Parents of low sleep need babies/children, please help!

[MintGreenLife]

I guess I’m looking for solidarity, advice, words of wisdom, just anyone that is going through/has been through the same!

DS is 14mo, he’s never been a sleeper. He never sleeps more than 10-11hrs in a 24hr period, with an average of 9hrs nighttime sleep. If he ever sleeps more like 10hrs, I feel like it’s absolute gold dust! Whereas I talk to other parents of babies of a similar age, and they sleep 11, 12, 13 + hours overnight. I in contrast am definitely a high sleep needs person 😂 and I’m struggling!

He also needs to be rocked to sleep for every nap, bedtime and every wakeup, which I find so exhausting.

Any words of wisdom? I’m currently struggling with the 2-1 nap transition too, as he can only manage 4.5ish hrs of awake time, but if I do one nap, then we have a shortfall of 4hrs in a 24hr period. Last night this resulted in him being up for 3hrs in the middle of the night.

Send help!

Would you consider sleep training? While it's unlikely to mean that he sleeps longer, if you're able to just kiss him goodnight and pop him down, you might find the whole thing less stressful and demoralising.

It was a long time ago but we used the Pantly pull off method in no cry sleep solution book to help them self soothe. At least this means you don't need to rock them to sleep. If he doesn't need much sleep though there isn't loads you can do except wait for them to grow up and at least they can entertain themselves. At least if dd gets into medicine her ability to stay awake all hours will finally pay off.

Yep I feel you. My little one is only 13 weeks but has been alert and "awake" since the moment he was born. He doesn't need much sleep and has never been within the wake windows. Constantly wants to look around and has seitous FOMO. It's exhausting!

Your little one is quite a bit older so not sure I have any good advice you probably haven't tried!

Solidarity is all I can offer you and a bump on your post... but im with you. Its exhausting

The biggest change for both of my 2 was when they didn't need support to get to sleep (rocking or breastfeeding in my case).

With the rocking we gradually faded it out. To patting. And then just being in the room.

That's sounds exhausting. It's so hard when you have a bad sleeper. My LO is 20months. I used to feed to sleep, then changed to rocking to sleep. But she was getting too heavy. So we started a quiet bedtime routine, at end of which she goes in to cot awake. We turn off light and one of us sits with her until she falls asleep. Can you try something like that? We probably had a lot of tears to begin with but wasn't too bad. Rocking just wasn't an option any more! She still takes a while to fall asleep at night now, but not so many tears. I haven't bothered doing this for naps though (I still feed or use pram).

I would be tempted to stick to one nap in the hope it gives you a little longer night time sleep. My LO will do 12 maybe 13 hours sleep in a day so if I keep nap to 1.5hrs max there's a hope she will sleep for 11 hrs at night. But some times she only does 9.5hrs and is up before 5am so I feel your pain. Especially as I still feel tired myself even with a solid 7-8hrs each night.

this sounds familiar.my DS (now 10) was/is very similar. He never slept for long, a 45 min nap was generally all i could manage and i tried everything. I also had to have to sit with him while he fell asleep when he was young which could take ages. I did sleep training when i was due my 2nd but very gently so it took weeks. I slowly slowly got him to go lie in the cot by himself and sat beside him, then lay on the bed, then turned my back, then moved to the other side of the bed, then sat by the door and finally outside the door. The other thing i did was do the exact same routine each time he goes to bed (nap and night time) so he knew it was sleep time, eg Put on sleeping bag, close blinds/ curtains and say night night moon, sing the same song and put him in the cot.

My guy can still be awake for 1 hr after going to bed but at least i dont have to sit with him 😂

He may not actually need less sleep, he may just not know how to get himself back to sleep so is waking when he drifts into light sleep.

I really think sleep training (of whatever variety you think best) will help you a lot.

My first baby was like this and it was bloody exhausting. I used to go out with her in the pushchair at nap time and walk her to sleep which helped me - I got exercise and she went to sleep with out having to be rocked. Or I'd save errands involving driving for nap time and go the long way home, she would often go off then.

Once she got too heavy for rocking/feeding at bedtime we would put her in the cot and stroke her back until she went to sleep. Then gradually withdrew bit by bit. Hours of my life wasted 🙈

@MolliciousIntent we actually got him to go down awake by sleep training and it was going brilliantly for a couple of months. I would just put him down with a few teddies and he would play with them and drift off to sleep, but then he was really poorly about three weeks ago, so I went back to rocking him to sleep. After a week we got him going down awake again, but then we got married the weekend before last and his sleep was awful as we were staying away from home, and now we are 10 days into rocking again and he just will not go down awake. Just screams, and I have no idea how to get back on track without a load of upset 😖

@OhILoveDoughnuts we did manage to start putting him down awake, but it got disrupted by illness and travelling and now we’re solidly back to rocking to sleep and can’t seem to move past it. I’ve tried habit stacking in the past but never got very far with it. I really can’t see him going to sleep with patting tbh…and also how do you pat and rock at the same time?!

@Skyla01 can you remember at all how long it took first few tries for her to fall asleep this way? We did something similar a few months ago, and it was hellish as so much crying, but we did manage two months of no rocking and putting him down awake which was so much better. But illness and travelling means he now won’t go down awake and just screams, so I’m back to rocking to sleep and it’s slowly killing me 😖

@daro funnily enough he will actually nap quite well if I let him! But he will never sleep more than 9-10hrs overnight, and I find if I let him nap longer in the day, this just reduces his nighttime sleep 😖 can you remember if you had much in the way of tears when you first started this? We did similar and there was a lot of upset to start with, but then it worked really well and he was going down awake for every nap and at bedtime without fuss, but illness and travelling means I’m back to rocking to sleep and I just don’t think I can keep doing it, but i don’t want loads of upset again. It’s so hard.

I’m currently sat on my sofa having a cry. After a terrible night last night, I was aiming for two naps today to help him catch up. Morning nap went fine. Then we went into town and I spent his birthday money on some new toys and books. Came back and tried to BF him to sleep, wasn’t having any of it. Tried rocking, just cried, arched his back, pushing away from me. Tried putting down awake. Screamed. Tried feeding to sleep again…he was laughing, while I was crying?! Then tried rocking again, and he started screaming again. Eventually called DH away from his desk (the wfh) and he managed to rock him to sleep, while I sobbed on the sofa downstairs. It’s just completely exhausting, and I’m trying to hard to help him, and to help us, and nothing I do helps!!

All I can say is it passes! My son has never slept more than 10 hours. I used to let him stay up until 10pm and he went to bed and got up at the same time as me, so I got no child free time but at least I got my sleep. At 30 months he dropped his nap so then at least he slept his 10 hours all in one block, 9pm-7am. So finally I got 1-2 child free hours before bed! Now he’s four and I’ve started putting him in his bedroom for an hour of quiet play before bed, so that gives me another child free hour.

@Blomonge at the moment he goes to bed around 8pm, so maybe I should try a later bedtime and see if that helps!

@MintGreenLife that is really rough. I remember awful days like that, albeit when mine was a bit younger. Getting to sleep probably took 30min plus with lots of tears. Now on average maybe 15/20min with little crying (for me, can still get very upset with my OH). If you've done it before your child should remember, and if you go back to putting to sleep in cot they should get the message. I would just go cold turkey for rocking. They are only going to get heavier!

I think from 14months I gave up caring so much with naps- if they won't sleep then their loss! I would try the easy option (for me feed to sleep, car or pram) but if it didn't work I didn't let it get to me. From that age lots of kids are down to one nap anyway. It's very hard though. What does your OH make of it all?

Hi Op,

My ds is on the lower end of average for sleep needs. At 21 months he seems to need 12hrs a day, generally does about 10-10.5 at night and 1.5-2 in the day. He can survive and be fine on 9.5 at night and will catch up during the day or the next night.

A couple of thoughts, have you tried doing a super short 10 minute nap in the morning and then a proper nap a couple of hours later? Lo might be overtired and hyper hence the bed time resistance?

If he only does 9hrs at night then I'd personally be keeping 2 naps as long as possible to not have to do an early bed time. i guess if he sleeps 9hrs you want bed about about 9pm? I wouldn't have thought a ten minute nap would subtract from night sleep. I used to time it so ds would fall asleep on the way back from the park and then wake him up as soon as we got back.

I think when he isn't overtired it would be relatively easy to transition from rocking to cuddling to sleep, to maybe leaving him to it eventually. There's plenty of advice around how to do this without tears about.

@LGBirmingham thanks for your reply! I had wondered about doing a really short morning nap to see him through to the afternoon one, but because it takes so much effort to get him to sleep (usually 45mins including little routine I do before every nap) I wasn’t keen on spending all that time and then he only sleeps for a very short period, as feel I need a breather after that as often exhausted with the rocking/poor night’s sleep, however your suggestion of car nap is a good one! Might try this thanks.

@Skyla01 currently in the middle of the daily bedtime battle! I’ve done an hour with no luck, so DH is trying now. Problem is if he has one nap he ends up with too long wake windows and is over tired, but with two naps not tired enough come bedtime 😖 umm I don’t really know to be honest! He doesn’t say much and usually just goes along with what I’m saying/doing re his sleep. He’s not against doing any kind of sleep training, but he also wouldn’t suggest it, it’s me that manages his sleep and so I guess he just goes along with whatever I think we should do! Which in a way isn’t very helpful, as I feel solely responsible when his sleep is poor, and like I’m getting it all wrong. We’ve tried 10+ times to put him down for his nap/bedtime awake since we got back from the weekend away, but he just screams and screams. I probably made an error in only leaving him for a few minutes when we got home and giving in to rocking him to sleep, but he slept so badly while we were away (averaging 6hrs per night) that I decided I wanted to let him catch up on sleep before I packed in the rocking, and now it seems he’s completely forgotten how to go to sleep without my help 😖 longest I’ve left him crying since things went to pot with his sleep is 15 mins which was today, and he was slowly starting to slow down by the time I gave up, but I had already pushed it way longer than I was comfortable with, mostly out of desperation. I’m still BF, but for some reason he stopped going to sleep with a feed at around 9 months , and so rocking was the next best thing, but he’s getting way too heavy for it now, and it’s not like it’s 2 mins and then pop him down. It’s 30/40mins of walking up and down his nursery jigging at the same time!

Why are you trying to force a child to sleep who doesn’t want to sleep? Parents get so obsessed with bedtimes and putting children to bed. Why not just leave them until they want to go to sleep and go with no fuss? It’s not like they have to get up for school tomorrow. Honestly my life became so much easier when I gave up trying to force bedtimes and just let my kids sleep when they felt like sleeping.

In our case it was a push chair nap, but I'm sure the car would work too. Ds has taken all naps in his pushchair since about 11 months. Feeding to sleep just stopped working during the day. And now also at night.

He can't get calm enough to sleep in day with me lying down next to his bed like we do at night now. The pushchair works great though, push him round the block, bring him in and leave him in the front room. Takes less than 5 mins.

It is really tough what you are going through but you have to be consistent with whatever you are trying. With DS1, it wasnt upsetting getting him settled it just took ages to get it sorted. With DS2 i was so intent on getting the sleep right he was the opposite, he went to sleep really easily but woke up loads and he used my boobs as a soother. I used a different type of sleep training for him. i would put him down awake (even if he fell asleep while eating i had to wake him to put in down) and if he got upset i would pick him up after 30sec and once he was settled again i would put him down straight away. That was much harder but only took 4 days to fix and he is now the most amazing sleeper will sleep anywhere and loves his sleep (but in fairness he was probably a natural sleeper anyway).

Neither of my kids have been great sleepers in reality but the biggest difference between dc 2 and dc1 is how much less clock watching I do.
I don’t bother about wake windows or bedtimes. I also have stopped believing that over tiredness is a real thing.
I get dc2 to sleep when I think she looks tired!

I also don’t bother with early bedtimes (dc1 has started school so has naturally got tired earlier)
but dc2 has a more similar sleep pattern to me because I want to sleep for the whole time that she is - like 10pm till 8am

@Blomonge i did go with the flow up until he was 7 months old, and honestly it was hell. He was such an unhappy baby, and once I started enforcing a nap routine and bedtime he was so much better. Maybe things have changed now he’s older, but he’s not a baby that just drops off to sleep anywhere, any time.

@LGBirmingham i actually did 100% pram naps from 7 months until about 11 months, but that turned into pram sleeping at night too 😖 so when we did sleep training we went cold Turkey on the pram naps! And I guess I’ve been afraid to do them again in case we went backwards. I’m going to try letting him have a short nap in the car on the way into town today (hopefully) and failing that will see if he will have a power nap in the pram. Hopefully this is the solution to bride the gap while we transition to two naps!

@daro i just really don’t know how to get him going down awake again without loads of tears. He’s strong willed and very much tells me what he’s happy with and what he isn’t. At the moment, the second I put him down in his cot awake he starts screaming 😖