This will be long, so I don't dripfeed info, sorry.
I have a lovely 14 month old Ds who has always been a good sleeper; has slept through the night since 10 weeks and not wanted a feed in the night since then, either. He's had bad spells when teething, but he self-settles well and once asleep, tends to stay asleep. Occasional wail in the small hours for a dummy to be replaced, but that's it.
Anyway, when he hit 11 months, he dropped from 11.5 hrs a night to 11. This didn't really worry us. However, since he turned 1, it's like a switch has been flipped. Every 2 weeks, he drops 30 mins from his night sleep. He is now only sleeping 9 hours a night. Also, he just will not sleep before 9pm at the earliest, no matter when his last nap ends. He could wake up at 5.20pm and be asleep by 9pm, or wake at 4 and not sleep until 9.30.
He is not ill, not teething and not having any sort of growth or developmental spurt. We keep our bedroom (he still sleeps next to our bed in his cot) very dark and at a temp of 18-21 degrees. There's no sounds waking him and he is a halpy chappy in the day. The amount of napping he does seems to have zero influence on the length of his night sleeping; he could nap for 1.5 hrs one day then 3 the next, and he'll still only sleep 9 hrs both nights. He is definitely not ready to drop to one nap yet.
I think I know what is causing it, but can't solve it: for the latter half of his sleep, he rolls onto his front to sleep. I know he does this because he gives out a wail when he pulls his dummy out because it's uncomfy. Then, after a few hours, he rolls onto his back and, in a lighter sleep, becomes aware his dummy is not in. Then, he wakes up abruptly and fully and starts screaming his head off and standing up in the cot. It's at this point that we wake up and it's already too late. Nothing can calm him down unless he BFs. I pop him on, but he just doesn't drop off. I can see that he's still very tired and trying to get back to sleep, but it doesn't matter what I do to make him as relaxed and comfy as possible, he struggles but doesn't drop off again. We've tried rolling him onto his back and popping the dummy in when he's moved onto his front, but as soon as we move away, he rolls onto his front and spits out his dummy again.
We are worried because it's just not enough, but also because it's really impacting on us. Because he will not fall asleep before 9pm at the earliest, we have to choose between staying up in order to have some time together or apart and then get less sleep than we want/need or we get more sleep but don't get to spend any real time together.
We're really worried that he's going to go down to 8 hrs soon. I mean, where will this end?!
We live in a 1 bedroom flat with a very large bedroom, so there is nowhere else we can put his cot.
Was just wondering if anyone had come across this sort of problem and if so, did it resolve itself and their tot went back to sleeping longer, or do you have any tips? It's really worrying us. I'm disabled and in constant pain, so never getting any down time or adequate sleep is really crippling me (if you pardon the pun!). And, of course, we want our Ds to get enough sleep, poor thing. He is tired in the day, so I know he needs more. HV was useless when I asked for advice.