Sorry for the essay, here's a TL:DR 11 month old wakes up hourly screaming. Tried all the usual suspects and am looking for tips and/or solidarity from others who have gone through this and found it was related to allergies/ENT issues or that they have simply grown out of it to give me some hope!
My son is 11 months (turns 1 year in just over a week!) and we haven't had more than 1 hour chunk of sleep routinely since he was 4 months old. We've had the odd 2 hour here and there, usually when he's had such an appalling night the night before that he just crashes for his morning nap. But the norm is between 40 mins to an hour. He's on a 2 nap day currently. I've tried eeking him out to a 1 nap day but he ends up so tired he has it too early. We ideally aim for him in bed between 7-8 depending on how appalling his day naps have been. He wakes up between 5:30 and 7am. There is no consistency there so we just try to keep the morning nap to around 9/9:30 regardless of when he wakes up.
He's my second so all this sleep disruption is now really taking its toll on the whole household. My oldest is 3 and although he wasn't the best sleeper he did work it out. I've contacted our health visitors chathealth service so many times for help and suggestions they told me there wasn't anything further they could do for me and to get the duty health visitor to call me. Which I did, twice. Both times I was given sympathy but ultimately nothing they could do until he's a year old.
He is breastfed, not too keen on solid food still however he is getting 4 top teeth through at once at the moment so I can understand that bit. He absolutely will not be laid down awake, we've tried many times to put him down gradually more and more awake, he then fought that and started grabbing hold of us as he felt himself being laid down. Blackout blinds, varying nightlights, no noise, white noise, pink noise, the shipping forecast (no really haha), routine tweeks, warmer/cooler clothing and I've even sprayed the curtains with "sleep" spray! Nothing makes any difference.
To survive my husband and I take it in 2 hour shift rotations throughout the night. I feed to sleep for ease but my husband does just as well with cuddles so I don't think it is necessarily hunger/breastfeeding reliance. Occasionally I've bedshared with him but the wake ups are the same, I can just settle him quicker as he's right there rather than down the hall. We are about to attempt moving his cot back into our room and cobbling together some sort of side car cot scenario (the only recommendation by the health visitor we resisted at first as felt like we were going backwards) as a last resort but I'm not optimistic.
He does have a milk allergy, and so is dairy free although we're about to start the milk ladder with him. We are currently waiting for an ENT hospital appointment as in November he suffered with an ear infection and the problems are persisting still.
So what I am after!? Solidarity maybe? Any tips from anyone whose 1 year old was still waking up hourly. To those that have dealt with food allergies and/or ENT problems: Do you have anything I should be asking about whilst I'm with the specialists? I'm so frazzled right now that I'll probably miss something important.