14-month old waking every couple of hours

[claireb8]

I'm hopeful that someone can offer some advice on how to sleep train a willful 14-month old who's refusing to settle at night and to sleep through.

She's been fed to sleep since birth and I know it's a bad habit, but until really recently, she's woken maybe once or twice a night and then has settled back down again (by breastfeeding) within 10-15 mins. Feeding her to sleep just felt like the right thing to do and it's worked for us until now.

The past few weeks have been a nightmare. She's suddenly started to wake up every 2 hours throughout the night and she's refusing to settle easily. This has coincided with her starting nursery (where she'll happily nap for a couple of hours) and my return to work. I'm barely functioning in the office and it's causing lots of rows with my husband. I'm at the stage where I think we should start some gentle sleep training, but he says this behaviour is because our daughter either has a cold or is teething. However, he's rarely the one who has to get up at night to soothe and settle her. I can't carry on like this. I feel exhausted.

She won't settle this evening so my husband has offered to take her a walk in the pushchair until she falls asleep (in the pushchair). This has happened most evenings now. I think it's another bad habit but it works temporarily (and I haven't got the energy to disagree with my husband) and she'll fall asleep for a couple of hours and then I'll beast feed her, return her to the cot and she'll typically wake at midnight....2am....4am....6am.

I know we should have started sleep training months ago. I don't want to try the cry it out technique. Any suggestions please on how and when to break these awful habits and to help our daughter to self settle and sleep through the night without me feeding her? Could this just be another sleep regression (she's on the verge of walking and I think that affects sleep?). Oh, and I know she can fall asleep without me because she has two decent naps at nursery during the day.

Also, could this behavior be due to teething? I read that the molars come through between the ages of 13 and 16 months.

Someone out there please advise!

Definitely sounds like a phase. Can you either have her in with you or sleep in her room for a little while - and/or would going to bed earlier help? for you x

Sleep training, gradual retreat worked for us.

Get your DP to do more of the settling too.

It's been years since we went through this but every time I read these posts I have to respond and say to you I've been there and empathise.

We used Millpond Sleep Training Clinic too - it over the phone but provided that bit of much needed support. We knew what we need to do (we had every book) but having an independent person on the phone helped enormously.

My 15 month old has always been a fairly poor sleeper. I'm sort of in the camp of, get everyone as much sleep as possible so haven't really bothered with sleep training to be honest as I felt it was unlikely to work without lots of tough sleepless nights that I don't have the energy for!

What worked for us is sidecar-ing the cot to our bed (we put mattress on the floor and cot in toddler bed mode). We get loads more sleep overall and I can deal with the night wakes without getting up which helps me get back to sleep quickly.

We've actually found that night wake ups have really decreased since we started this set up, I think because he sometimes stirs, finds I'm there and just goes back to sleep.

In 6 months I plan to try giving the cot another go but if he doesn't settle I'll just go back to the current set up.

I hope you find a way forward OP, sleep deprivation is hideous!

I feel for you - I was in this position too. I cracked it by reducing the length of the feed by 30s every 2 days. When I got down to about 3mins per feed, he started dropping feeds. The millpond sleep clinic book is excellent - all the different approaches, but with some case studies to help your sleep deprived brain figure out what to do!! But you need to stop feeding to sleep. I started by getting him to go down for naps awake, then transitioned to bedtime. It made me extremely anxious, but after a few days he went to sleep without a peep. Good luck.