Please help me figure out what on earth to do about 11mo sleep

[MintGreenLife]

I feel completely at a loss as to where to go next…

Almost 1yo DS has always been a bad sleeper. Until he was 4mo we couldn’t get him to sleep in his cot at all and he had to be held for all sleep. At 5mo he began waking every 20-60 mins and this slowly progressed to again not going in his cot.

Now almost a year old, he has stopped feeding to sleep (bf) and needs an energetic jiggle at bedtime and night wakes for 20-30 mins to get him to sleep. Again this has turned into also not being able to put him in his cot as he wakes as soon as he is put down. At best he spends an hour or two at the start of the night in his cot, after that he sleeps in his pram (still frequently waking, and being rocked back to sleep). I can’t carry on like this. My entire evening is taken up by rocking him and trying to get him to bed, and it starts all over again in the night and I’m often up 1-2hrs just trying to get him back down again, and then he wakes very early in the morning. We tried putting him down awake last night and singing and patting to soothe him to sleep, but he just cries and cries!

please can someone help me figure out what to do! How do I move on from rocking, is he under-tired, overtired, what’s going on?! This is is current routine… fyi he has all his naps in his pram and I push him up and down on the gravel outside our house.

6ish wake up
9-9.30am ish first nap (1ish hours)
2.30am ish second nap (1ish hours)
7.30-8pm bed time

please help 😭

I should also add his sleep needs are generally quite low - usually around 11hrs in a 24 hour period

No advice for you, sorry 😪 just a hopeful
bump for someone else to come along ❤️

@Daffodil21 💜

Controlled crying.

It sounds like he's developmentally ready to learn to sleep by himself, because all of the assistance you offer is gradually stopping working. So you need to give him a chance to figure out how to sleep by himself! Ferber/CC is the most effective and quickest way of doing that.

@MolliciousIntent we tried putting him down awake last night, siting by his side offering reassurance, but he just cried and cried for an hour until we gave in, and we both felt absolutely awful about it today 😭

Did you try leaving him completely? Some children just aren't cut out for "gentle" techniques, you're there but you're not giving them what they want and it makes them angrier and angrier, whereas if you just leave them to it they rage for a bit and then go to sleep. Weirdly, you being there "supporting" just makes it all harder for them.

@MolliciousIntent no not tried just leaving him as didn’t like the idea of this. Could be worth a try to see if he gets any less worked up!

I'd really recommend it, and give it a good go. We did CC with our 10m DD and it took an hour at bedtime and an hour overnight, and then the next day she slept 7-7 and has done for the past 2 years.

Ouch op this sounds tough!! I would:

• make certain he is not hungry
• try and add another nap in the day (two one hour naps seems v little to me)
• Look at the detail- change bedtime routine, bathtine? Story? Music? And maybe not baby music- try something else that might grab his attention and allow him to lie and listen, classical or acoustic or something. Lighting? Comfortable in bed? Teething pain?
• look at doing cry it out

Is he waking and being fed? Or waking because hes possibly hungry or tummy ache etc? I think the key is why is he waking up.. it seems unusual to me that he’s waking that regularly so I’d try and find out what’s causing the waking ups. Even small things like changing the placement of the cot, changing his bedding/mattress, giving a soft comforter or keeping the room on the warm side so he’s feeling sleepy. best of luck to you xxx

I would introduce another sleep aid.....I know but hear me out🙈my boy was the same albeit a little younger when we started. so he likes rocking. I would while rocking start patting his bum.slowly you can stop rocking and just pat while holding then you can put him in his cot and pat getting lighter and lighter with the patting until you can stop. This is what I done. It's not a quick process but I couldn't do cc or cio.

It does sound like he's got some strong sleep associations and struggles to self settle, but his wake windows look a bit long as well, especially as he doesn't sleep that long overnight? He's getting under the amount of sleep suggested for his age over 24 hours - perhaps he could be chronically overtired, which won't be helping his settling? For comparison, the below works really well for our nearly 11 month old - when we nail it (not every day!!) she self settles for her naps and night time, and generally sleeps through:

Wake 6-6.30
1st nap 8.45 (1 hour)
2nd nap 13.00 (1.5 hours)
Bedtime 18.30

Much bigger wake windows than this result in difficult settling for naps and bedtime, suggesting she's overtired. Obviously they're all different, but it might be worth changing his schedule a bit?

Too much nap I think and a developmental phase where they are learning to be mobile and have a really strong drive to practice this. Both DS2 and DS3 did this - DS3 is 10mo and doing this exactly now. I find if he sleeps past 3pm at all, then it's no chance of getting him down to sleep before 8/9/10pm. Separation anxiety is also really strong at this age, making any changes like ending co-sleeping or moving to own room tricky, and teething is another theme that pops up throughout the first couple of years. Worth trying calpol one night randomly just to see if it helps, especially if there are other teething signs such as biting everything and drooling.

I know it's not an unusual amount of naps for his age, but you said low sleep needs - so that probably translates to the naps as well. Have a look at Lyndsey Hookway/Possums stuff for more detail about sleep pressure, but the basics of it is that there's a hormone (adenosine) that builds up and up and up the longer we're awake and makes us feel tired, they refer to it as sleep pressure (because it is easier to understand). The longer baby is awake the more sleep pressure they build up, the more sleep pressure they have the easier it is to get them to sleep, and the more likely they will do a longer stretch without needing a lot of resettling, especially really involved resettling or proper alert wake ups where they don't go back to sleep.

So I'd personally try capping the second nap or seeing if you can get it to happen around 1pm instead so that it's over sooner. I understand wake windows are a bit bunkum in terms of science, but if you look at the gaps he has about 3 hours awake and then a whopping 5 hours between his next nap and then you're wanting him to go to bed 4 hours later. So I think you'd be better looking at 3/3/6 or 3/4/5 - just giving him that larger gap between last nap and bed in order to build up more sleep pressure. Otherwise what's probably happening is that the first nap is about right, but the second one is happening because his sleep pressure has built up to quite a high level (he's really tired) so he can't help but fall asleep, and then sleeps quite deeply and releases more sleep pressure so it doesn't have enough chance to build up by bedtime.

But sleep location doesn't sound ideal either - would he co-sleep? Would that work for you? Lyndsey always says if you're looking to make sleep changes what you want to do is do it in stages so your starting point is timings - adjust the timings using whatever method and sleep location works right now. Then once timings are good you can look to adjust the location that they fall asleep and then once the location is OK then you can look to adjust the method you use. This is an article where she talks about this: lyndseyhookway.com/2019/08/29/sleep-one-step-at-a-time/

Sorry I know you'll probably get 100 different solutions on this thread - my advice would be to pick one that feels right to you and give it a go for a week or two. Then give yourself a break for a week or two and try another one if no luck. Don't try and do them all at once as it will be manic/impossible.

@BertieBotts i don’t get what you mean - are you saying he’s already possibly getting too much sleep? He’s getting quite a bit under the recommendation for his age.. the bit about sleep pressure is the opposite for my baby - the more over tired he is, the harder he finds it to drift off! I agree with @MGee123 I think it’s possible he is chronically over tired. Agree he might have some learned behaviours about going to sleep/bedtime so I would change everything up! Let us know how you get on op xo

@BertieBotts he doesn’t have 5hrs of awake time at any point, the gap you’re referring to is 4hrs, from 10.30am until 2.30am, and that’s the recommended awake time for this age. I already follow Lyndsey on Insta. Sadly he won’t take to cosleeping, I’ve tried, but he seems to very much need his own space and won’t settle in our bed, which is very unfortunate seeing as at present we can’t put him down in his cot! It’s a complete nightmare at the moment 😭

@MGee123 i could try something similar, but in my experience if he goes to bed early, he just wakes up earlier, and if I let him sleep more in the day, he just has less nighttime sleep. He’s never slept more than 11-12hrs in a 24hr period, despite trying to get him to sleep more!

You would need to give it a couple of weeks persisting with a different schedule to know if it's having any effect. He might well wake early still to start with, but you stick to the wake windows roughly and try and get him to increase his daytime sleep as well eg wakes at 5.30, first nap 8/8.15 but extend this to 1.5 hrs to get him back on track.

You may be right, it might be that he doesn't need as much sleep as other babies, but given that he isn't actually settling or sleeping well on that schedule, I suspect that isn't the case? He really does sound like he's overtired - classic signs being early rising, difficulty settling, poor napping.

I would also try to move his naps from buggy to cot as a priority. Their sleep quality is often worse in a buggy, as they can stay in light sleep rather than getting to the deeper restorative sleep, which may also be adding to an overall overtired picture. I feel your pain on this - our baby was glued to her buggy for naps until 7 months and it then took at least a month of stressful naptimes getting her to sleep in the cot. It won't happen automatically if he's learned to only nap with motion, you will have to teach him but it is worth it if you can crack it. This will also help him learn self settling strategies, as at the moment he is being assisted to sleep at every point, hence your difficult bedtimes and night wakes.

To help him be successful with cot naps you need to work to short wake windows and get him ready for a nap at the first sign of tiredness (even if you think it's too early), make sure he's got a full tummy, do a mini bedtime routine to cue him in and use white noise to help him understand it's nap time. I'm not sure what would be best to settle him but as he is so used to motion I might start rocking him, first few times get him fully asleep then put him down, then start putting him down sooner before he's completely asleep and pat and shhhh in cot etc. Gradually wean down the support you're giving him, and do the same for your night settling.

If you're trying to get him to link sleep cycles to do a longer nap (ie more than 40/50 mins) you need to be in with him towards the end of the sleep cycle (you learn what this is for your baby - ours is 45 mins currently) and the second you see him stirring, place a hand on his back/bum and if needed restart patting/shhhing. For the first month I just stayed in the room while she napped to save the stress of listening downstairs and legging it up at the slightest squeak!

It is so exhausting, you do have my sympathy, and the solution is probably going to be hard work for you as it will almost certainly involve breaking his current sleep habits and developing new ones. I'm sure others will have other opinions, this is just my thoughts!

@MGee123 thank you, I do agree with you that he needs to start napping in his cot. I might try for his first nap today. We had a very disrupted night and he only slept in his cot for 2hrs, and didn’t wake up until 8am this morning, so hopefully the lie in might have helped him catch up on sleep! He actually naps well in his pram and I wake him from his nap after around an hour in at attempt to get him sleeping more in the night. I’ve been doing this almost two weeks now, but obviously it’s not helping. Before he would probably nap about 3hrs a day across two naps x

Just to also throw my recommendation for controlled comforting.

I had similar with my first at the same age and we did all sorts of tiny adjustments to nap, comforters, milk, rocking, patting.

I tried staying in the room but he just got so angry!

Tried the Ferber method with a very set routine around naps and bedtimes-left him 3 mins/6/9 etc. I cannot believe I didn't try it earlier! First night took 20 mins, second night 15 and then he just went down on his own. Slept through and dropped his last overnight bottle.

I think if you're going to do it, you can't chop and change, you need to pick and stick to it and give it at least 3-4 nights before deciding if it works.

Obviously entirely up to you but just thought I'd share my experience.

@EvergreenForest thank you, I just can’t see him settling within 20 mins, although I’m sure you felt exactly the same! I definitely don’t want to leave him crying for long, so it’s tricky, but I think it’s clear that the methods we were using before (feeding to sleep and rocking) aren’t working anymore and something has to change, I just wish I could figure out a way that we could do it without lots of tears!

Honestly, he's telling you that he doesn't want all the rocking and patting anymore, it's not working for him, it's overstimulating and winding him up, you just need to leave him to it and let him work it out himself. If rocking was still working it would be fine, but it's not, so it's not.

You're not going to be able to fix his sleep without crying, because crying is the only way he has to communicate. he's going to cry and moan and whinge because that's his only method of expressing himself. It's not a bad thing!

@MolliciousIntent i agree with you, but I also don’t know if I can let him get so worked up. We tried for an hour the other night, and by the end of it he was hiccuping and gasping he’d been crying so much 😢

@MGee123 he had just over an hour long nap in his cot this morning! First nap in his cot since he was 7 months old, and even then he only napped in his cot about 5 times before I gave into the pram. Think I can call this morning a success!

Failed on the second cot nap of the day - was rocking him for an hour in total and tried to put him down four times, but he just screamed every time 😭 feel exhausted and very frustrated now.

Oh Op you poor thing

I know it's pretty hard to read but I do agree with what @MolliciousIntent has written above.

If you're getting frustrated too and what you're doing isn't working then you've really got nothing to lose by trying Ferber. There will be some crying but I imagine there are tears at the moment anyway.

Really hope things improve 💐

@EvergreenForest we’re going to try and put him down awake tonight. I desperately don’t want to, it I can’t see what the other option is, as like you and others have said, feeding and rocking isn’t working anymore, so what’s left 😢