18 months sleep regression, split nights.

[SnugTurtle]

DC is 17 months now, and for the last week they wake up at around 1am and awake for 1.5hrs. They were never a good sleeper, but since transition to one nap we finally started having good night sleep until split nights started happening.

DC wakes up around 7.30am, nap at 12pm for 1.5-2hrs and bedtime at around 7.30-8pm. We co-sleep but DC mostly sleeping in their toddler bed which is attached to our bed.

Does this sound like a sleep regression and just need to wait it out?

Any advice on how to survive split nights.

If it's only been a week, you could wait it out a bit longer, but split nights often occur when you are aiming for a bit too much sleep in 24 hours. I'd try trimming half an hour off wherever best suits you and DC – later bedtime, earlier wake, or shorter nap.

Exactly what @skkyelark says. I've got a 16mo, we go for the sake amount of nap but up 6.45am, asleep between 8pm and 8.30 (unless the lunchtime nap has been bad or obviously too tired to get to 8pm).

Thank you, rising earlier is definitely not an option after a sleepless night. But we will try later bedtime and 1.5hr nap.

Was your DC also having split nights before or were they not good with sleep in general?

I feel like some children are just better at sleeping at night. My DC only recently started having long stretches at night i.e. longer than 2 hours, but they always were good at daytime sleep and no matter how much I capped their naps - nights were bad. They used to wake up at 6.30am and bedtime at around 8pm with 2 naps, and maybe 2.5hrs day sleep in total. But then when we finally moved to 1 nap, things got so much better until now :(

Neither of mine were good sleepers, and both are low sleep needs on top of it – we had various periods of split nights when we didn't have the amount of sleep/length of wake windows/number of naps right for them. At 18 months, DD1 would have been doing roughly 8pm-6am overnight with a 1-1.5 hour nap in the day. DD2 was similar, but bedtime more like 8.30pm.

On the positive side, DD1 became a much better sleeper by about two (excluding things like teething, illness, the odd bad dream – the second molars have a lot to answer for!). It's harder to say with DD2 for medical reasons, but I think she probably outgrew the 'just because' wakes around a similar age, perhaps a couple months later. So it very much is something they can outgrow!

Oh I see, thank you so much for sharing! Fingers crossed. The other reason I don't want to cap their naps or wake them earlier, most of the time I do that means they will be unsettled all day. Delaying bedtime is also tricky for the same reason. Definitely not a chill child. So I had to just go with a flow with them.

Even my 13 month old doesn't need that much sleep. Think you need to shave off an hour somewhere.

I would do bedtime at 8.30.

For reference, my 13 month old sleeps 8pm - 6.15 am and has 1.5-2 hours of sleep a day (sometimes one nap, sometimes 2 short naps). Not overtired at all. Some babies really don't need 14 hours of sleep a day.

Mine was the opposite, crap naps but fairly good nights. However from 12 months we had a mix of difficult bed times (running round and round the cot for an hour) and early wakes at 5am and we had to cap day sleep at 2h max and keep moving bedtime back until the early mornings stopped. Solidarity, broken sleep is torturous and I think you have had a worse time than us! We only get lots of night wakes now if teething (molars) or if DC has an ear infection.

You can play with bedtime moving 15 mins at a time and see what happens, so you hopefully don't lose too much sleep yourself.

We had a horrendous 18 month sleep regression with DC2. I had to stay with her holding her hand for an hour plus in the middle of the night, otherwise inconsolable screaming. (didn’t dare let her scream too much as also had poor sleeper and early waker DC1…)

It passed in about 6 weeks or so. There were better and worse bits in the 6 weeks so it wasn’t 6 weeks of split nights but took 6 weeks till it stopped.

Thanks, I think you're right it's too much sleep, I think we started with 7.30pm because they couldn't do such a long wake window. Maybe they can now

Just wanted to give an update in case anyone who is also struggling sees this post. We changed DCs schedule to, wake up 7am, nap at 12pm until 1.40ish, and bedtime around 8.15pm. That actually solved an issue with split nights quite quickly. We only had one split night since, which was tonight which I think was due to something else. 6+ hrs wake window seemed a lot at first but it's fine.