1 YO and night wakes - I’m struggling

[Starry4321]

My one year old is still not sleeping through the night. Infact he wakes at least twice in the night. I’ve not had a full night sleep in almost a year and I’m starting to get concerned about the impact the broken sleep is having on my mental and physical health as I feel like a zombie some mornings.

I start the bed process 8pm. Have tried earlier before but can’t get him down then. We are still EBF so I’ll basically nurse him to sleep. By the time he’s in a deep sleep it’s 9pm. He will have his first wake anyone between 12am and 2am. Then the second wake is anytime between 3am - 4am. When he wakes I’m feeding him back to sleep. My husband sometimes rocks him but he screams his head off when he is rocked now even though he used to like it.

He’ll be awake for the day at 7am and want to be crawling around right away. Basically being a mini wrecking ball from the minute he wakes. So it’s not even a gradual wake up.

Is anyone else in a position where 1 yo isn’t sleeping through night? Does this get easier? I honestly feel this stage is harder than 0-6 months. I’m so tired.

That sounds tough for you. I wonder if it’s related to hunger - would you consider a formula feed top up before bed?

My 2.5 year old has only just started sleeping through but it isn't linear, she would do a few nights sleeping through at 1yo but then back to one or two wakes depending on teething etc.

I would say to start bedtime at 8pm is very unusual for a 1 year old though. What naps are they having? Day sleep massively affects night sleep for mine and it sounds like yours might be having too much in the day if they're not tired until 9?

@burgundymug if it’s due to hunger the solution at one year old is more food not formula that’s needed, they don’t need formula over 1 and certainly not if their mother has clearly had enough supply to maintain them until this stage. Formula isn’t a magic formula (pardon the pun), it’s unnecessary in this situation, she could use cows milk if she wanted an alternative rather than forking out unnecessarily for formula or follow on milk.

This is really normal for many of us tbf, I’ve 3dc and haven’t had a full nights sleep in 10 years, it’s exhausting. By 12 months it’s still really normal for them to wake, I found it gets worse as they hit that age and into toddlerhood because they just sit up randomly and want to get up at all hours, mine have never consistently slept more than a few hours until they reach 5 or 6.

Consider me told @Garman!

I don’t know any 1 year olds who sleep through the night. This is, unfortunately, perfectly normal. You won’t want to hear it, but neither of mine slept through consistently until they were 3.

What did help was minimising the disruption to my sleep. We co-slept so after a feed, I could lie down and start drifting back to sleep while they settled, rather than having to stay upright and awake until they were asleep,

I stopped bf around 15 months, so after that, in theory, Dh could do nights just as well as me. Often I still did most of them (because when co-sleeping they were on my side), but when they were in their room it was just as easy for Dh.

7am is a pretty sensible time to wake (5am isn’t at all unusual at this age 😩) but if your Dh is around, he should be doing the mornings, definitely on weekends, if you are doing the nights, so you catch up on sleep.

Probably not what you want to hear, but DH basically sat with DS1 from that 9pm "thank God he's finally asleep" point until he went to bed at 1am. He would catch DS stiring, and try and get him straight back to sleep. It meant, me going to bed at 9.15pm, I could usually get a minimum of 4 straight hours. And that was my magic amount to function.

It won't last for ever!

My 4 yo still wakes 0-2 times a night. If her reflux or having an allergic reaction is playing up she's awake every hour.
Having nanoseconds being asleep and wake is fairly typical too and 7 is good time I know quite a few people who had babies-toddlers that were up for the day at 4-5am

I'm mid 30s and I don't sleep through the night either and I require a cuddle before going to sleep too. It helps the day slip away and me get into the right headspace for sleep. I don't mind doing the same for my daughter. Her sleep has been the same on breastmilk, formula, oat milk and nothing.

I feel for you OP.

We had to do some sleep training with DS at 9 months to break the feed to sleep association (breastfed) - he then went to bed more easily and woke up just once (maximum twice) for a feed, instead of multiple times. Basically we did bath, feed, book then settle, rather than bath, book and feed to sleep before transferring to cot. Would you consider this, along with some extra food before bed?

At 15 months he slept through the night for a week - then woke up again for a few nights but offered water instead of milk, he then started sleeping through. It did not affect breastfeeding, he still had an evening feed til he lost interest aged 2.

Mine is 2.5 and wakes once a night, usually. We tried formula as it's often touted on here, it made no difference. We night-weaned, again no difference - it just meant it took a lot longer for him to go back to sleep.

Unless you sleep train, which doesn't teach the child not to wake but not to cry out for you, then it's really normal for them not to sleep through at this age. MN is very positive about sleep training, a lot more so than anywhere else on the internet IME.

We didn't have a single sleepthrough until DS was 2. Then we had 3 across 6 months. It dropped from 3 to 1 when he stopped napping. Last night he went to bed at 7pm, slept until 1:30, woke up, and woke again at 4:30, then slept until 6:30. The night before he went to bed at 7:15 and woke up once at 3:30, then was up for the day at 6.

Will he let DH do some of the wakings? My big mistake was doing them all myself. DS hasn't accepted DH doing them since 14 months, so it's a been a LLOOONNGG time of me doing the vast majority of bedtimes and almost all night wakes.

It's not uncommon to still be waking in the night at this age.

If he is sleeping 9-7 that's 10 hours. Typical sleep needs over 24 hours for 1-2 year olds is 11-14 hours total so his nighttime sleep seems very normal. If he is having a lot of daytime sleep still it may be causing him to not be really tired until closer to 9pm. You could look to reduce his nap slightly if it's fairly long and/or wake him earlier in the morning consistently. You could also look to night weaning but obviously there are no guarantees with that in terms of improving nighttime sleep.

Sorry I haven’t read the full thread but I have an EBF one year old that has just started sleeping through the night (with occasional wakes here and there).

Essentially we’ve gone cold turkey with the night feeds. He was waking up every 3rds and I would settle him back with a feed, but then decided to send DH to rock him to sleep. Yes it took a while but within 2 nights he wasn’t waking up anymore as he knows he’s not getting milk. Last night for example he did wake up screaming at 11 and both DH and I were rocking him to sleep for an hour until he went down, so it’s not perfect, but I’m not giving in to feeding him which has really helped. We do bed at 7-8 and he wakes up at 5/6am so still pretty tired but it’s better than it was.

Lastly, I’m finding this age a million times harder than 0-6 so solidarity, you’re not alone in that.

I definitely sympathise, it's so hard. My youngest didn't sleep through consistently until she was 3. Definitely waking at least once every night at 1. I stopped BF at 12 months so would give her cow's milk in a bottle at night then usually she would be in our bed the rest of the night, not ideal but at least we all got some sleep that way which is essential when you have to get up for work in the morning.
She didn't really stay in her own bed at night until she was old enough to understand reward charts and we used them to get her to stay in her own bed. Which did work after a couple of gos!
She is 9 now and does sleep in her own bed apart from very occasionally if she has a bad dream etc she will come in with us, she can just be quite an anxious child. Very different to my eldest, she's been sleeping through since 12 months and rarely wanted to sleep in our bed, didn't do anything different just different personalities.

Sorry but it sounds really normal.
:( I know how shit it is.
One thing that could help is to try and shift the feeding to sleep to other calming methods. Have you looked at habit stacking?
Another thing that has worked for us is to stop rocking. After about 7m our baby got cross also when being rocked. So we've shifted to shushing, patting and having a hand on them in the cot or bed. That seems to help them go back to sleep on their own in the night as they're not being got out of the cot.

I agree with PP that this age is way harder than newborn phase and 6 months phase.

Hello - this sounds very hard - I'd recommend sleep training. It's hard for the first few days but you'll be much happier and healthier and so will the baby and in the long run that's more important than a few hard nights (& sounds like they're hard anyway)

Thanks for the support. Baby currently has 1 nap per day. Used to be 2 but he refuses second nap so it’s not worth the fight. He normally naps for 1.5 - 2 hours anytime between 10am and 12pm.

last night he was up from 2.30am - 4.30am so worst night yet. I think there was a teething element last night. My husband ended up letting him sleep on his chest while he sat uk awake so I could get some sleep. This is a tough stage.

Hey Op, any updates?