How to get my 14month old LO to sleep through the night

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Hi Im desperatley seeking advise on how to help my Lo sleep through the night. She is 14 months old and for months has been waking every 2 hours , getting her to sleep is never a problem and when she does wake its only for 5 - 10 mins max as she doesnt want to wake, but cant get back to sleep herself so a wee cuddle or a quick bf does the trick. Im so tired though im up and down from 8pm til 6am and my partner is constantley shattered for work as everytime I get up im also waking him. Any advise would be great appreciated im willing to try almost anything ( not controlled crying dont agree with it sorry )

Have you tried leaving her for 10mins? It is quite uncanny often they can be crying quite hard but then go back to sleep dead on 10mins. Maybe she will self-settle if you give her the chance as it sounds like she's very sleepy still. 10mins feels like an eternity the first couple of times but it's really not so bad and it makes a big difference to you and your oh if you don't have to move, even if you still wake for a few mins.

I think she'd climb out of bed looking for me if I left her too long, shes been in a bed since 11months as she hated the cot, but as she knows I will always come for her she either lies there or sits up in bed waiting for me , but worried if I didnt come she may look for me and get more upset. Plus theres no way my partner could stand 10 mins of crying .

my 14mth old dd is in my bed! but to stop bfeeding at night with my boys i would give them a cuddle or pat and shhh them at this age. my dd has a dummy which none of my boys ever did, so she generally just replaces that herself in the night, she still needs a little pat or a cuddle here or there tho.

if you dont want to bfeed her in the night then you coudl try pat/cuddle and its a case of being consistent and reassuring but very boring in the night and then mine have all gradually woken less. like you we couldnt leave ours to cry in the night. they were all in our bed and then a toddler bed in our room until age 2-3yrs and then happily went into their own rooms. no quick fixes tho i am afraid!

we co slept until my LO was 8 months old but she crawled around the bed so much that no one else could sleep and we were terrified she'd fall out and get hurt so we put her in a cot which worked for a while and shes been in her own room since 10months, then she started refusing the cot so we tried the toddlers bed at 11 months which is great, its just getting her to stay asleep thats the problem :( I dont mind bf at night if only it wasnt as frequent so I could get some sleep too! Do you think shes waking as often as she knows she'll get a feed and some comfort or is it just that her body doesnt understand that she should be sleeping longer? We have had the occasional night where shes slept a good 4 or 5 hours between waking and it was total bliss but her sleeping patterns seem to change from week to week and teething doesnt help either!

i think its probably a combination of habit and teething, he age, and also needing comfort.

i think if you didnt feed at her night she may well wake less, but that isnt always the case!

with my boys at this age i would feed them at bedtime and then i tried shushh/pat and they gradually got so they would go longer at night without a feed, at first it was just the first part of the night wehre they didnt feed, then that stretched out so 7pm-1am then it gradually got so they went from 7pm-5am at which point they would be in bed with us (having started off in the toddler bed) and that was fine by me!

we have a futon with a toddler bed next to it, so the crawling, fallingout wasnt an issue and tey would start off int he toddler bed and then at some point crawl into our bed (it is right at the end of our bed adn the same height) and then eventually they just started sleeping longer and longer in their own bed.

we never left them to cry tho, i would try shushh/pat etc or cuddles but i did feed them if they were upset and they needed it, buti was very boring, no talking or playing etc kept it dark, quiet etc and did the minimal i needed to to help them go back to sleep. like i said it wasnt a quick fix but it did work for us and seemed much kinder than leaving them to cry which i could never do.

is there anyway her bed could be in your room so you dont have to get up and go to another room, or put a mattress down on her floor and sleep there for a bit maybe?

our room is too small but on rough nights I have camped out in her room with her or my partner has ended up in the spare room and shes been back in bed with me. I'll try to not feed everytime and see if just a cuddle works :)

thanks for your advise x

Totally different age, but my DD was waking loads at 4mo and wouldn't settle unless fed. I decided it was wrong to be feeding her more frequently at night than in the day, so I picked a limit, initially 11pm, and wouldn't feed her before then, and then not until 3 hours after that feed. If she woke between times one of us would just sit with her, no physical or eye contact, until she went back to sleep. It took less than a week before she was only waking for the two feeds. It was only a couple of weeks after that she dropped to one feed most nights, though she hung onto that til quite recently (she's 11mo). It only took about 20mins actually before she fell asleep - before that we'd been shushing, patting, stroking, cuddling etc and failing, hence feeding but for our DD, less attention was better. Something to bear in mind. And also to be totally consistent. If you decide to put a hand on her then do that, do not give up and start cuddling. Changing what you're doing only confuses them!

My youngest is 16 months and very active until the late hours shall we say.

The best way I deal with it is to make a nice little playpen with the sofas and put the toys in the middle. That way she seeing you while you dose on the couch and she plays until she sleeps safely.

thanks for all the advise ladies!! The past few night Ive managed to get her to stay in her bed and I just rub her head until she drifts off again and im only feeding her if I have too! thankfully when she wakes it is only for 5 mins at a time so hopefully her body learns to sleep for longer periods at a time ...............soon! haha