I am so desperate, please help me before I tip over into actually insane

[roslily]

Ok, I will try and include as much info as poss without going on too much.

Ds is 14mo. He sleeps in his cot, goes down well. We have a bedtime routine and he goes into his cor, no probs, night night then he goes to sleep.

However he has always been an early riser-5am, and sometimes earlier. Now he is waking several times in the night, and then waking at 4-5am and not settling. It isn't ready to get up either as he is still tired. He has also started taking a long morning nap (2 hours) to make up for this.

I have ruled out hunger as he eats so much, and on the occasions I have offered him milk he still won't settle. I have adjusted heating and bedding so he is warm.

I work 3 days a week and it is killing me. I just broke down in tears to dh this morning, I just can't go on like this.

I am willing to do anything. I am at the point now where I can barely function.

how much daytime sleep does he get in total?
when DD started getting up at ungodly o'clock we cut her morning nap. had to stay in for a few days to ensure she didn't steal a crafty snooze in the buggy, but it soon worked.

we had an early riser to and cut down daytime naps and it took about a week but he is always up after 6 now.

Maybe your baby is going through a new developmental stage? My ds is 4 months so sleep all cocked up because so much going on cognitively all of a sudden. I found this site helpful:

www.isabelagranic.com/bed-timing/

It is kind, non-Gina Ford but science-based child development blog with articles on each stage.

Some of this may also help:

ask moxie has some really good articles on developmental spurts/sleep issues and the comments after articles are also useful sometimes.

wonder weeks

HTH!

Don't let him nap in the morning. Keep him up with whatever means possible.

I would treat any waking at 5 am as night waking - no lights, shh/pat, here is your dummy or comfort blanket, maybe a hug, and back down into the cot you go.

Roslily

My ds is 13 months and is waking every 2 hours for milk and last night stayed awake between 2.20 and 4.20 and then woke at 5.30am.

I have 2 other ds and am absolutely shattered. Im scared to go to the dr in case they think I cant cope. Dh is great but thinks I may need anti d's but how can that help when I have barely 4 hours sleep a night.

I stopped his morning nap and he was sleeping between 12 and 3pm which meant he slept better at night but now he is only having up to 1.5 hours nap he is waking every 2 hours at night.

He really seems to need his night milk. He eats 3 good meals a day with a bottle of milk am and pm.

I dont think I can cope any more.

Thanks for the advice. I did try and drop his nap before, but he goes to a childminder 3 days and she said she couldn't keep him awake as he was tired. Going to start on Sat, so he has 4 days at home with me to get into routine.

Peachespaige - Why exactly are you feeding your 13 month old milk every two hours through the night? He is not a baby anymore. He has no physical reason to feed every two hours. His is not a need but a habit.

Stop night feeds immediately. He will cry for a few nights, start eating more in the daytime to compensate, his eating habits will change and he will sleep through.

Pechespaige I was exactly were you are 2 months ago. I was considering anti-d's and I was on the edge.

To help us i used a sleep consultant. 2 months later his sleeping has improved. He is waking only in the night now if he is teething or sick. we stopped night feeds by gradually reducing the amount of time he spent on the breast by a minute a night, rather than going 'cold turkey' however we did get to a point when he did cry for about half an hour until he realised there was no milk coming.

But he did go down from three feeds to one feed. We did some other things too but thought that if you wanted to eliminate night feeds this might help.

What's his routine with meals? Not a definite fix, but we realised that dinner at 4:30pm just wasn't enough (this was when DS woke at 4:30am every day, about the same age as your DC), so we started giving a small snack at 4pm ish, and then a big filling meal at about 6pm, then straight into the bed/bath/milk/stories routine. Took a while to work, but DS will now sleep way past 7am (and until 11am this morning!!!!

Peachespaige - just saw your post too. Personally I wouldn't just cut out the night feeds in one go, as he's taking an awful lot of milk overnight (sorry to disagree Cote :) )
DS was like this, waking every 2.5 hours through the night, and cutting out the milk feeds just resulted in a screaming meltdown.. and after 14mo of NO SLEEP I just didn't have the mental energy to deal with it.

DS was having 3 x 7oz bottles between 11pm and 6am.. I was KNACKERED.

We targeted the middle bottle, reduced it by 2oz per night until that one disappeared. Once that one was gone we reduced the earlier bottle, and ended up with one bottle at about 4am. After another few days we slowly reduced that one down and just gave water if he woke.

It took about 2 weeks, but was surprisingly easy.

HTH

We have an 18mo early worm and have tried quite a few things since it started (9 months ago..weep).

What has worked for us, finally, is this: DP gives her a large cup of warm milk when she wakes up at 4.40 or 5.30 or whatever, then they sleep on a sofabed mattress on her floor. She won't go back in her cot (or maybe we aren't interested in risking it) and it has to DP. She won't go back to sleep if I do it.

Not an ideal set-up, but it works - the latest she has slept now has been 7.50-odd, which is a revelation. And since we've been doing it, her initial waking time is getting later, though can still be quite early. 6.50am is the record. So hoping it'll keep going that way then we'll stop the mattress bit.

Forgot to say, we had a long morning nap phase too and I spent a couple of days doing really fun things around that nap time (museum, high-energy snacks), while aiming for 1-3pm nap. We did it no problem, though not sure it had any effect, but certainly worth ticking off the list of things to try!