18 month old only sleeping 8hrs a night - help 😭

[MintGreenLife]

I guess I’m just looking for personal experiences, or any advice?! My DS has never been a good sleeper, but for about a week now he’s only sleeping about 8hrs overnight 🤯 he’s always been low sleep needs, only ever sleeping 9-10.5hrs over night, and he has just been on the one nap since he was about 13 months and I cap that to 1.5hrs. Has his sleep needs dropped?! Or is it just a phase? He’s also waking twice and needing rocking back to sleep 🤦🏻‍♀️

a few things that may be at play…

• we are experiencing separation anxiety for the first time
• he was going down awake up until about three weeks ago, during illness and travelling for Xmas I’ve been either BF him to sleep or rocking him. We’ve been home almost a week now and not making any progress, still rocking him to sleep 😖
• I do think he’s come along loads developmentally in the last week or so
• he only started walking a month ago.

Any idea what’s going on?! Any advice please! From a very tired mum x

No advice but watching with sympathy, 12mo acting very similarly! I hate illnesses, they throw everything out the window!

@goodmorningsunny isn’t it so tough!! Really hope someone has a miracle solution for us!

Sounds like he's either still recovering from the illness or brewing something else. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear @MintGreenLife

@PritiPatelsMaker thanks, that could be possible! I do think it’s maybe a developmental thing…we shall see!

That's a lot going on for him, there does tend to be sleep regression when babies are going through developmental leaps.

Also, why do you cap his nap to 1.5 hours? I sometimes found with mine that sleep breeds sleep, and a longer nap helps them be more settled at night. Apologies if this has already been tried, just something that jumped out at me

@JobApplications2023 awh thanks! Totally get where you’re coming from with that. I’ve found if I let him nap longer then he sleeps even less overnight, however this morning he seems very tired from only getting 8hrs last night, so I’ve gone for an earlier nap and I think I’ll let him sleep a bit longer to see if I can help him catch up, in case overtiredness is causing some of the issues! He generally can only manage a maximum of 11hrs sleep in a 24hr period, hence the 1.5hr nap to try and get a decent bit of sleep in the evening!

I think as he starts walking more regularly he'll need more sleep! Mine stayed walking at the same age and coincided with much better sleep. Fingers crossed for you!

I don’t know but I’m interested as all of a sudden my 18mo has needed about 1h less sleep a day - waking an hour earlier in the morning no matter what I do! It started really suddenly and been going on for 2 weeks.