Split nights

[Sleepy74747]

My 10 (nearly 11 month) old has started having split nights where she’s awake for hours during the night…happy but very awake! I’m so tired :(

does anyone have any experience of this..has two 1.5 hour naps is this too much? I wonder if cutting down to two 1 hour naps would help

1.5 hours is on the long side for a morning nap, so it’s possible she’s using that to make up for sleep she didn’t get overnight. I’d cap it to 45 minutes, which is one cycle, and see if that helps. Afternoon one I’d leave at 1.5 hours but would aim 4 hours from wake up to bedtime.

What are the timings of the naps, bedtime, wake ups and morning?

Because its not really the length of any one sleep that's the issue, it's the overall routine if the day.

Also - how is baby going from awake to asleep for sale of these sleep periods? Because the issue may be down to being unable, rather than unwilling, to sleep.

I would try cutting out or at least drastically cutting down the first daytime nap. You could then bring the second nap forward a bit to give a good amount of time before bedtime.

IME of having 3 children, if they start being really wakeful in the night, it's time to cut down on day time sleeps. And all children are different so while some may still need a lot of day time napping at this age, others just don't. Two of mine were still having two short naps a day at this age. My third was really different: she had dropped to one nap by about 8 months and then dropped all day time naps at just over a year old! I was horrified at first, it just seemed too much to have a child this age awake all day, but the flip side was she went to bed beautifully, by 6 pm and slept right through.

@FATEdestiny So a typical day would be:

wake 7:30
first nap 930ish for 1.5 hours
second nap 2ish for either 1 or 1.5 hours (morning nap always seems to be the longer one)
bedtime 730 or 8pm

she goes down for bedtime very easily but lately she wakes every 2 hours and then is wide awake at 11pm till about 1am. It seems to always be 11pm she wakes up.

i breastfeed or rock to sleep, usually works very quickly but in the night when she’s wide awake nothing works and I generally just keep the lights off and let her climb on me while I lay down until she tires herself out…we cosleep.

@freyamay74 thanks I’m going to try capping at 45 min and 1 hour naps for a few days and see what happens! That sounds very rough for your daughter to have dropped all naps so early 😱 …i do wonder if she’ll drop them early as she’s just started walking so everything seems to be happening quite early on

Ideally the afternoon nap is the longer one. So try calling the morning one at 45 minutes and you should hopefully see the afternoon one lengthen

I don't think your routine is the issue. The issue comes down to settling technique

breastfeed or rock to sleep, usually works very quickly but in the night when she’s wide awake nothing works and I generally just keep the lights off and let her climb on me while I lay down until she tires herself out

You have settling methods that only work when the biological pressure to go to sleep is high. So when babys body clock is saying now we need to sleep, a quick feed and/or rock solves it.

The problem is that, when waking in the night babys pressure to sleep is comparably low. The body has just woken up, having literally just had a chunk of several hours of sleep. While baby does need more sleep, the body ìs not exhausted in that moment.

Your settling methods aren't robust enough to overcome low sleep pressure. That's not uncommon with settling methods like feeding and rocking to sleep. Independent settling methods tend to be mire effective.

Do you want to teach independent settling? If you do, now is a good time. It'll involve crying though. Probably lots.

If you don't want to teach independent settling then you will need to accept there isn't a magic wand. Try to keep baby still when she wakes - climbing over you is making matters worse. Try holding her in quite a tight cuddle so she stays still. For example hold both hands in one of yours, on her chest. Pat baby while holding her.

This is likely to need dome active work to overcome, so if you want yo work on it expect to be up snd awake until baby is back to sleep, rather than just dozing and ignoring.

@FATEdestiny @Sleepy74747 I hope you don't mind but I've hijacked the thread in hopes of some split night advice!

DD is 14 months and has always been a good sleeper up until a week ago when she started waking for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night. It started suddenly last Monday. No routine change or anything else significant I can think of other than the fact she is cutting a back molar but she wakes wanting to play.

I've tried repeatedly lying her back down, she takes her dummy out and throws it and stands up in the cot crying and eventually becomes hysterical if I don't get her out. A couple of the nights I've managed to persevere until she's fallen asleep but the rest I've ended up either with her in my bed or downstairs. If I take her in my bed she doesn't settle down either, just continually sits up and tries to crawl off. If I try to rock her or cuddle her she arches her back and tries to get away.

She usually has a pretty consistent routine of wake around 6:30, nap 9 until 10:30ish second nap 2-3 or 3:15 then bedtime about 7:15/7:30pm. This week however the routine has been a bit haywire because of the split nights, she's been waking later (7:30am ish) and this has pushed everything else later too. Today she woke at 7:30 nap 9:50- 11:10 (I woke her) then second nap 2:30-3:20 (again I woke her as I didn't want her sleeping too close to bedtime). I put her down at 7:30 she was asleep for about 7:45 but woke at 10:30pm and has only just gone back to sleep.

I don't know if I need to try one nap instead of two if this might help... she's always needed quite a lot of sleep seemingly on the higher end of normal and is shattered 2.5 hours after morning wake up so I just don't know how the transition to one nap would work. Any insight or suggestions would be much appreciated!!

@Sleepy74747 I hope you've had some success with your lo on the sleep front x

@Sleepy74747 and @Northernsoul90 did you have any luck fixing it? I’m going through this now with my nearly 6m baby

We’ve had multiple phases of split nights, if it’s one or two nights then back to normal we have put it down to teething or development (usually because a tooth or new skill appears in the same few days as the split night.

Anytime it’s lasted longer than one or two nights it has always been resolved by reducing daytime sleep or extended period between waking up from last nap until bedtime.

DS is now 15months old and went down to one nap at 11months. I know this is on the earlier side but I didn’t do anything to achieve this, he did it himself and his night sleep improved dramatically. He can now manage anything from 4-8 hours between waking from nap and bedtime, usually dependant on his activity levels. I try to limit daytime sleep to 2hrs max and wake him by 2pm and bedtime usually lands around 8pm but realistically can be anytime from 6pm-10pm. I know that wouldn’t be ideal for everyone but we aim for 8pm and if he is tired before I’m not going to keep him up and if attempts at bedtime don’t work I won’t force it if he is clearly not tired.

Im on day 3 of reducing daytime sleep. It’s much less than we’re told a 5m baby needs - 3 naps of 30 to 40 mins. Previously it was 4 naps of that length (or longer) which was fine until last week when the split nights started.

@DiaDeLluvia I think my baby was on 3 naps by 6 months, he only ever slept 30-45mins for naps until he went down to one nap when one day he just started doing 2hrs, now it’s more like 1.5hrs most days. To be honest he didn’t have a nap ‘schedule’ that was the same every day until about 8months when he started napping at 10am and 2pm.

Every baby is different and although it can be helpful to have a guide, sleep times and amounts aren’t prescriptive. For example, a quick google says that my 15 month old should have a 4 hour wake window, which he does on occasion when he has had a VERY active day but much more like 6-8hrs most days.

What I’m saying is listen to you your baby rather than someone telling you when or how much your baby should sleep.

It could also be development, could she be learning to roll, sit, or have you recently started solids?

yes It could be developmental. We’re having zero success with solids - he doesn’t get it or seem at all interested in food. We’ve had our first night with no long wake - he’s currently snoring beside me - but he does wake every 45 mins for a feed so I think he could do with starting solids if only I could get them into him! I don’t mind the regular wakes too much as we cosleep and I’m happy to go to bed early but I’d obviously prefer a couple of longer stretches.

Sorry solids isn’t going so well @DiaDeLluvia don’t stress about it, it took a few months for us too but I just gave him pieces of food and I tried not to worry whether he ate it or just played with it. He eats really well now so it will work out in the end.

Solids doesn’t always help sleep either so try not to add that to the stress, I think we did start to to get regular 2-3 stretches from around 6/7months.

At 15 months it’s still 45mins-5hrs between wakes usually but over 3 hours only happens a few times a week. We cosleep too and it really is a life saver.

We had this. Moving to one big nap solved it.

@DiaDeLluvia hi, I've not currently had much joy although DD has just been ill with a nasty virus this last week so that massively affected her sleep, she's also cutting 2 molars and going through a 'leap' if you believe in those. Any of those things could be affecting it but the sleep issues have been going for around a month now, on and off.

Im currently in the process of cutting her down to one nap from two, we had a couple of really good nights and then wakings the last 2 although for not as long as usual... I'm also not sure if she's having bad dreams as she seems a bit disoriented and is upset when she wakes now as opposed to ready to play like she was before. I've been guilty of letting her sleep too late in the morning as I'm exhausted from the previous night but I know I should be waking her in a morning so that she has enough awake hours throughout the day. I've set the alarm for tomorrow, she's currently in my bed after spending the last 2 hours trying to get her back to sleep. Sorry I can't be of more help! 🤦‍♀️ x

@Sleepy74747 hey, how long did these last for? Currently on night 2 of split nights with my 9mo. In a really similar position to you re naps and settling techniques. Boob works most of the time but hes just wide awake, I could cry 😭