15 month old waking and gas

[craigslittleangel]

A little history.
My LG had colic until three months and has never fully fallen into a sleep routine. Every milestone seemed to indicate a change in her sleep pattern. She did co-sleep till three months. From about 4 months to 12 months she was up twice a night and would be up for an hour or two hours.
She has had a morning nap since she was 4 months of 30 minutes to 2 hours. (mainly an hour).
My Oh takes me to work so she may nap on the way in for 5 minutes, but apparently she mainly chatters away.
She is now down to waking up at 4:30 and either staying awake or fitful dosing until 5:15. Waking is normally proceeded with a lot of farting
She has also begun to wake every hour for four, after she has been put down to sleep.

Don't get me wrong, considering the problems before; I am more than happy that she is now getting long periods of sleep. But its really clear that she is not getting enough for her.

At Christmas and a few occasional mornings, she has slept till 6:30/7. The difference in her personality and behaviour is amazing. She may still have a long morning nap, but she is happy and smiling all through the day.

I don't feel she has a really good sleep pattern and she is still very reliant on her dummy.

My question is, does anyone have any ideas as to how I can help her get either my quality sleep or more of it at night?

My DS is also 15 months and has never really slept through consistently (there was one period of about 2 weeks when he was 8 months). He goes to bed at 7pm every night and he sleeps until 7.30am about 2 nights out of 7. The rest of the time, he wakes up any time between 11pm and 4am usually for 2 hours or more. Nothing seems to work once he's awake.

So I'm not really in a position to give advice!!! But the best nights do seem to coincide with the 'right' timing and length of nap during the day. Since 12 months, he has had a lunchtime nap as opposed to a morning nap. He's normally asleep by 12.30 and I find that 1.5 hours is the best length for him to sleep well that night. If I let him sleep longer, he won't go down to bed very well at 7pm. If he wakes up after an hour or less, he will get overtired and will usually sleep badly that night as well. i can't control the nap as much as i'd like to be able to, but perhaps you could try moving her nap later (to lunchtime) and seeing if that makes any difference.

Was also going to suggest same as pp. If she is waking at 4.30am & napping in the morning at say 10am, then if her bedtime is 7pm or later she is awake for a really long time between the end of her nap and bedtime. This in itself is likely to cause overtiredness which can cause early waking. I think from a 4.30am wakeup though, you will be hard pushed to keep her up all the way til lunchtime, so I would suggest that you gradually push the nap later by 15mins/week. This will take some time, but it is the best way to get her used to taking a later nap, whilst making sure you don't cause too much OT. Whilst the nap still starts before midday, I would also do a slightly earlier BT (if you aren't already doing so), especially on days where the nap is short.

If it helps my now 18month old DS used to wake early & we have recently done the above to solve it. It took 4-6 weeks & he got rather overtired during the process, but for the last month he has now been waking at 7am, napping 12.30-2.30 & bedtime is 7.30pm. I do wake him in the morning & at naptime I let him sleep a maximum of 2hrs. Some people hate to wake a sleeping baby, but I swear he is getting more sleep now by doing just this than he ever has. And he is so much happier for it. xx

Hi I have two DS and both have been rubbish sleepers for different reasons,
My second started poor sleeping at 10 months and is now 16 months and just begining to settle. The main problem was waking to be in agony trying to trump! the only way he could get some rest was upright on my chest and then he would tense and cry out and trump. This went on and on until I changed his milk to Lactose free blue top. It took about about 3 -5 days and I swapped his yoghurts to lactose free. I havn't gone down the full lactose intolerant diet route and he has everything else as we do.
The wind has greatly diminished and now he seems to cope with it in his sleep and doesn't wake him, if he wakes it's teeth or cold etc..
He know sleeps 11 ish hours , I have difficulty getting him to sleep as all the good practice before 10 months has gone out of the window as I couldn't let a child in pain cry, but I am very positive and hopefully my bags will shrink ish soon !
Hope this is of interest

This is interesting. My DD is 15mths next week and after sleeping relatively well for a while has regressed significantly in the last month. But I too have noticed wind. She also seems to be holding her breath quite a lot. What is that about? I'm heartened to discover it is not just her.

Not that it explains it all away, but she has tripled the amount of food she eats this week; there are certainly teeth coming but I've seen them for weeks coming up and down.

Thanks to all the posts.

I will definitely think about switching her milk for a week to try it. And work on nap time. Although with her dad during the week its an early afternoon nap, but with me it seems to be 10 and then she needs a lie down.

Will report back with anything that works.