11 Month Old Sleep

[OliviaH2]

Hey, looking for advice for baby sleep.

My second child (11 months) does not sleep well at all, she wakes more than a newborn during the night and barely naps during the day. Some days she is up from 5:30am and will only nap 20 minutes throughout the entire day until she goes to bed at 7pm.
I did gentle sleep training with my first which had amazing results for us, but our second baby just won’t have it. She gets louder and fights the sleep so much that I end up upset and exhausted myself.

I solo parent during the week as my husband works/lives away for majority of the week, so I’m struggling with the lack of sleep as well as having an under active thyroid. I feel terrible for my eldest as I don’t get one on one time with her and I know that my 11 month old needs the sleep! During the night she starts in her cot and then comes in with me as I’m too exhausted after some time of trying to keep her in her cot. I need to stop bringing her in but it’s a vicious cycle when I’m already exhausted.
I just don’t know what to do. Any help or advice?

I am breastfeeding so that is the comfort in the night, she screams until she gets it😭

previously tried “just chill baby” course which worked so well for our first but no luck this time.

Thank you xx

What is your current schedule in terms of bedtime and wake time? Is she very unsettled in sleep, snoring or sleeping with mouth open frequently?

Some babies can drop to 1 nap at this age especially if they are naturally low sleep needs, but 20 minutes does seem too little.

Breastfeeding back to sleep at this age seems very normal to me, night weaning not being recommended until at least 12 months old.

Thanks for your reply!
For bedtime we do bath, story and I feed her which she usually falls asleep to - I know it would help if I keep her awake to put her in bed awake however she is usually so exhausted from being awake all day she almost always falls asleep feeding.

She does most of the time sleep with her mouth open.

Okay, thank you that’s reassuring!

Ah okay, sleeping with an open mouth most of the time can be due to medical issues like enlarged adenoids which can also lead to restless or poor quality sleep. So you may want to speak to a GP about that to hopefully rule out anything major.

Apart from that the only thing I can add is that average sleep needs ages 4-12 months is 12-16 hours overall in 24 hours so if you're aiming for e.g. 12 hours overnight it may be a bit too much sleep then, so adjusting the schedule e.g. by gently nudging bedtime later may help her to sleep better overnight and possibly during the day. However I would have any potential medical issues considered first of course.

That’s really helpful, I haven’t even heard of that before so will definitely look into this.
She was up from 4:30 today and has only slept 20 minutes, I’m exhausted so I don’t know how she isn’t! Thank you 🙂

No worries, hope you get it resolved soon

Honestly I’d just embrace the cosleeping and feeding her back to sleep. She’ll sleep better for it, and so will you.

sending solidarity OP. As @LuluDelulu says - if you’re both getting sleep and happy with the co-sleeping then maybe just embrace it and don’t stress too much about her sleeping in the cot.

I personally loved co-sleeping until my dc would only asleep attached to my nipple which became uncomfortable and meant I was less rested. At this point I chose to sleep train and haven’t looked back. We used Ferber - not the gentle type just normal Ferber. I would advise if you want to try this be prepared you might need reinforcements so maybe try and do when your partner is home for a bit. Need to be consistent for at least a week but most people see improvements within a few days. There will be tears but I think overall less crying than if I hadn’t have sleep trained as she has slept for 12hrs since she’s been 6-7 months old.

whatever you do be kind to yourself - it’s a hard phase x