1 year old sleep…where am I going wrong?!

[Ismo456]

DS has just turned 1 - older siblings are 6, 8 & 10 so I am really out of the loop and can’t remember what I did with my others!

He was a dream until about 9 months. Only ever woke for 1 night feed from birth until 3 months, then used to sleep right through!

howerever since then bad habits have started to creep in and now it’s got to the point where he’s a terrible sleeper.

firstly, he has no idea how to self settle. Has always fallen asleep on his bottle in our arms and transferred to cot. This was fine until teething kicked in, which now means he wakes multiple times through the night and needs to be cuddled back to sleep. Have tried letting him cry (although I hate it and end up cuddling him). He also wakes at 5am every day and is AWAKE. Won’t even be cuddled back to sleep.

Judging by my smart watch, I’m averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep per night and I don’t think i can sustain it much longer. its also affecting his siblings who his crying is now waking in the night and also means one of them is getting up at 5am too. Not ideal when they have busy days of school and sports clubs.

His typical day looks like this

wake 5am
milk 6am - breakfast 6.30am
15/20 min nap on school run 8.45
11.45/12 lunch & milk
12.30-1.30/2 - nap
5pm dinner
7/7.30 - bed

the above is on a good day, if we have plans he can end up having a longer morning nap of 45 min/1 hour and then be awake for most of the day afterwards.

someone help me! He has a black out blind, white noise on until I go up to sleep. I don’t know how to get him sleeping again and I’m dreading the 6 weeks holidays with even less routine.

he is extremely active during the day and never sits still!

all advice welcome!!

Following as in a similar boat!

Mine is about the same age and recently needed a later bedtime or less nap time in the day (if LO doesn't nap very much in the day, I bring bedtime forward). Currently we are doing about 90 mins nap in the day, usually in one block, and start bedtime 7.30pm and asleep between 8-8.25. The main way we realised they needed less sleep was the eye watering early wake ups.

We've swapped bottles for 360 cups. I started with daytime bottles and over the course of ten days swapped then all out. I didn't want that bottle= bed relationship forever, but I don't see why baby can't have some milk before bed for comfort and helping them settle, I just didn't want the baby chugging an enormous bottle (which is what bedtime had turned into).

That doesn't' seem like enough sleep, my 2 year old still naps for 2hours a day plus nearly 12hrs at bedtime. The more babies sleep the better they tend to sleep. If my LO had a early start at 5am, they would be having a 2hr nap around 8am. Why are they only having 45mins?

Drop down to 1 nap a day in the middle.

Bring bed time earlier.

Time to move to one nap around midday maximum 1hr 30 mins. Try it for a week consistently.

3 under 3 and not one has a day nap and if they did they would be up way to early so 6-30-7pm is bed and they wake between 8-9am also had to put up a blackout blind for early sunrises

Thanks all

the thing is, some days he does just have one nap per day, sometimes 1 hour at most. Still doesn’t change how the night/morning wake up goes.

re a short morning nap, this is if he’s in the pram when I’m on the school run. If he’s woken up early, there is no way I can manage to keep him awake for a 40 minute round trip in his pram.

so so hard to keep a routine going when there’s older ones that need to be in school, at clubs etc