Hoping for some wise advise. My 13mo's sleep is getting worse not better and I am so tired I can't function day to day let alone work out how to improve the situation. Sorry for the length of the post, I am trying to put down everything which seems relevant. Thanks in advance to those who read it.
A typical night involves him going to bed around 7.30-8pm, he is BF and feeds nearly to sleep then I try to put him in his cot awake. He is angry and protests very hard about this but can usually be soothed to sleep in his cot by a combination of patting/stroking/a still hand on his back or singing a lullaby (different things work on different nights).
He then wakes randomly, at least 2-3 times per night, but at different times. Sometimes he wakes at 10pm, 12am, 3am, 5am; or it could be 1am, 3am, 5.30am, or any variation really. I'm desperate for some continuous sleep (if I get 5 hours in one go, I feel fantastic) but due to the 10pm-midnight wakings even if I go to bed early I rarely get more than 3 hours in one go. Most nights I am up with him every 1.5-3 hours.
I used to always thought his wakings were down to hunger. Until about a week ago, I always used to feed him back to sleep in the middle of the night, as this was the path of least resistance. However, his wakings have been getting worse not better and we need to sort his sleep, for the sake of my sanity (I have been to GP as I am suffering problems with memory and cognitive functions which she put down to chronic fatigue). We therefore decided a week ago to night wean (no BF between 8pm and 6am). This has gone much better than expected, generally no harder to get him back to sleep than it was with BF, and he didn't even seem hungry at breakfast time, so I decided his night wakings must have been about comfort not milk. However his sleep is still just as bad, so the night weaning hasn't been the magic improvement I was hoping for.
When he does wake, he instantly stands up in his cot screaming for us. Usually the first one or two times per night it is relatively easy to soothe him back to sleep. I am trying to teach him to sleep in the cot, so I lean over and give him a hug which turns into lying him back down, then pat / shush him, and usually just the reassurance of a hand on his back is all he needs to relax and go back to sleep.
However, frequently we have prolonged screaming bouts one time per night, where he is awake but doesn't want to be, and pretty much nothing we can do can help. This happened before the night weaning as well as after, so it isn't just that he is hungry and/or cross about not having milk. It can start at any time of the night (last night, 3.30am, the night before, 1.30am) and often the time it starts will move back or forward by an hour each night for several nights in a row, then there will be a few nights' break. When he has these screaming bouts, it is very loud and angry/distressed crying (not grizzling back to sleep). Nothing we can do (including cuddling or bringing him into our bed) will stop him screaming. It will go on for 1.5-2 hours till he tires out and falls asleep. My husband says since he will cry anyway, leave him to cry in his cot, but he will cry for 1 hour plus, standing in his cot screaming (yet if we go to him, he still screams in our arms).
It isn't teething or illness. He's 100% fine during the day and was hardly bothered at all by the teeth that have come through already. In addition, this has been going on for months.
He naps well. 2 hours in the middle of the day. If he's had a bad night, he will sleep for 3 hours.
He sleeps much worse now than as a little baby. He used to sleep 9 hours aged 3-6 months, then hit a blip at 6 months, then went back to sleeping 7 hours from 7-9 months.
I went back to work at 10.5 months which hasn't helped, and I do think there is an element of separation anxiety at the moment, but his sleep had got bad before I went back to work, and we've tried co-sleeping and that isn't the solution either. He still wakes (and sometimes does the screaming thing), and I can't sleep properly with him in the bed. Also I feel the inconsistency isn't helping.
I don't like it when he cries, I hate even more the thought of leaving him to cry on his own, but don't know what to do. Certainly what I have been doing so far (feeding, soothing, taking him to sleep in our bed) hasn't worked at all. I feel I've made a major error somewhere along the way. I don't know what to do and would welcome a fresh perspective - my husband and I are so tired we keep going round in circles all the time.
Everyone I know is advising me to do controlled crying / cry it out. I don't want to but am out of all my reserves of energy. So many posts I've read say "I've done controlled crying and he just grizzled for 10 minutes" - but this IS proper distressed crying. I've no problem leaving him to grizzle to get to sleep.
Answers on a postcard, pretty please? Or suggestions as to a good sleep consultant.