20 month old has never slept through the night

[Ellebel]

Hi all. I am really starting to get down about my sons sleep. At nearly 20 months old and we have had maybe 5 times ever he has slept a solid 10 hours. Most of the time he still wakes around twice a night, often more. I always blame it on regressions... Teeth etc etc but at this point as every other baby I know from NCT etc is a pro at sleep most of the time I am starting to really question what to do.

His current schedule (which is dictated by nursery but kept to mostly on weekends-
-Wakes anywhere between 5am- 6:30am.
-Breakast 8am.
-Lunch 11:30am
Nap 12:15/30pm, lasts between 1.5- 2.5 hours, at which point we wake him
Dinner 5:30pm
Bedtime 7pm (bedtime routine has been the same since tiny, bath, bottle (220mls) bed. He can fall asleep straight away or sing to himself for an hour, but we rarely have to go in and settle him.

Night wake times very, can start at 10pm, or 12am or 2am, there is pretty much always one around 4am. We have tried- shh patt, timed visits to calm him and simply leaving him ( I tend to cave after around one hour because he is just getting more and more upset). Eventually we end up giving milk, and I know this is causing a problem. It is watered down to the point where the last bottle if he has mulitiple of a night is basically water.

Is the only way I can get him to sleep through to do full blown cry it out? I have never wanted to as I hate the idea and from times of semi trying feel like he will just cry all night, but I am reaching a point of desperation where I am not sure what else to do!

Many thanks for any advice x

My daughter didn't sleep through the night until 2. We had 2 glorious weeks before she went back to waking. She is 3.5 and she can sleep through the night but as soon as something is wrong she wakes up again.
She has severe reflux and at 3 it went out of control again waking hourly some times every 40 minutes. We got her meds increased and she within 1-2 weeks she started sleeping until 5 and 3 months later after going backwards with a couple of viral illnesses she sleeps 8 until 7.30.

At 20 months I thought she would be waking me in the night until the day she left home! We had a big improvement when we moved her into a bed. We had coslept so much I think maybe this felt more normal to her. We did this at 2 with a side to the bed and around 2 and a half we took the side off and had an improvement then too.

Mine are 2.5 and 5.

5 year old sleeps through and doesn’t disturb us maybe 20% of time time.

2.5 year old I know it has happened but I can’t remember when!

Both just climb into our bed - 5 year old just wants to know you’re there and he doesn’t even disturb me. I just wake up and he’s there. 2.5 year old wants a cuddle and a sip of water usually.

IMO it’s more effort trying to fight it than it is just going with it.

20 month old here too - never slept through the night at least two wakes a night … no advise just solidarity that one day we might sleep again

My 27mo still wakes once most nights so I feel your pain.

I would restrict the nap to no more than 1.5 hours and keep it a consistent length for starters. Def doesn't need to be 2.5 hours at this stage.

Have you tried experimenting with reducing nap time?

Thanks everyone. Seems it’s not quite as uncommon as I thought which is both reassuring and daunting. I might have years of this to come!! I’ll definitely try reducing nap time- he often is beside himself upset when we wake him so I feel bad and think maybe he needed more sleep but makes sense over napping could be atleast part of the problem

If you're on Facebook please do check out Feed Sleep Bond and The Beyond Sleep Training Project group for evidence based information and support.

There's a reason why cio and any type of letting baby cry for a need feels wrong to us. Unfortunately society pushes unrealistic expectations on baby sleep and their solution is "let them cry" rather than educate parents regarding biologically normal infant behaviour and sleep and providing actual appropriate support.

My son is 7 in August and doesn't sleep through, my Daughter is 2 in a week and has from few weeks old....they're all different

Completely normal. I have 3 DC - DC 1 and 3 didn’t sleep through the night until they went to school 🤷🏻‍♀️

My twenty month old has only slept through twice. He's underweight though as he was premature with iugr so he does need feeds through the night, which I think is different to most babies that age. Don't think he'd sleep through even if it wasn't for milk though. He wants us.

Mine was 5.
5.
Tried leaving her to cry; she projectile vomited through sheer rage.
However, since then, great sleeper. Not up in the night as a teenager etc (she’s 19 now).
It is one of the reasons she’s an only child. Literally couldn’t risk it happening again.

25 month old here, still wakes at least once but more often twice or three times every night.

This is definitely within the range of normal.

It is hard going but not a sign they will always be wakeful.

Sounds like not enough sleep pressure. I would personally cap the nap to an hour and push their bedtime back an hour (7pm is still early) and see what you get to?

If you can do provide a cup with water that they can help themselves - children often still get hungry/thirsty during the night at that age - my son didn't actually regularly sleep through until 2, so I suspect you are almost there!

My son (who is now an adult) didn’t reliably sleep through until he was six. I spent years as an absolute zombie, getting woken at least once a night and being up at 5 every morning, taking hours to settle every evening.

Many times I considered walking away and never coming back but you learn to live with it and eventually it gets better.

My DD only started sleeping through at about 17 months. If she isn't eating enough during the day she will still wake up and need milk but that is very rare as she likes to eat. She has breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack to keep her full at night.

Dd2 didn't sleep through until around 2 and a half, it's quite common op sorry 😬 my friends little boy didn't sleep through until he started school at 4 🙈

Finishing teething was the magic cure for us

I think nap time should be an hour to try and see if it helps but to be honest I think by 20 months it’s too late to sleep train and with my DC who was a bad sleeper it never really helped anyway. I promise with time it will improve or they can entertain themselves. My DS was a horrendous sleeper and at 4 still wakes early and not always through the night but it slowly got better after 2. What we found helped: -taking turns catching up at the weekend on sleep -snoozing while he watched iPad at 5am next to him in bed (not saying that’s great parenting but survival was what I was after) -dropping his nap at 2.

My DD didn't sleep through with any regularity until she was 3.
And she dropped naps completely by 2 🤪 I almost lost my marbles with sleep deprivation. She really struggled to get to sleep and the only thing that has ever helped that is those aromathery sleepy stickers. Somehow they also seem to settle her when she wakes up briefly overnight as well. She still ends up in our bed after bad dreams but on the whole is much better.

Mines nearly 4 and she hasn’t slept through the night yet. She was another one who dropped the nap quite early too. She just never seemed to need that much sleep. Now she’s at school nursery 4 days a week she seems to need more sleep, she’s down by 6.30 most nights and goes down like a dream so that’s nice. She’ll still wake up at least one though - although these days it doesn’t take long to resettle her literally just ‘I’m here shhh go back to sleep’ and handing her her bunny that she’s usually dropped will do it. Earlier/ later bedtimes make no difference and she never lies in past 6 either.

I know this sounds really unhelpful and it’s honestly not meant to be (and if looking into sleep training or whatever feels like a better fit for you then no judgement here) but I honestly feel so much better when I just go with it rather than trying to ‘fix’ it or railing about how/ why we will ever change it. I’ve tried all sorts but I just accept this is normal (for her and in general) and it will change eventually but for right now she needs us in the night and that’s that. But Im not sure when I reached that stage of acceptance - it took a while!

It’s normal!!!!
check out the fb page Biologically normal infant sleep (something like that) they will tell you!
for some reason we are programmed as humans to insist our children sleep away from us at night. Babies and toddlers don’t like to be away from us. It’s biologically normal they are close. Your child probably just wants a cuddle. It’s all normal! I’m pretty sure it’s normal to wake for a drink sometimes too like us adults do
you don’t need to CIO.
also bare in mind 7pm-5am is 10 hours of sleep plus a 2 hour nap is 12 hours. That’s loads. It’s not a surprise he wakes

My DD is now 3, we sleep trained her at 11m and had months of bliss with her sleeping through 12 hours, but when she was 2.5 she started waking 1 or 2 times in the nights again, we always get up and give her a drink (she never liked milk so still had a bottle of toddler formula) then she would go back to sleep on her own after that if we left her to it, anything before 6 was treated as a night waking.

For the past month or so she has been sleeping through again seemingly just by herself for no apparent reason.. I think its's just luck to be fair, I'm done trying to figure it out!

You may find that because he puts himself to sleep, if you can meet whatever his 'need' is in the night, he may go back to sleep on his own, we've always thought getting up for 10 mins to see to her then everyone goes back to sleep is better than fighting because 'they should be sleeping through' without intervention at that age, but that's just our take on in.

The way I see it is sometimes I wake up and feel thirsty or need the toilet or have a bad dream etc, so she's no different really.

I’m sorry but it’s just normal. Some people may be exceptionally lucky but most babies, toddlers and children wake up at some point at night, either frequently or have phases of it. My DS didn’t completely ‘sleep through’ consistently until about 4 or 5, and even then if he is ill he’ll call for us occasionally. They can be teething, ill, developmental leap-ing, having nightmares… It is normal and will get better.

we've always thought getting up for 10 mins to see to her then everyone goes back to sleep is better than fighting because 'they should be sleeping through' without intervention at that age, but that's just our take on in

Oh this absolutely - doing anything different not only results in full on drama and no one sleeping that night, but more disturbance the following nights as well. So much easier to just go in to her and pass bunny or a drink of water or cover her back up or whatever it is. It’s really just her wanting to know we’re still there I think, as she would be able to do all of these things herself since we leave a nightlight on, her water accessible etc.