15 month old night waking.

[Fearoex]

Please help. My son is 15 months old and has never slept through the night. I still breastfeed him and seem to more than usual at the moment. He usually wakes at around 7, then has a nap around 11 and another around 3. Sometimes he will just have one if the morning nap gets pushed back even later. He is fed to sleep for both and then at the start of his bedtime routine at 7. He sometimes goes down ok when he’s almost asleep but it’s very difficult to get him down awake. He wakes in the night at least once or twice and rarely can I get him back to sleep without feeding him. I am exhausted to say the least. Would like to reduce his dependency on breastfeeding and I’d like to get a bit more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep in a row. We’ve tried controlled crying sort of but caved in after twenty mins of him going absolutely nuts. He is in his own room now but often ends up in bed with us. Think we’ve also got some separation anxiety going on too as he wants to feed more often and screams the house down if I leave him or even look like I’m going to leave him. Not sure if I will ever get a decent nights’ sleep😬 Any tips? X

Both he and you are relying on breastfeeds at night. You need to decide what you want to do and stick to it. He really needs to be getting into a routine if you want longer periods of sleep at night. You have to teach him to settle without feeding back to sleep.

Yes I’m sure you’re right, he just gets so upset and worked up if he’s not breastfed to sleep most of the time. We’ve had a pretty consistent bedtime routine since he was teeny and he gets enough sleep in the day. Just not sure if it’s worth trying controlled crying again or if there are any other techniques that have worked for people.

I guess the difficulty you have is you're feeding to sleep for all sleep times so he knows no other way.. we broke the link at night time by using comforter and offering water and cuddles. We did controlled crying at an earlier age so not sure if tgat helped. He settled for naps himself too so he had some resources to sleep by himself.

To give you a little hope, dd1 woke constantly through the night, sometimes for hours. She just did not sleep well. One day at 17 months she slept through the night, then the next night, and the next. It was like a switch had flipped, I changed nothing at all to cause it. I still frd her to sleep for a few months more and then very gently stopped bfing her at about 20 months.

We did something from someone on here... I think it was about Co sleeping (which I do for half the night really, when they wake in the middle of the night) by someone called Jay Gordon.
Basically I wore a higher necked t shirt so no boob in face probs, then I just cuddled, comforted, held for as long as it took. Someone gave the tip of timing it by looking at your phone- the longest it took was 15mins but felt like hours because with feeding it was so quick.
3 nights later and no more night feeds... Worked for DS1&2.

Now to follow my own advice and do it with my #3 who is 15 months!