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!

I feel your pain. DS is 20 months and a 9.5-10.5 hr overnight and a 1-2 in the day. The daytime nap doesn’t seem to make any difference to the overnight, and he’s only started sleeping through fairly regularly in the last month.

We stick to an 8pm bedtime because quite frankly I need an evening. We take it in turns to do the wake ups with him.

We’ve not quite mastered leaving him fully, I tend to put him in his cot at about 7.20 and let him wind down. He gets very upset if I try to leave the room, so I now sit near the door and comfort him if needed, but don’t pick him up.

At 9 months, I was still rocking him - even at 16 months! Some of them do need less sleep and are ok, I just make sure I nap with him if I need to, and go to bed for 10!

I think you’re right to enforce naps, it is what some babies need. I’d personally really struggle to have no evening whatsoever for the sake of an extra hour in bed in the morning.

@WalkingOnSonshine my DS is 14 month, not 9 months, unless you just mentioned rocking at 9 months randomly 😂 so yep, also rocking a large and heavy child to sleep! Thanks for this - I agree that lots of babies need that routine, and I very much believe ours does too, and I need an evening too like you. At the moment I do all the wakeups as an BF, and then DH usually takes him out for a walk in the morning so I can get a bit more sleep, but at the moment that’s not really working as I’m struggling to get back to sleep, so am doing bedtime, all the wakeups, up early plus the nap battles in the day, and I’m feeling pretty horrendous for it 😖 plus am working part time from home.

Do you mind if I ask how you soothed him when you stayed in the room? Mine cries regardless of whether I’m in the room or not, and gets very cross if I try to stroke his hair or anything - pushes my hand away, and just gets more and more angry that I’m not picking him up!

Had another bad night. He only slept 8hrs in total, and woke every 2 hours. The 2 hourly wakeups is unusual for him, so think maybe his teeth are bothering him, as he just had two cut through last week. Is it a very bad idea to start trying to put him down awake again while he may potentially be teething?!

With my eldest it worked really well. Though I did the patting along with music (groFriend) for a couple of months before I tried putting her in her own room.

At 9 months I started putting her in her room. Then I rocked and put her down asleep. If she woke I patted and shhh her to sleep. Gradually, she'd sleep through the odd night. By 12 months. Religiously, unless she was ill. I still breastfed her till 13 months. Then probably around 14 months we randomly stopped the patting and since then she's always got herself to sleep. (She's 3 now).

My youngest was tricky. Rocked her to sleep but she still woke loads in the night. So much time spent rocking and patting. From 9-12 months was awful. But we consistently stuck out the rocking & patting. With the music. Then randomly just after she turned 1 she slept through and has most of the time since. We've slowly stopped the rocking and even stopped the patting. She still wants someone in the room with her while she goes to sleep. She's 18 months.

No idea where I got 9 months from, sorry! DS has never really had sleepy cues, he’s literally just fallen asleep having been tearing around the living room 7 minutes ago. So I have to be really strict on nap and bedtimes.

I gently talk to him if he’s crying & say that I’m there etc once or twice, but otherwise I mainly stay silent. I sit by his nightlight so he can see that I’m there, but he also gets a bit annoyed if I touch him. Sometimes he asks for a cuddle, which I’ll give him but won’t pick him up out of the cot (which is what he really wants!)

I have tried saying “I’ll be back in a minute, I’m just going to feed the cat” which has worked a couple of times (he’s obsessed with the cat and first thing he says in the morning is cat ok?) so I make it seem like the cat needs me more 🤣 that’s worked a couple of times, but other times he gets really upset if I leave the room. That’s what I’m working towards though, him falling asleep on his own with me not there.

Sorry I super waffled there. I definitely got to the point with my youngest (many times) where I wanted to give up. I think it all comes down to being consistent.

@WalkingOnSonshine sounds like our babies are very similar! My DS never appears tired either, so I’ve very much had to use nap routines so he doesn’t end up awake all day long!

Oh that’s so sweet about the cat. I think maybe once I’ve got things back on track a bit better with his naps I will try to do something similar.

I expected him to have two naps today, but my first attempt at his nap failed, and in the end he had 6hrs of awake time before he fell asleep. So I think I’m going to solidly try a lunch time nap for a week and see if it solves some of the issues we’ve been having!