11 month old never slept the night, we can't do it anymore

[am988]

Hi,
We're exhausted. Sometime in the early hours i was crying as we're so exhausted! So if anyone can offer any tips please! We re desparate!
So this is our ds2. Our ds1 woke up once at night but he always went straight to sleep.
Ds2 was bf till 10months, thought formula would help but doesn t seem like it. During the day he doesn t drink milk, though i try, he drinks wayer has yoghurts cereal etc but the most he drinks in the late pm is 90ml. Then drinks loads before bed. About 250ml..7ish and some 200ml 11ish, then we normally feed at 3.30ish...cause we run out of ideas and are so terribly exhausted we give in: he would have woken again at 1ish.. then 3...after he wakes at 3 ish and we feed at abt 3.30 he ll probably settle at 4.45 if er re lucky, up again at 6.15! Tru the day he has nap in the morn...short.. sometimes he doss not sleep but rests. He has a good 2hr nap in the afternoon, then he gets really tired and is asleep by 7. No issues to sleep in the pm or night, first lag of the night is ok, .. he sometimes wakes between 10.30 and midnight for bottle but after that its disaster! From then longest stretch is 2hrs!
We also discovered he has eczema... came out with the hot weather, sometimes its the itching that wakes him i apply loads of creams...
He s also teething!
But his nights were always like this, when i was bf i thought it was cause i was bf and always fed him.
Should we give him water at the 3am waking? I m not sure that ll work.
I don t know really. Maybe lots of issues, but i m seriously thinking we ve done sonething wrong with this one, ds1 seems an angel compared to this one.

My immediate thought was he's intolerant to dairy - the ezcema and poor sleep would point to that as an option. It could also be silent reflux too. So switch to a comfort milk and stop dairy for a bit and see if any change? If so speak to the GP outlining the exact issues and ask for medication or hydrolysed formula (which you might have to flavour eg with a drop of vanilla essence to get him to drink). He would have reacted via your BM if you had dairy too.

Also if he's tired I'd get him to bed earlier - asleep by half 6 if possible. He sounds overtired - classic symptom is sleeps well the first half of the night, less so the second half of the night (mine did this). So make sure he gets a decent 30-45 mins morning nap around 2 hours after waking up.

My Ds was like this. He was bf until 10 moths and was up every 3 hours for a feed. Weaning and ff just didn't help. He only had one 20 minute nap a day so it wasn't that he wasn't tired. The worst thing was if he woke he would be wide awake for 1hour 45 minutes. You could time it. Then up at stupid o'clock in the morning. I don't think it helped he teethed from 4 months to 20 months so usually there was some sort of teeth thing going on.
We tried everything but he was just a crap sleeper and he didn't seem to need much of it. In the end we got a double bed in his bedroom with a bedside and whenever he woke one of us would go in, take him out of the cot and sleep in the bed with him. He was happy and we got more sleep. Slowly, slowly he got better at sleeping and only started waking once and sleeping to a reasonable time in the morning- 7am which was fine. By the time he was 2 and a half he slept through and since then he has been a fantastic sleeper.

What time does he have his last solid food before bed? Maybe all the drink before bed is symptomatic of hunger?

Thank you all. It is very encouraging to see we re not alone!
To answer your questions:
Yesterday for example he had a half hr sleep in the morn, yes 2 hrs after he woke, then good nap 12.30-2.30,
He was tired at 6, gave him quick bath and slept at 6.30,
Up at 10.30 for bottle...
Then up at midnight.... then long to settle and up and down till morning.. yes ended in our bed...had more milk at 3.30am... then a blur but he properly settled 4.45 ...ish for an hr and a bit: he was exhausted in the morn and this morning had an 1.5hr nap, perhaps too long but i don t know what to do anymore, yesterday he never had a morn nap and good aft noon nap yet was still a disaster!
Food:i do offer him lots of food... he prefers puree and lately been giving more finger foods... but he d eat toast all the time otherwise and nothing else. So maybe you re right tru this transition he s preferring his milk.
Eczema: its genetic, runs tru the family his dad s side bad eczema...
Seeing gp end of week. I ll be asking her what to do too.
Will take your suggestions, try give more milk... today was going to cut his pm nap shorter... see if that helps!
I gave up hoping he ll ever sleep!
Thank so much...

The ezcema can be triggered by dairy so I wouldn't rule it out. A genetic predisposition to reacting badly to dairy is not uncommon and easily fixed.