10 month old, waking multiple times during the night & needs me to go to sleep

[CTJE]

Hi ,

I'm jumping on here in the hope that I can find some solidarity at the very least.
My 10 month old (just turned) has never been the best sleeper (well she was before 5 months then everything changed) but recently we've seen everything from split nights , where she can be awake for up to 3 hours , to multiple wakes a night (sometimes hourly).

Heres the thing. She goes to sleep on my knee. No rocking or bopping and it only takes her a few mins. She can be lifted into her cot either drowsy or asleep and will go off to a solid sleep for at least 4 hours before the wakings start.
Bedtime is usually 7pm.give or take 10 minutes.
She always wakes at 6- 6.20am regardless of what has happened during the night.
Her wake windows are 2.45-3/4/4. So her first nap usually 8.45/9 and 2pm. I've started to cap them both at 1 hour as I feel like anymore and she has even worse nights than usual.

We've tried sleep training (gentle approach ) we paid a consultant so we can't afford to pay another and I'm not willing to try cry it out at all. Not even slightly.

I'm just wondering am I silly to be still holding her to sleep. I've tried putting her in awake and she'll just push up on all 4s and then sit up. There's no way she'll relax in the cot now that she can crawl. I see mums on Instagram (I know!) and friends who just put baby into their cot and walk out. I don't know if I'll ever be in this position but would like to just get through the night first.
Has anyone managed to do this in a similar situation to me? Any advice would be amazing.

I would do whatever works when she's sleeping so poorly and only try getting her to sleep a different way when she's sleeping better.. the wake windows I'm not sure about, I'd be pushing for 5 hours at least before bed.. she might not be tired enough to stay sleeping through sleep cycles..
Some babies really don't need as much sleep as others or as recommended..

11 hours from bedtime to wake up is a long night, she might just not need as much sleep as you’re trying to get. Could you try a later bedtime, with a 30 min catnap to get her through if needed? Like 9pm. See how that goes for a while.

at 10 months I think mine was doing maybe 1h30 morning nap, 30 min afternoon nap, bed 8:30/9 and waking 5:30/6 (with a few wakes). But no way he would have done 11 hour nights even with wake ups!

Sounds like she loves getting a cuddle to fall asleep, I don't understand the desire to have babies fall asleep on their own of they love the connection.

Suggestions:

• later bed time so the last wake time is longer?
• shorter last nap?
• one big napkin middle of day (maybe not quite ready to drop a nap though)

Also, it is pretty normal sleep so it will just change as she gets older!

Good luck with it all!

What did your sleep consultant suggest? What sleep training methods did you try?

We had a similar issue and did 'pick up put down' on recommendation of our sleep consultant, after 2 nights I was able to put LO in the cot and walk out...

I have a 12 month old and have similar issues--I feed her to sleep and at wake ups as it is quick and she just won't put herself to sleep any other way. I've tried and she gets so upset so I'm just going with it for now.

What has been really helping at the moment is capping her first nap to 30 mins, it seems to mean she will then have a longer stretch of sleep at night, not sure why! Here is our current schedule:

Wake anytime between 6-7.30
Nap 1: 09.30-10
Nap 2: 2.30-4
Bedtime: 8.15pm

When I cap the first nap she wakes once or twice at night, if I don't she could wake 4+ times. Good luck!

Just to say my little one was such an awful sleeper from around 6-12 months. She was never great before then but it was 1-2 hourly a lot and getting a longer stretch was rare!

We breastfed, rocked to sleep etc anything that got her to sleep. We co slept too. I did what I needed to do to survive as well.

She is now 15 months and she started nursery at around 1 year. Firstly she never had any issue sleeping at nursery. They rocked her and put her down, she slept. Many of my friends with sleep trained babies had difficulties with their LOs sleeping at nursery (we expected to see the opposite effect but no!). Over time, without any sleep training, she just started sleeping longer stretches, she is happy to just lie down and you massage her legs/ arms now. Sometimes we rock her. Sometimes we just let her wriggle (she never cries just moves around) whilst sitting in her room when she’s restless, she goes to sleep on her own at these times. She now has slept through the night for a few weeks and I guess I just wanted to say you are not creating bad habits if that’s what you’re worried about. So if it’s working for you and you’re getting through, then maybe take a breath! Sometimes it’s developmental, sometimes like for us it was food sensitivity and developmental. You just don’t know a lot of the time so it’s just doing what feels right for you. Even now if she wakes 3 times before 12am we just let it go and co sleep and she sleeps, and the next night she’ll still sleep through in her cot. Sometimes they just have bad weeks/ months and need us. People kept telling us she’d get used to it, but she seems to be doing fine

i guess I just wanted to reassure you that they can go to sleep without sleep training eventually.

As others have said ione thing I would say is we do have a lower sleep needs child and so our WWs at two naps were 3/3/4.5-5 I think. So if you think it’s a WW issue you could try extending them a bit or the one before bed? Your LO may sleep later but it may help. If that is ruled out, you might need to ride the wave and trust that your LO will sleep. I felt like ours never would but miraculously she just does now!! We did go down two 1 nap recently

Hi @shardlakem we did stay and support method with the sleep consultant. So where you put baby in cot awake and comfort her with pats and or singing/humming etc. If she cries you use distraction techniques which were blowing on her face gently, banging on bars of the cot or turning up the noise machine. This drove her insane. She absolutely hated the distraction techniques.

I must look into the "pick up, put down" technique but I'll have to implement it myself as my husband won't pay for another sleep consultant (they're so spenny)!

Thanks so much for your reply

@MyOpenEagle Thank You so , so , so much for your reply. And for taking the time to write it all.
You've made me feel so much better about my parenting. I was beginning to doubt everything I was doing and was convinced I had missed a trick or created her back sleep habits.

I'm 100% going to extend the last WW, I had been thinking this but genuinely I had lost confidence in trying different scenarios and was convinced if I changed or extended the last WW, I'd ruin my night. I mean some nights it can't get any better.

Im so glad your little girl is settled into nursery. That's amazing.
Thanks for being so kind

Sounds exactly like my DC2 at that age @CTJE! You're not doing anything wrong at all.

At bed time I put her down in her cot with her milk, and 1 in 7 nights she was asking to be picked up again so she sits on my lap, drinks her milk and falls asleep there. I then transfer her to the cot. She was only conking out in her cot if she was knackered but I always put her down there first and sometimes pottered in and out the room a little bit to see if the tiredness would catch her.

She's nearly two now and it's increased to 4 in 7 nights that she will fall asleep in the cot.

Over night she still wakes between 1-2x a night but it's trending upwards. She only has 2-3+ wake ups if she's teething or sick.

She's my second child and I can assure you, they do just start sleeping longer. Some are better sleepers than others. Just keep your routine consistent whatever it may be.

The sleep consultant sounds quite mad with her 'distraction' tactics 😂 that would rile anyone up!

Also agree with @MyOpenEagle - lovely advice!

@WilberForce5 THANK YOU so much !!!
I don't mean to sound ungrateful but to know someone else has had the same, if not, similar experience to me just makes me feel so much better and that I'm not failing.

I love the sound of your routine with your LO. And I have to learn that everything is slow and steady with babies. If we could get to where you are by the time she is you LO age, I'd be thrilled.

And as for the sleep consultant.....hehe! You're not wrong there. We had to abandon ship, I think if my LO could talk, she would have told me exactly what to do with those distraction "techniques".