Low sleep needs

[ru53]

Has anyone else had a child with low sleep needs? Or a child that has started sleeping longer as they get older (I’m hoping)? My 15mo consistently sleeps only 9.5-10 hours at night and max 1.5 hours in the day, but usually just a single 1 hour nap. She seems totally happy otherwise and not overtired. But it’s really hard work for us! She sleeps 8:15 to 6am most nights. Have tried earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes she still won’t sleep more. It means if we want 8 hours sleep ourselves (ha!) we only get 1.5 hours of time together in the evening, where we also have to have dinner and do all the things that need doing so we effectively have zero quality time, maybe that’s just normal.

I think it’s quite normal, both of mine are like it

I don't have personal experience of a low sleep needs baby but from experiences I have read of other parents it does seem that low sleep needs babies do tend to stay that way - sorry!

When did your daughter drop down to one nap? If babies drop to one nap early (around 12 months or sometimes even a bit earlier), they also tend to drop all naps quite early (2 years old or so, sometimes younger) - just so you're prepared!

Totally normal for a lot of children, I have friends who’s babies stopped napping at that time too but I’d be looking at sleep training tbh

My daughter still napped 2-3 hours a day until she was 3.5ish and it was a godsend on a weekend! She still sleeps 7pm/6:30ish now and she’s 5.

Take a look at the blissful baby expert.

My little one is 2 now and has gone from 12 hours overnight to 10 all of a sudden. He only started sleeping through at 15 months so I'm gutted it's dropped down 😅 I think some kids just don't need as much sleep as we wish they would 😂

I can hear her chattering away to her dad now in the next room, we’re both just exhausted. Luckily she’s a delight in the daytime, just full on non stop I don’t know where she gets all her energy. The joys of toddler life! @AperolWhore I guess my question is would there be any point to sleep training because I don’t think she will sleep any longer if she doesn’t need it.

She sounds really nornal.
Does she need you in the night? Even if she does that would be normal and healthy too.
Sorry to say, it sounds like you get absolutely loads of child free time.
If she is happy and settled then be proid you are meeting her needs and don't try and fix what isn't broken. And absolutely don't have any more children, you will never get it this good again.

@ru53 it depends on if you and hubby need the extra sleep. I feel 8pm is late to sleep for a baby that age and would be working towards 6:30/7pm. Plus that means you get 3ish hours to yourself every evening.

The 6am start is normal for most kids and I’m an early riser so my daughter waking up at that time doesn’t bother me but I struggle if she goes to bed later than 7pn.

We’re down to usually one wake during the night now but it’s been hard work to get there. Then she normally stirs about half 5 and needs a bit of resettling to just get through to 6am.

Well I’m relieved it seems fairly common I had just been reading about how important it is for child development to get adequate sleep and she is quite far below the recommended average for her age.

Bit dramatic to recommend not having another child. We’re fine just tired. I’ve been more exhausted in my life unrelated to having children.

Yes agree the 6am start is not the issue it’s the late bedtime which has developed. I might try shifting it earlier again but last time I did that she started waking up ready for the day at 5am which is too early for me! I’ll look at that site you recommended.

I have never managed to get mine (now 2) in bed before 8-8:30 and sometimes later on bad nights. We are slightly luckier in that she sleeps until 7am. We do dinner together at 6-6:30pm and one of us gets the cleanup done while the other is doing bed time so by the time she’s in bed we don’t have anything to do other than relax. I really need that decompression time in the evening even if it’s only 90 min.

Yes we have started having dinner before she goes to bed some nights and I think that’s the answer like you’ve said. Agree the decompression time is so important!

It’s completely normal, just do as @wishIwasonholiday10 suggests, make sure you don’t have to do anything after bedtime except relax, 90 minutes every day is plenty of time to connect with a partner. we’ve been doing that for 5 years now and we’re fine
Sleep training won’t make them need more sleep! I don’t really understand that suggestion

That sounds about like what both my low sleep needs children were doing at that age, and similarly to you, if we put them to bed earlier, they woke up earlier and we picked 8pm-6am as the least worst option. Sleep training is going to make absolutely no difference if they're sleeping well, but just don't need that much sleep.

Also second or third the suggestion to have dinner as a family whilst little one is still awake and then someone cleans up and does any other necessary chores or prep for the next day whilst the other one does bath/bed. One of the advantages of a low sleep needs child is that you do get more time with them after a full day of work/nursery/school.

If bedtime starts slipping later and later, I'd look at shortening the nap – at least that's how it went with both of mine. Before they could fully drop the nap, we had to cap it at an hour, or bedtime became 9-10pm (or worse, it pushed them onto a 25-26 hour schedule instead of a 24 hour one). They both dropped to one nap before a year, and then gradually dropped that last nap over a few months around 2.5 for DD1, a couple months earlier for DD2.

Mine is 3 months old and has gotten down to 10-11h per day, most of which are naps during the day, and there's barely any hours left for the night 😣he seems totally happy with that (we're not :p)

I've got 9 children and sleep needs really do very! I have pretty low sleep needs myself and 3 of mine have definitely inherited that. Youngest is almost 4 and consistently needs 9-9.5 hours a night. She goes to bed around 9-9:30 and is up 6:30 -7am consistently. I prefer the later bedtime rather than a very early start as it gives me a bit of time in the morning for jobs before she wakes up. She has been like this for a good year now.

Mine is 3 MONTHS old and sleeps 8-9h a day, while he should sleep 14-16. It's almost half of the recommended time..

How would you set up a schedule around a baby's sleep? He's 3 months and 3 weeks old.

The baby falls asleep at 7-8 am and if not woken up would continue to sleep till 3pm. I have some health issues due to the birth and twice a week I have an appointment in the morning. I should also walk the kid as early as possible so that he starts sleeping at night. During the day, if I manage to wake him up at 11 (earliest possible), he later has 2 naps - usually one 2 hours long during the walk, and one 1,5 hours in the afternoon - this is when I eat my main meal. At 8pm he gets bedtime routine and sleeps until 10pm. Then he's mostly awake until 8am in the morning. My partner can work from home 3 days a week, and has flexible working hours, but needs to do around 8h per day of focused work.

Our current schedule is like this: at 8 I breastfeed, from 9pm I try to sleep in a separate room, usually fall asleep at 10:30pm my partner does one feeding with a bottle. At 3am we switch and I try to sleep again from 7-8am once the baby sleeps and if I don't have any appointments. In the afternoon I sometimes try to nap during baby's second nap, but often can't fall asleep. My partner works this way from 9am till 7pm (as he also helps around the house during the day), and sleeps 6 hours. I get 4,5h of sleep. Help.

My partner can't fall asleep before 11pm and I have great difficulty sleeping during the day, also it takes me ages to fall asleep.

That's very hard, he's got stuck with day and night largely reversed. Before you can think about a schedule, you need to work on helping him get that big sleep to nighttime.

One way to do this would be to try to stretch it later and later. Let him have that big sleep, but try to put him down as late as possible. All the distractions to get him to 8-9am, then 9-10am, etc. Follow his cues – some days you'll get lucky and be able to stretch it a bit longer, some days you won't. This is the slow but safe option (as safe as anything is with baby sleep!). It would let him keep his same rhythm of sleep – and an 8 hour block is good for his age! – just rotate it to (ultimately) something like 10pm to 6am. However, it's a long way to rotate.

A way that might be faster, but a bit more unpredictable would be to try to rotate the other way. I would do this by temporarily embracing his 'day' starting at 10pm. Get up, stimulating activities, deliberately avoid naps after, say, 2-3am (depending on his wake windows). Then try to get him down at 5 or 6, and see if he'll do a big sleep. If he does (even if it's more like 5-6 hours than 8), pull the other naps forward including bedtime – bedtime is no longer 'bedtime', it's going to become a nap. This depends more on you having a reasonable sense of his wake windows and being able to manage his sleep and stimulation during that 10pm - 5-6am block. However, you could potentially rotate faster this way, and it's less far to get to something you can work with – even sleeping 2-10am is much better than where you are.

The fastest but least predictable way would be to try to really limit his naps during the day, deal with the pain of an overtired baby, and hope he'll then do a big sleep when you do put him down at 8pm. He might. Or it might throw his sleep patterns totally out and he starts waking every 2 hours regardless.

@ru53 did this get any better for you? My 15 months old has always woken early 5-5:30am maxing out at 10 hours sleep.

I know this is an older thread, but just wondering how things panned out for you since?

My 15 month old has always been an atrocious sleeper. Until a month or two ago she would only ever nap for 30 mins at a time (in her moving buggy, never in a cot). She dropped to one nap about 2 months ago and it lengthened to an hour (which seems like heaven to us, she's still in her buggy but we can stop and have a cup of tea in a café or something and it's really nice). Bedtime is between 8:30pm and 9:30pm. She hates going to bed, hates lying down, the whole thing, so there's lots of screaming before she sleeps. Was your toddler like that? She wakes between 6am and 7am.

Anyway, today she was woken by something, during her nap, so only slept 30 mins total, but went to bed quite easily at 7:30pm! I still feed to sleep because, well, see above about the screaming. Before someone tells me I need to stop feeding to sleep, I did stop before Christmas, assuming she'd get used to it. She never did, every night she would scream and cry before bed. Still does but not for as long when I can get her down with the boob. I only restarted feeding to sleep in the last month.

Starting to think maybe we cap her nap at 30 minutes? That's so far below 'recommended' day sleep though, so I really don't know. Any advice from OP or anyone else who has experience of low sleep needs babies?

You can still feed before sleep Cat without feeding throughout the night. Have you read Dr Jay Gordon’s Night Weaning Method?

Personally I wouldn’t cap the nap at 30 minutes at this age. 45 is a full sleep cycle so if you do want to cap it I’d at least look at that.

I’d also have a look at the No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers. It helps to build up sleep associations so, hopefully, they go to sleep and stay asleep.

The other thing I’d look at is that she’s getting enough calories in during the day. Sometimes we don’t realise that they can be a bit under the amount they need and this can affect sleep. The Caroline Walker Trust has a good guide on how much they need here.

How is she if you’ve had a more active day, like swimming, going to the park or to playgroup?

Thank you, didn't know that about 45 minute sleep cycles, good to know.

Yes I've substantially cut down feeding at night (she used to wake every 30 - 60 minutes, but only wakes 2 or 3 times a night now), but still do after 2am because if I don't she will get up and do a split night (awake for 2 or 3 hours. She still does this a few times a week, but not every night).

Tried sleep associations before, they do nothing for her. She doesn't make sleep associations.

She eats really well. Three solid meals with many snacks in between. Tonight she had lasagne for dinner, twice. Once at 5pm, and again around 6:30pm. Have tried doing calorie rich suppers and it makes no difference.

Having an active day makes no difference whatsoever either. People with other (regular) babies / toddlers can't relate to this, but her sleep pressure is not impacted by how active or otherwise she has been.

None of the things that 'help babies sleep' ever made any difference with her, from the early days right through to now. Baby massage, swimming, starting solids, getting more active, even her vaccination days, she still never slept.

@CatCaretaker My baby is sleeping pretty well at the moment, but it's not down to anything I have done/changed. I received all the same wisdom - she'll sleep when she starts solids/when she drops milk/when she starts walking/when she falls asleep independently/if you tire her out...nope. None of it made a lick of difference. I think it's just time.

I don't think feeding to sleep is a problem. I hold my baby to sleep most nights (some nights she does fall asleep by herself) and sometimes she sleeps through the night and sometimes she doesn't.

I totally get it. My first was very much like this only he woke up between 3am and 5am. There’s a reason they use sleep deprivation as torture.

Does she go to Nursery? Sorry if I’ve missed if you’ve already said this.

Thank you, yes this is it exactly.

Ok good to know that time helped. Just gotta wiat it out.

I don't get any downtime yet because by the time she is finally asleep I am exhausted and if I leave she will usually wake so I just stay in the bed with her. Craving some time to myself again but it will be some time yet before that's a possibility I reckon.