1yo sleep advice

[ThatGentleScroller]

I’m hoping someone can help because I’m honestly at my wits’ end.
My little boy has just turned one. He used to be a really good sleeper and has slept through the night before. We still get the odd good night, but for the last month or so he’s been waking in the night more and more.
We’ve always had a solid bedtime routine and he usually goes to bed around 7pm. He has two naps a day normally 1-1.5 hours in the morning and then 30-60 minutes in the afternoon. I usually cap daytime sleep at around 2-2.5 hours, and he has about a 4.5-hour wake window before bed.
At bedtime we usually give him a cuddle until he’s sleepy, then put him into his cot. He can fall asleep independently, so I know he’s capable of it, but recently we’ve not really pushed it because when he gets really upset I just haven’t had the energy to cope with lots of crying while we’re already so sleep deprived.
The problem is the night wakings.
If he wakes, I cannot settle him in the cot. He just gets more and more upset until I pick him up. As soon as I cuddle him he falls asleep really quickly, but the second I try to put him back in his cot his eyes ping open and he cries. I can spend literally hours repeating this over and over.
Last night he woke at about 2am and was awake on and off for around two hours. I tried everything I could think of…bottle, water, Nurofen, teething gel, leaving him for a bit, comforting him in the cot and nothing worked. The only thing that settled him was being cuddled, but every transfer back into the cot failed instantly.
He has just had two teeth come through so I don’t know if it’s teething, but surely it can’t be every night?
I’m so exhausted now that it’s really starting to affect my mental health. I dread bedtime because I never know what sort of night we’re going to have.
Has anyone been through anything similar around this age? Was it separation anxiety, a sleep regression, teething, an ear infection or something else? Did anything actually help? I feel like I’ve tried everything and I’m completely stuck.

My DS was like that. Slept badly until 10 months, then very well 10-12 months and then it all went to pot again. It was horrible, trully worse than the newborn days, until around 18 months when we went down to 1-2 wakings. At 21 months he stopped all night wakings, for good. It just happened naturally.

And nothing helped, no. A lot if it was teething, horrible case of hand foot and mouth at 13 months that sent us to hospital, lots of viruses and fevers and I also think separation anxiety as he only settled with me.

My 2yr old did this around that age. She’d slept right through from 12months then just had a blip around 1yr. We did camp out method. You stay with them in room and comfort but try not to engage or take out. Every day you get closer to the door. Took about 2weeks and we could leave. No tears and would just listen to her tonie and play and drift off. No more issues since then.

Hey, no advice but solidarity - am in what sounds like a pretty identical situation here. My son turns 1 this week, has never been a brilliant sleeper but we had got to the point where he was only waking a couple of times a night and went back to sleep very easily with a quick feed. For a couple of weeks now he’s started fighting sleep, takes at least an hour of feeding/rocking/being held to fall back asleep and often wakes immediately on transfer. I’ve spent a good few hours sitting awake with him asleep in my lap. We did find that nurofen helped so I think pain from teething (or something else? I wondered about earache but surely that would be worse/have other symptoms with it?) was a factor. But I’m putting it down mainly to separation anxiety which suddenly kicked in for us around when I went back to work and he started nursery a month ago. He also used to be fine with my husband putting him to bed and dealing with night wakes, but now he wails for me and really escalates if I don’t come in and feed him. To cut a long story short- I feel your pain and send lots of sympathy, hopefully it can only get better from this point as I don’t think it can get worse?! Have come across quite a few threads where people say it got better from 18-24m… but that feels a long way off…

I’m probably a bit old school but if he’s having 2 hours awake at night I’d drop a nap.

One thing to consider first though is if he’s learning a new skill? Is he trying to walk for instance? That can sometimes mess up sleep.

Is he getting enough calories during the day too? Sometimes it appears that they are but with a few tweaks they go back to sleeping again.

There is a good guide on feeding 1 to 4 year olds from the Caroline Walker Trust here

Exactly the same here. I’d say 7pm bedtime is too early with that much day sleep. It’s hard until they can happily cope on 1 nap. I’d try switching the naps around, do 15 min power nap in the morning and then a longer nap after lunch. Long awake period in the night shows he needs less day sleep / later bedtime.
We switched to a floor bed at 12 months and it did help as we could lie with our daughter rather than holding / transferring.