Experiences of awful-sleeping toddlers?

[Anothernameagainforthis]

My DS is just gone two. He has always been a pretty poor sleeper - a very light sleeper from birth who slept only in direct contact with me til he was a year old. I have always fed him to sleep, at bedtime and throughout the night. Til he was a year, he woke pretty much every hour. Since then, it's usually been every two hours - occasionally three, sometimes still every hour.

My general feeling has been to go with it - I do find it OK to live with, now. He starts the night in his own bed (as he initiated a month or two before his second birthday) and usually I resettle him in there once at about 10, then he generally comes into mine on the next waking at about midnight. But increasingly I don't feel as though he is going to do it on his own, ever. I know lots of parents of older children who did do it when they were ready, but none of them were waking this frequently still at 2.

I'm thinking very seriously about night-weaning, but he only has 1.5 molars left to come through and since he struggles so badly with his teeth, I don't want to do that til they're all done with. But, and this is probably just me being delirious through two years of awful sleep, does this sound outside the bounds of "normal" - should I be trying to eliminate any physical/medical reasons for his awful sleep, before trying to persuade him to get on with it? I have never expected a bf-on-demand co-sleeping baby to sleep through, or even very well, but waking every hour or two consistently for two years seems very poor even compared to all the other babies and toddlers I have known with the same sleep associations etc.

I would really, really welcome any stories from people who had similar sleepers. I have read a lot about children who slept similarly to my child at a younger age, but never anything about how children this age and older progress - seems that either children get naturally better by now, or parents (justifiably) intervene sooner. Is WIO an option for us?

[back ground info]
He goes to sleep by himself for naps at nursery and has done so since 16mo.
He has asthma - has the brown inhaler and only very rarely needs the blue one, generally if he has a cold.
He has/had a tongue tie (never cut because not dx early enough, and doesn't seem to have caused any issue with eating solids or speech).
I'm a single parent, so there is nobody else to help.
Although I'm probably going to night wean once he's done with his teeth, I'm reluctant to wean altogether. I am planning to drop feeding to sleep altogether, though, rather than the Jay Gordon style where you still feed in the evening.

This is long, sorry. Thanks if you made it this far.

Poor you! My DD1 (2.2) has always been a pretty awful sleeper too, very easy to wake, difficult to re-settle. Now she seems to go through phases. If all goes well, she will sleep through most of the time (although usually still wakes early to come into our bed) and will resettle easily if she does wake - but if she is teething (which seems to be most of the time) or ill (pretty much the rest of the time!), she will be up two or three times, often for an hour or more - seems to be the time it takes the calpol to kick in!

As he self settles at nursery, I wonder if you could just work on his bedtime for now? I found with DD1 that when she was finally able to self-settle at bedtime, her night time sleep did improve noticeably - although obviously not perfect as above!! I used a gradual retreat method - although our problem wasn't feeding to sleep, more that she needed me to rub her back until she fell deeply asleep which could take a back-breaking hour or more. I have had to repeat it several times as travel seems to upset her again but it still works each time and generally without too much distress on either of our parts.

Instead of feeding to sleep, could you tweak your routine so that you do feed a bit earlier then stories and cuddles? Either cuddle him to sleep to begin with then put him down, or put him down and cuddle as best you can in his cot. If he gets at all distressed, you can always stop and go back a step or two.

HTH.

Thanks charlie, that is helpful. When you say just work on bedtime for now, do you mean only change the bedtime routine and just stick to the same old for nighttime wakings, for the time being?

I feel as though mine is always either teething, ill, or otherwise 'developmental' all the time, too. I suppose that is the nature of light sleepers...

I definitely want/plan to move to cuddling him to sleep at first, but I do want to wean him off this more quickly than I have done with feeding to sleep. At some point in the next year or so, I think I would like to be able to leave him in the room alone to go to sleep. No idea at all how realistic an aspiration that is!

DS1 was a dreadful sleeper. He didn't consistently sleep through the night until he was 5yo.

I had several attempts at night weaning, but although he seemed ok with it at the time, each time I tried it, his behaviour through the day went down the pan. It was easier to continue night feeding than deal with his out of character tantrums and clinginess. He finally seemed ok with night weaning at 3.5yo.

He had all sorts of health stuff going on too. When he was 6yo, I discovered that his previously undiagnosed tongue tie was the root cause of pretty much all his problems. Reflux, snoring, mouth breathing, congestion/noise in his ears with some hearing loss, bouts of apnoea presumably linked to his high, narrow palate.

His tongue was revised at 7yo and he started orthodontics to expand his palate and now, 18 months on, every single one of his problems has disappeared.

There are lots of problems linked to tongue tie that most HCPs overlook because they have only been taught about tongue tie in relation to feeding and speech. We had a pretty hellish time with DS1 and I wish his ties had been spotted as a baby. It would have saved a lot of heartache.

If I were you, I would have him assessed by somebody who specialises in ties. So that's probably not your GP or HV. There are also a couple of tongue tie support groups on facebook, mostly dealing with babies, but also older kids and adults sometimes too. If the NHS agreed to do anything about it, they would want to use a GA at your ds's age. This is neither necessary or desirable, but you would need to go privately to access any of the alternatives.

Sorry, forgot to say that night weaning at 3.5yo did not help his sleep one little bit.

Neither did anything else that I tried because he had an underlying problem.

Hmm. Interesting, thanks mawbroon. I wish I'd pursued his tie sooner - I strongly suspected it from v young (we had really horrible start to bf) but I was just too knocked sideways by pain/feeding/birth/motherhood/exhaustion to do anything. I phoned one IBCLC and when she couldn't make an appointment, I felt like I'd run out of steam and couldn't find the energy to try again. Sounds pathetic, now.

I want to see if night-weaning and a few visits to cranial osteopath helps first - I can't financially afford to jump straight in with private dentist if it's avoidable - but I think that has to be the very next thing if those two don't sort it. My gut feeling is that something may well be at least slightly wrong here - I don't now think his sleep, or his feeding, have ever been normal. (I had that very typical experience of weeping to my midwife that he fed "all the time" and she said yes, yes they do that, imagining I meant he fed lots but not actually all the time.) That's amazing that your son's issues have all now disappeared, though I'm so sorry it took you both such a long time to get there.

Am I right in guessing your son's tie was lasered? If so, do you mind telling me what that was like? Was he sedated? Did it hurt during/after?

Cranial osteopathy is probably a good bet too, but I would suggest that it would be better to have the ties looked at first.

Ties can cause tension in the jaw/head/neck. No amount of CO will remove the tension while the ties remain - if the ties are the root cause of it. You would need to find a CO who understands about ties and the issues they cause because not all of them do.

DS1 has had ongoing osteopathy from his absolutely wonderful orthodontist who has been treating his body as a whole. He had a curvature at his neck which in turn had a knock on effect on his hips, knees and ankles. Again, all sorted now. The dentist regularly manipulates inside his mouth to help the palate expansion along.

Yes, you guessed right, DS1's ties were lasered. He was revised twice. The first time was incomplete, cost a fortune and he was put under GA. I didn't know any different at the time . A few months later, I came to realise that the tie had not been completely released so we went to John Roberts in Huddersfield who lasered them properly. He had no sedation, a local anaesthetic and 5 minutes or so with the laser doing his tongue and upper lip ties. He was eating half an hour later, but it was sore for a few days afterwards. We stretched the sites to stop them reattaching until they were healed. DS1 hated that, but was bribed with sweets....

John is only doing under 1s and over 6s the last I heard which means your only laser option in the UK at the moment (as far as I know) is Malcolm Levinkind in North Finchley. I took DS2 to him for assessment and found him very knowledgeable. In the end, we decided that DS2's was a wait and see case because his problems were minimal. Had the decision been to go ahead, I would have been more than happy for Dr Levinkind to treat ds2.

I fully understand what you are saying about HCPs in the early days. I told anyone who would listen that DS1 fed all the time. I was told "oh, yes, they do when they are newborn", "he's gaining weight fine" (he was, but only just enough to stop them worrying), "the latch doesn't need to look textbook, as long as it's working" (his upper lip tucked under, no matter what I did) etc etc. When I say he fed all the time, like you I meant all the bloody time sometimes for 16 hours out of 24. But, hey, first baby, what did I know

It has been a long road to get to where we are now. The stress of it all, coupled with 7 years of sleep deprivation (ds1's terrible sleeping overlapped with the arrival of ds2) made me seriously ill. And all of it preventable

I'd really really recommend trying night weaning before splashing the cash on cranial osteopathy or anything else. Ds1 kept waking until he was about 26 months when I finally night weaned him, and within 2 weeks he was sleeping through. I was kicking myself for not doing it earlier, but was very attatchmenty (and like you, had a lot of other pressures), so I'd really hoped he'd just grow out of it.

We did jay Gordon and it was hard for a few nights but then suddenly clicked. After that I did rapid return and within a few weeks it was sorted!

Thanks, both.

Mawbroon - that's really helpful to know. I have read about Malcolm Levinkind before on here and am even in London so would be very possible, if also v expensive - though will obv do it if need be. My son also had an upper lip tie, though he split it himself falling over at about a year. It is awful that all of that, the impact for both of you, could have been so easily avoided. It is impossible for me to know at this point how significant DS's tongue tie is, I suppose - I will definitely get some photos and join one of the Facebook groups to see what people think. It certainly seems less restricted as he's grown, but I don't know how proportionately so if that makes sense.
My DS failed to interest HCPs because he gained weight brilliantly - flew from 25th to 75th by six weeks - but it was taking me ~18 hours a day to do that :( and actually, compared to other babies in my family, it's an underperformance. If/when I have another, I will be so much more pushy about this, and probably everything else. I feel very angry about it, and angry that it's so commonplace, too.

Otoh Custard, that's very reassuring and I would love for that to be my experience too! Out of interest, had he cut all his two-year molars by then? I keep thinking DS will be done with them any day now but I've been saying that for months now. Maybe this isn't as big a deal as I imagine - presumably lots of 2yos who haven't nursed in the night for ages manage to cope with teething perfectly fine - but I keep thinking it would be easiest for him if he just had the usual all-night-boob remedy til they're done with. (This may make no odds in the end - he's still a little sensitive over recent room move at nursery so I don't want to do it til he's calmed down from that a bit, which may coincide with these bloody teeth finally being through. I hope...)

I don't remember the exact prices, but we were charged something like £120 for the consultation. If he had gone ahead with the revision it was to be another £350 approx and there was another charge if sedation was required. I don't remember the exact figures, so I may be a bit out, but it's around that anyway. I have seen people suggesting asking TT providers if they would agree a payment plan, but obviously have no idea if Dr L would do that or not.

What type of tie does he have? It is possible to have an anterior tie and for there to be a posterior one lurking behind. Posterior ties are hard to spot unless you know what you are looking for.

DS1 had loads of free tongue and he could lift it up really high, but the back was tightly tied down. I could see the whole of his tonsils when he opened his mouth wide. Now the doc would need a tongue depressor to see anything because his tongue sits so much higher up - hooray!

How is your DS's palate? There are pictures on my profile btw if you want to see how DS1's looked. Saying that, appearance is not really relevant, it's all about the function, but it might be helpful for you to have a look. Ties come in all shapes and sizes so you may not see any similarities at all.

He definitely does have an anterior tie. I don't know if I'd be able to see a posterior one, but having just looked at the photos of your son's, I'm going to have a look in his mouth later. I've also never looked at his palate so will be checking that out too. He couldn't stick his tongue out beyond his lips for ages - well over a year - but now he can. I'm not sure what kind of upward mobility his tongue has though... And I'm not sure I'd be able to get him to understand well enough to try to have him demonstrate. He is going to be really annoyed with my mouth obsession this evening.

Those ballpark figures are v useful, thanks. It's the kind of money I could probably find but not easily spare, if that makes sense.

He is a physically tense child, always has been. I suppose this could well be caused by the tie, though of course it could also be coincidental.

Pure guessing here, but I wonder if he had a thin anterior which was preventing him sticking out his tongue? Very thin anterior ties do sometimes break which unfortunately perpetuates the myth that all tongue ties break or that they grow out of it. Many ties would never break in a hundred years!

You mentioned an upper lip tie earlier. It seems that a very high number of lip ties also come with tongue ties, usually posterior ones, so his chances of having a posterior tie are quite high.

DS hadn't got his molars, and id been the same as you - and because he woke up so often, I was really scared of losing the last line of (boob-based) defence. That's partly why we did the jay Gordon method - it had a few steps, so I thought that if it wasn't working I could step back up to feeding lots without losing supply.
As it turned out, though, he woke so much less afterwards even with teething that it was fine, and I still had supply - we kept the bedtime feed until he stopped wanting it when it was pregnant about 5 months afterwards.

It sounds like tongue tie is worth investigating for you too, I hope you find a solution!

Thanks again, both of you!

mawbroon, I peered into DS's mouth but he wasn't very cooperative and I'm not sure I know quite what I'm looking for really.

So now I have a plan of action:

1. Osteo appointment. (No fantasies of this alone solving it, but somehow I'm happier with this as first step.)
2. Night wean. (Maybe this, along with a few follow-up sessions of CO, will do it?)
3. If no joy after a few weeks of the above, consultation with Dr Levinkind...

It has been really helpful to read your thoughts, and have some space to think through. I will update!