Night wakings lasting hours in 1 year old

[furryelephant]

Literally at the end of what I can cope with (again!) DD is 13 months, never been a good sleeper.

For the past 4-6 weeks she’s been up for at least 2 hours in the middle of each night. No pattern to timings, tonight she woke at 12am and is still up, night before it was 5-6:30am. We cosleep and she still BF overnight but that isn’t getting her back to sleep either! I’ve tried dropping her second nap as she was really fighting it anyway, clearly isn’t helping but there’s never enough time to fit a second in anyway. She averages 13 hours sleep in 24hrs.

Is this just a phase they go through? Someone please tell me it’ll end 😩

DS1 did this. It was knackering (tho 5am would have been get up time ).
He still doesn't sleep great, but is old enough not to disturb anyone now (at school). It does end. It's just a phase.
And I'm not in the UK, hence the crazy posting time.!

All of mine did this
My soon to be three is down to only a few times a week....
They all dropped second nap well before a year & all naps around 18months.

Honestly just try not to worry about their sleep & concentrate on your sleep - try to cat nap while bf/being crawled on etc etc one of mine would be awake with DH (who would just sleep through it ) sometimes, one would sometimes let me sleep a bit if i turned my back to them...

And my posting at this time may suggest wherethey get their excellent sleep genes from

Nearing 4 hours now unfortunately she won’t feed lying down and if I so much as shut my eyes she’ll crawl straight off the bed to try and play. Also a completely lone parent so no one to share it with I really hope this doesn’t last until 3

furryelephant, do you want to sleep train baby to sleep in the cot?

Otherwise, it's more about adjusting your expectations and finding ways to maximise sleep, rather than solving anything.

Has she recently learnt to walk or anything? Another thing is, what time is bedtime? Sometimes it can be too early or too late, it’s about adjusting it (not all babies do the mystical 7-7. Mine sleeps worse the earlier she goes to sleep, if she goes to bed around 9.30 she wakes maybe twice, if she goes to bed at 7 she wakes frequently in the night or has middle of the night parties like your little one. Nightmare!

@FATEdestiny we’re happy cosleeping at the mo, she’s reduced the amount of wakings to 1-2 per night unless she has a cold/teething etc, it’s just I don’t know why when she’s waking up she’s just awake!

@crazycatlady5 her bed time generally moves about depending on how her naps have been and when she seems tired do you think that could be the problem? So today after she’d been up from midnight-4am, she slept until 10am (if only I had too!), napped 1:30-3pm (tried to extend it but she wasn’t having any of it!) and has just gone to sleep for the night now. I try and just go with how tired she seems as I spent a long few months trying to force her into a “typical routine” and spending hours trying to get her to sleep when she didn’t want to seemed pointless

DD1 did this at 8-9 months. I think it's a phase where they decide life is just too interesting to sleep so why not party at 3am. It stopped as suddenly as it started, I think you just have to hang in there.

I decided to use it as an opportunity to night wean though - I figured if BFing wasn't getting her back to sleep she could go without!

@chloechloe I think I might do that too! I keep hesitating as she eats pretty terribly so worry she’ll be hungry, logically I know she probably doesn’t need the milk though! It works occasionally so think I’m still hanging onto that hope

You might find that if you night wean she will start eating better. I'm currently night weaning DD2 who's 12 months (it's the second attempt, I also did it 6 weeks ago). She's been a terrible eater but when I cut out the night feeds she started eating more almost instantaneously. She was in the habit of eating very little in the day and catching everything up at night. I appreciate it takes a bit of a leap of faith as you don't want them to go hungry! But at that age they don't need the night feeds. Yes they want them, but they're capable of doing 12 hours without any calories and it's actually good for their digestion to get a break in the night.

I hood things get better soon!