with your sleep? Does he nap in the day? If not, could you go to bed very early some nights ready for the 'night shift'? Catch up at weekends?

My DD did the same - we did gradual retreat which worked until 10 months - but it took a month to get her to sleep through. We then did a limited CC - 5,10,15mins for both naps and night time sleep at nearly 12 months as she wouldn't sleep if we were in the room with her any more. We would never let her cry for more than half an hour ever - Tania Byron recommendation. If she wasn't asleep by then I would BF her to sleep. Thekey is to get your DH/DP to go in during the night so he doesn't expect a feed. I still BF at nearly 14 months. Of course when they are ill, teething etc.. you go backwards again - then I send DH/DP. It works after 2 nights. I hated the crying but I nearly crashed the car one day and would have killed us both and thought sleep deprivation had to end. DD also has eczema - definitely get skin prick tests - DD allergic to egg and her sleep and eczema has got better since

DS's eczema used to bother him terribly at night. We found it helped to have him in sleepsuits with fold-over gloves (you can get them from www.adams.com) to stop him scratching so much.

If his head is itching then I'm not sure using shampoo would help, we just bathe DS in Oilatum and sponge his hair down. Are you using a steroid cream like hydrocortisone?

If the eczema is really disturbing his sleep then you might want to consider using something like Vallergan occasionally, our paed prescribed it to use once a week so that DS could get a break from his itching, although we never actually used it -- but it was good to know we had it in reserve if we ever got totally desperate!

Also we did do cc to drop the night feeds, but tbh I would not have done it while his eczema was really bad, when his skin was at its worst I figured he needed all the comfort he could get.

thank you. will ask for skin prick test. maybe i should waitto drop night feeds until i have been to the dermatology unit and see what they say. he has had eczema since he was about 2 months but he seems to suffer worse on his face and scalp as this is really where he scratches. his nails are short but he really digs them in!! bless him