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Please help me! My almost one year old awake 3 to 5am most nights. Killing us.

6 replies

fantagrape · 01/05/2011 11:10

okay not literally, but my marriage is suffering, last night my husband threatened to leave. The result of two people suffering daily with extreme lack of sleep, and constantly bickering. Dh apologised in the morning, but things are very difficult.

My Ds is 11 months. As per the title he will wake at around 3 and simply refuse to sleep. For the first hour he's quite awake and would clearly quite like to go and play. The second hour he gets tired but will not settle. Usually the final half hour of torture he spends screaming in my arms.

He's a good eater, no problems eating enough in day. His daytime sleep, I've had to structure to fit in with taking my dd to preschool. So his nap opportunity is 1 to 3. (morning nap went several weeks ago). Sometimes he will have two hours, often only one. Noted that bad nap leads to bad night, but if his nap ends early, he won't resettle.

I don't let him sleep on the boob ( unless I'm at my wits end after many bad nights). I try not to aid him to sleep with rocking, patting etc.

I mainly put him down once calm, and try to get further towards the door!

Problem is, he wakes and stands up immediately. He's not quite cruising, so not walking yet.

So anyhow, up he stands, and if not attended to he will make a huge fuss. So I lay him down, little rub on back. Slowly withdraw. Repeat for two hours.

One last point, he is given a bottle when he wakes at ten. Should this stop, I suspect it's not helping. It used to be a dream feed he was woken for at 10. Now he wakes himself my dh gives him the bottle at that point.
Dh reluctant to stop this, thinks he will just scream for it and that'll be maybe four hours disruption at night instead of two.

Can anyone give me any advice, please? Thanks for reading.

OP posts:
IHeartIona · 01/05/2011 11:22

Hi, is he teething? For us it was when teeth were coming that dd was awake like that. Used to give calpol if she would not settle and it would helP if given soon enough.

fantagrape · 01/05/2011 11:35

Thanks iheart.. But no I don't think so, as he has already got 8 teeth, they came one after the other for months.

Also he is usually ok in the day, apart from grizzly overtired sometimes. And no red cheeks etc.

OP posts:
fantagrape · 01/05/2011 11:48

Sigh... Just phoned dh to say I think his 10 pm bottle should stop. He responded that "he's asleep while drinking it".

Doesn't see the issue that a. He's woken up for it, and b. He's fallen asleep over it.

Gahhhh

OP posts:
vez123 · 01/05/2011 12:15

How much does he nap during the day? I might be barking at the wrong tree but we had similar issues when my DS was 9 months old. We stopped putting him down for a morning nap (which used to vary between 1 and 2 hours) and he now has an early long lunchtime nap instead. He now sleeps through about 5 nights out of 7. For some reason a lot of older babies who have long naps in the morning start waking in the night/early morning, wide awake.
We are not finding it easy though to transition to only one midday nap. Sometimes we put him down for 15 mins at about 10 am, but not longer.
Hope this helps.

fantagrape · 01/05/2011 12:29

Hi vez

He doesn't have a morning nap, he didn't seem to require it lately (not too tired if had a half decent night sleep) and also if he does have a morning nap he only wants a proper lunchtime nap after 2.

I try to avoid that as it means I have to get him up soon after - at 3 to fetch my dd from preschool.

OP posts:
vez123 · 02/05/2011 18:41

Hi fantagrape, how much does he sleep over lunch?
We cut my DS's morning nap about 6 weeks ago or so and for a while his sleep improved a lot. I have been finding over the last week though that he started waking up very early, maybe not as extreme as your DS but it seems to be getting earlier.
I am now planning to even reduce his lunchtime nap. At the moment he sleeps 1.5 - 2 hours over lunch but I would prefer if he slept longer at night, even if that means he needs less sleep over lunch. So I might reduce by 15 mins increments to 1 hour or so and see if it makes a difference to his nighttime sleep. It is difficult though as when he wakes so early he is very tired and needs his nap.
And I would stop the bottle at 10. My DS used to wake at 11 and 4 like clockwork for milk (bf) and we got it out of his system by shushing/patting/rocking him back to sleep (mainly DH). Took 2 or 3 days.
What time does your LO go to sleep in the evening? Sometimes moving bedtime forward can help (have no experience with this but I have read that somewhere).
Anyway, maybe I am completely wrong and hopefully someone else with more experience comes along.
V.

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