Being driven insane!

[Tortycat]

Think I've messed up totally with dc2's sleep... he's 8 months and slept fine to start with. But from about 5 months its got steadily worse.

Day naps are awful. Most days he'll have 1 or 2 short naps e.g. 30 mins - can be in the buggy, car or bed. It's harder to get him to sleep in the bed and often I'll give up after 30 mins as I have a toddler too so spending hours isn't practical. Trouble is wherever he naps he wakes up after 30 mins or sooner if there's any noise (frequent due to dc1!). Occasionally he's not slept at all in 12 hours if I haven't been able to focus on it!

Night time was ok but again has got worse. Usually asleep by 7.30-8, then wakes 11ish, 2ish, 5 ish then up about 7.30. We've coslept from the start as I wanted to and it worked well for dc1 (who's a great sleeper). Ebf so all done by me. He now refuses a bottle or dummy.

So wondering if anyone has any advice?? Should I try to get naps right before focussing on night time? I don't want to leave him to cry (although tempted at times!). How much should he sleep?? Surely more than this!

Anyone?? Another awful night....

We went through that phase too. Some babies do. In your shoes we went with the 2, 3, 4 approach. This is hours awake between naps. DD usually took about 30mins to go to sleep so I'd start 90 mins after getting up. Then 2.5 hours after waking up from her morning nap, then aiming to be in her room for quiet bedtime by 3.5 hours after waking up from her afternoon nap. What we did was focus on making the naps happen, need that car/buggy/breastfeeding, then once they were established routine we transitioned her into bed for them.
Good luck.

Thanks John. I'll try to persevere with daytime naps and hold onto the hope this is a phase...!

Ds did go through a phase of barely sleeping. I'd get 2 20 minute naps on a good say! Then he started crawling at 10 months and the more mobile he got, the longer the naps became. He maintained his 2 hour afternoon nap for ages.