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 😭

Thanks everyone. The problem I’ve always had with him is he doesn’t have clear sleep cues. I only introduced a nap schedule at 6 months out of desperation as he would just go and go all day and never indicate he was tired, and he was a very grumpy baby until I did this! I’m going to try watching him very very closely though and will try to follow his lead and see how that goes. I’ve just put him down his nap as seemed tired after the bad night, going to give it an hour to let him settle himself, but if no luck I’ll give up and do a pram nap as not going to be any good if he doesn’t sleep all day!

also in terms of winding down etc, he doesn’t have any screen time at all, never has, he has dinner about 2hrs before bed, then a bit of play time, then bath with his Dad, then breast feed, then half an hour of quiet play in his nursery with the blinds down and lamp on, then book and that was then when I would rock him, but now trying putting him in bed awake!

So he’s currently almost an hour into a cot nap! It took him 15 mins to settle to sleep, and I used the Ferber method going in and out the room. I only went in twice before he fell asleep.

I know some of you have said that he seems overtired, but I honestly think it’s the opposite! When I started tracking his sleep at 6 months old, he was only sleeping 12hrs in a 24hr period, and this has since gone down to 11hrs. He’s a low sleep need baby. The best measure of whether a baby is getting enough sleep is their mood, and he’s always happy and rarely grumpy. I think the problem has probably been coming from him not having long enough wake windows to feel tired for bedtime, and because I rock him to sleep he can eventually be lulled to sleep, but then doesn’t stay asleep very long as not tired. I’m going to do away with the nap schedule for now and just try to watch him very closely and let him have the sleep he needs, rather than trying to stick to set amounts of sleep at set times.

His cot nap only lasted 45 mins, but am really pleased he fell asleep for it fairly quickly!

This is great news OP and well done for persevering. This may also support the theory that being in the room with him can make him more upset?

I really hope this continues for you.

Fwiw with ds1 I was very routine driven. With ds2 I don't have that luxury so just watch for the odd yawn and pop him down when he seems tired rather than at set times and he's so far never refused a nap. So think your plan sounds great ✅

@EvergreenForest thank you. I’ll try again for his afternoon nap when he seems tired. In hindsight he definitely wasn’t tired when we tried to put him to bed. I knew he wasn’t, but it was 8.30pm and so felt like I couldn’t leave him up much later, although of course I could have! Yes possibly finds it too frustrating us being in the room and not doing anything.

Not got round to watching the video, but will do asap. I do feel horrible pangs of guilt when I look at him today 😭 he seems quiet, but it’s probably just in my head, but also he’s probably knackered from such a disrupted night!

Great work on the cot nap OP! You know your baby best, go with what you think is right. We can only suggest opinions based on what we know/have experienced and obviously all babies are different and none of this is an exact science. Hope your night goes well tonight!

@MGee123 thank you ☺️ I waited this afternoon until I was certain he was tired and ready for a nap, rather than following our usual schedule. Put him down and he was asleep within 5 mins with minimal crying! Really hope our night goes ok 🤞🏼

Amazing, well done. Fingers crossed!

Oh wow-I'm grinning from ear to ear reading this! Sounds like you may have had a bit of a break through in not following a specific routine and letting him guide you. I defo found that easier with son number 2.

I'm super hopeful of a better night for you both. Unfortunately I've got a bad UTI so will inevitably be up through the night-am keeping fingers crossed you'll be getting more sleep than me!!

Woohoo! Yep that's it. Until they're tired. If you start charting it now I bet it starts to fall into a pattern.

You're right sorry I totally miscalculated your schedule - oops! Sorry.

This has been a really interesting and useful thread and I think I might try some of the suggestions for my 11mo.

There seem to be some knowledgable folks on here about Ferber/CC and some people have hinted at the increasing intervals being designed to give them a chance to self settle. Can anybody explain this a bit more for me? I've never wanted to do this method as just felt instinctively wrong to me to leave them crying - but if I do try to get DS3 to sleep without him crawling all over the place it does tend to take hours and involve quite a bit of crying - I'm thinking I have quite possibly been sucked into an unhelpful "sleep training vs attachment parenting" mindset, so I'd like to understand it more and actually make a decision whether it makes sense rather than write it off outright. I did have some success with a delaying feeding tactic to night wean DS2, and the tactic gave me a sense of confidence in my own ability to actually make changes and that it wasn't something terrible for him - he was fine and I didn't feel it was cruel. Also on a recent long car journey, I found that I could comfort him without picking him up (which was what he really wanted and I felt guilty that I could not). Made me wonder if I could transfer that to bedtime.

Anyway my question is this - Increasing the intervals in the same night never made any sense to me - I would have thought that in order to build up confidence in the fact I would return, you would want to stick to really short intervals only for that first night (I like the idea here about starting with 1 or 3 minutes) so to me it would make more sense to comfort them every 1 minute, then once they're OK with being left for 1 minute you lengthen the time, until they are OK with that then lengthen it again. But it seems like most methods expect you to lengthen the interval immediately when they defiinitely won't be used to it yet. That seems counter-intuitive and stressful to me.

@BertieBotts Hey! Think it was probably my post you're referring to! I am absolutely not an expert in sleep training but I did a lot of research before starting and used the gradual retreat with my 6months old and then moved to Ferber when he had a few regressions

I guess the idea behind increasing the intervals is that you are teaching them a new skill. It's hard and rough at first so they need to know you are there with them through it. But if you constantly go in in very short windows then you're disrupting their ability to calm themselves down and fall asleep on their own. It would probably take twice as long going in constantly at short intervals as if you extended the time

I had a very different version of this this evening with my now 2.5 year old (and I know this isn't the same as cc but just to give an example).

He woke up at 9ish crying. He'd had a nightmare and was upset. I went in reassured him, gave him a cuddle and he lay back down. But was up crying again within 10 minutes. I also have a 5 month old I was trying to get down so not sustainable to sit with him!

So I reassured him again, gave him a kiss and said I'd be back shortly. Left him for 3 minutes then straight back 'see! Mummy's just outside so you don't need to worry!'. I then left again. Went back in after 5 minutes-he'd started to doze off but me coming up woke him a bit 'see, mummy's here! Big kiss, night night. I'll come and see you again'. At this point, he's reassured I'm there, I'm offering him comfort, but I'm also letting him go to sleep on his own. I went in one more time after 7 mins and he was asleep.

If I'd have stayed in the room or gone in very short intervals, he would have relied on me more to get to sleep. Then when he woke in the night and I wasn't there, he probably would have got upset as I'd been there so much as he went to sleep. This way, when he wakes in the night (unless we have another nightmare!) he'll just get himself back to sleep

I know, I know the example above doesn't quite fit but just trying to give something that is sort of similar in why you'd increase intervals.

Sorry, rambling now

Yes... I guess that makes sense to me for a 2.5yo, because they can understand, but not quite so much for a baby under 1?

I guess I just need to try it and see.

This is great advice. I work in a mother and baby unit and this is the advice we give all mums. Introduce a new sleep crutch such as patting and then slowly reduce the other one which is usually bouncing or feeding. Then once baby is happily falling asleep with you patting them in the cot you would gradually reduce this and then gradually remove yourself from the room. We have great success using using the technique .

@BertieBotts I did CC with my DD at 10m and did it similarly to Evergreen, but with much less chat. We did 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 10 10. I started the timer as soon as the whining turned into sustained crying/shouting, but as soon as angry/grumpy/tired crying turned into real distress (you'll be able to tell the difference) I went straight in. Didn't pick her up, just stroked her hair til she calmed down and said "it's sleepy time baby, sweet dreams, I love you." I said this til she calmed down a bit, and nothing else, and then I left. Waited for the noise, started the timer again.

As far as I can tell, the reasoning around increasing intervals is because the point is not that you want them to learn that you always come back (they should already know this from their experience of you during the day, do not do this with a child who has damaged attachment), the point is that you want them to learn that they don't need you to come back. So popping in every minute just disrupts their settling process.

It really does work, but you have to do it properly and consistency is key.

Little update from me - he fell asleep for bed last night in 8 minutes with very little crying, 10 mins for his nap this morning. The night wakeup is another story though - it was an hour and a half last night as he got hiccups and repeatedly fell asleep and woke himself up again, must have happened about 20 times 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m not sure whether I should be feeding him in the night or not?! After half an hour last night I went in and fed him, and he seemed better able to settle himself after that…

Thank you for the explanation. I suppose then the short intervals to start aren't really for the baby's benefit but for yours?

Mint I think it's really up to you whether you want to feed in the night or not. I suppose you could carry on if it's working OK and if you wanted to cut it out at some point, at least you know you have an option that works to do that? If he was unable to settle and then settled OK after a feed he might well have been hungry. IME it was around 15mo when DS1 differentiated between hunger and milk at night - he would latch on and feed for about an hour after which I was losing the will to live, then he would sit up and make his baby sign for "breakfast". He never ate very much in the way of solids at that age.

This sounds excellent OP! With the night feeds my boy was self settling at 6mo but still waking for two then one feed till he was 13mo. He kind of weaned himself as I was giving him milk in a tommie tippiee for his morning and pre bed feed and also unlatching him earlier and earlier during the night feed towards the end.

I think he was mainly feeding for comfort and after I fed him for shorter and shorter periods he just stopped waking up.

I think given how well he's doing, for now you could just go along with the feed and if he doesn't stop on his own in a few weeks then you can look to cut it out.

@MintGreenLife I know everyone says they shouldn't need any milk overnight after 12 months but my DD took a bottle until she was 18 months
I figured a quick 5 minute bottle was waaay easier than the crying/whinging (in her sleep!) for up to an hour - i assume it would have gone on longer but I always gave her a bottle so I could get back to sleep. One night at 18 months she suddenly stopped crying in her sleep and we haven't looked back
Do what works for you and if you think he's hungry give him a bottle and get yourself back to bed and get your, well needed, sleep!!

Sorry I've just realised your BF still. I only BF up to 6 months and then swapped to formula. Either way if you think he's hungry and will settle after a feed I would 100% say just feed him x

Thanks everyone for your advice about the feed, I will just give it if I think he wants it. Last night he didn’t have a feed! Was a bit of a weird night - he went to bed at 8pm and fell asleep in 10 mins, slept 1hr 30, and then between 9.30pm and 12.15am woke four times 🤦🏻‍♀️ He’s not done that since he was about 7mo and we had two months of waking ever 20-60 mins. Anyway, he resettled himself every single time within a few minutes. Of course I didn’t sleep much as was very on edge he was going to keep waking up, but then eventually he slept 6.5hrs solid, and no feed in the night. He slept 10.5hrs overnight, which is a really long sleep for him ☺️

So I used to bf to sleep with my boy. I used controlled crying to sleep train him. Now i put him in bed, give him a kiss, and leave the room for him to fall asleep on his own. sleep training WORKS, but you have to do it EVERY DAY, for every single nap. It's grueling, but it's worth it.

Something I would advise is that after an hour of crying, do give up and give him what he wants. He's exhausted by that point and needs to rest. When I started CC, I was determined not to give in and after 2 hours I finally did. Poor baby was so overtired that he only slept 10 minutes. So give it an hour and then give up; my boy didn't fall asleep in his bed until day 3 of training.

Good luck!

@Sbena thanks ☺️ Since the first night he’s been falling asleep within 5-15 mins. Do you mind if I ask if your little one stopped crying when put down eventually? We are only a few days in, but at the mo he cries as soon as I put him in the cot. Some times he stops within just a minute or two, sometimes it’s on and off for 10-15 mins until he falls asleep. Really hope he won’t continue to cry every time I put him down! Although he did that as a newborn, which resulted in me holding him 24/7 for the first three months! X

@MintGreenLife glad you are seeing some improvements!
I know you’ve said about having a low sleep needs baby and I’ve always thought this about my little one too. When we dropped to one nap I always tried to limit it to two hours as he was waking for hours on end in the night and having an early rise too….after a couple of weeks nothing seemed to be working and one day I let him sleep longer because he was so exhausted, I think it was 2.5 hours in the end and he then went and did 7-5, he’s been extending that to 6am too which is an absolute miracle for us 😂 this also tied in with him beginning to walk and being a lot more active, so he was more physically tired too. So just something to bare in mind with developmental things too 🙂

@FTMworrier thanks ☺️ He actually only started crawling a couple of weeks ago, so I was hoping this would tire him out and he might sleep a little more. So such luck so far! Maybe walking will help 🤞🏼