Sleep training? How? 12mo

[HappyGoLuckyGo]

This might be long but I want to give a clear picture up front. I'm hoping for advice on night-time sleep, please.

Currently 12mo DS has 1 nap a day, usually 4.5hs after waking. So, he'll wake around 7.30-8am, nap 12/12.30-2pm ish, and then bedtime should be around 8-8.30pm. (Lately his nap has been shorter, maybe just 45mins-1h.) He has 3 meals a day plus snacks, and is still bf. His room has blackout curtains. He is walking independently.

He has always bf-ed to sleep, and then I put him in his cot. Sometimes he needs to be 100% asleep before he'll let me put him down without re-awakening and crying, sometimes he's clearly aware that I'm putting him down but carries on dozing. At night we have a dinner/bath/bed routine, and have done for ages.

Lately, he either wakes at 5-5.30am for a short feed and goes back to sleep til 8am (which is fine) OR he wakes screaming blue murder, standing in his cot, and needs to bf to resettle. Two nights ago he woke like this around 1h15 then maybe 3hs after bedtime, and then woke at 5am as well. Last night I didn't dare check the time when he woke. I'm feeling so tired (yes, yes, I know I have it easy compared to some posters here!) that I just end up "sleeping" with him on a single mattress on his floor. It's not safe or comfortable, but I don't know how to resettle him without the feed, or after the feed if he's still awake. I don't know how to teach him to self-settle, and it's going to be a big shock for him after a year of being pandered to, frankly!

How to proceed please? CC? CIO? How long should these methods take? Will they work? hat EXACTLY do I need to do? Arghhh…. Please help.

Hopeful bump ahead of bedtime... (Am not on UK time)

How long is “lately”?

Sounds overtired to me. Dd always woke earlier when she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Have you tried an earlier bedtime? It seems like it won’t work, but I found it to be really helpful.

What I mean is, is it short enough that this could be a phase/regression, or long enough that this is the new normal?
If it’s not been happening for long maybe just give him a while to see if he gets better.
Has anything changed that might be causing him to need you more during the night- change in environment, routines etc.?
Any chance it could be night terrors/bad dreams?
Sorry no advice about sleep training as I don’t advocate it. But my sympathies for the tiredness, I’m still up 3 times most nights with my toddler.

Thanks for the replies. Lately is probably... two-three weeks? We live abroad and had a hell of a time over Christmas because we were moving round every 3-4 days visiting family, and he was extremely unsettled. Came back home and he took most a week to settle into a routine, was going through til 6-7am for maybe a week? And now this.

Earlier bedtime is a good idea to try... I read they need 11hs a night, so was aiming for 8pm for a 7am wake up. He is often overexcited at bedtime and struggles to settle. Again, “lately”.

Wondering if it’s the 12 month regression, but also wondering whether I’m just mollycoddling him and he knows I’ll come running when he yells...

Responding to your child’s needs is not mollycoddling! I’m sure he’s not waking up screaming for the fun of it.
Sleep is a hard thing to gauge - no one can tell you exactly how much they need but at 12 months I think it can be 11-15 hours (night sleep plus naps) so he may well just need his bedtime moved a bit earlier - fingers crossed!

Yeah... I know you’re right. I’ve noticed at baby groups he tends to be one of the more demanding ones, so I wonder whether I’m spoiling him and we’d both be happier after some tough love! Maybe I’ll try the earlier bedtime... how early do you think?

Tough love on a 1 year old????? Really? He’s still a baby, he doesn’t know how to manipulate you or do things to purposefully annoy you. Some children just need more attention.

Dd is in bed by 7 and sleeps 11/12 hours a night, apart from if she’s ill.

I would highly recommend the 'little ones' sleep programme. It cost me £30 to download but was money well spent as my 6 month old sleeps from 6-6. This isn't a brag and it certainly wasn't easy but we're all better for it. The programme doesn't advocate CIO which I personally hate and think is a great way to create negative associations with sleep, but it does look at slowly supporting your child to switch to self settling. It's worth a go.

Well we had a 7.30pm bedtime last night, he woke at 12 for a feed (that I’m sure he doesn’t need), whined but self settled at some point in the night, then woke at 6.15 or so and took almost 90mins to get back to sleep.

I’ll try a 7.15 bedtime tonight but even DH thinks we need to start sleep training, we’re both fed up. Disagree about manipulating though, I’ve just been reading a thread about settling baby into nursery and they know exactly how to push our buttons 😂

When you say “switch to self settling”, backcat, can you give a bit more detail please? I just can’t imagine how that switch can be made

OP, how do you know your baby doesn’t need that feed? Maybe they are having a growth spurt?

Also waking at 6.15 means they had 11 hours sleep. It isn’t that early and maybe that’s all the sleep your baby needs over night? Maybe you need to adjust your expectations and just go to sleep a bit earlier?

Completely disagree with you. Your baby is defenceless and is just asking for some very basic needs of comfort during the night. They are not manipulating you.

Spending 90 minutes trying to get him to sleep at 6:15 seems pointless, surely he's just up for the day at that point? Half 8 is late so I think sticking with the earlier bed time is a good idea.

Cry it out is outright cruel, and going from feeding to sleep to controlled crying seems mean. There are other sleep training methods that don't involve leaving your child in distress if you're determined to sleep train (pick up put down, gradual retreat, shush pat etc).

Does sound like it's just a blip though. Their development comes on so quickly at that age and he could well be teething, and none of that does any favours for their sleep.

Re the feed he can sleep through for 11hs straight or so occasionally and from what I find online you can expect to night wean from 6mo, so I think it’s habit more than hunger. Could be a growth spurt though!

I agree that I thought he was up for the day at 6.15, but I thought part of the point of the earlier bedtime was to increase total hours of sleep, so I fed him and then we lay down together and he fussed a bit and then slept. He actually slept til 9am after settling around 7.30am... so my plan for today is a nap at 1pm and then 7.30pm bedtime?

I’ll try the earlier bedtimes for a week, to make it routine, and then it’ll have to be sleep training, I think.

Oh and I did wonder about teething but i gave him Calpol one evening and that was the night he woke up at like, 2130, 2300 and then 0500...

If he's hungry what is his daytime eating like?

I would say it’s good! He’s a significantly higher centile on weight than height, three meals a day (porridge and fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner vary but proteinaceous, often include fatty healthy foods like avocado to fill him up). Fruit or carby snacks eg breadsticks, bf on demand, water available...

(Just since the weekend I’ve given him a lot more independence with finger food and eating by himself, and now he’s eating a lot with a lot more interest but not necessarily a hugely different volume - but the sleep issue predates that change.)

In my experience wakings at that age are either due to being overtired, illness/teething or a developmental leap.

When did he drop down to one nap? How long has he been walking for? The recent short naps would suggest he's overtired and if he's just started walking that would certainly contribute to his exhaustion.

Separation anxiety really ramps up at this age too. 12-19 months was horrendous for us with wake ups almost every night for 1-4 hours.

I think we’re looking at overtiredness... he went down for his nap at 1245 which is about an hour earlier than I’d have tried usually, and slept for 90mins.

Started walking at the start of Jan and I’ve been taking him out for walks etc, so probably he is exhausted, poor thing! The one nap has been for a while now... maybe since 9 months? I was surprised because I know that’s much earlier than expected, but it had been working well til now (and he went back to two briefly around 10mo).

Thanks for your replies everyone, really appreciate you taking the time to advise.

I’m sorry but it’s ridiculous to say that a child that age is being manipulative!

Clearly I don't think it's intentional, but I'm definitely being manipulated - I'm not needed in a physical sense for his survival and yet still find myself trying to sleep upside down on a single mattress with a wiggly bundle, half the night! But let's not derail - I'm open minded about sleep training and I wanted to know whether and how I should go about it. Hopefully the early bedtimes and a bit of patience will fix everything anyway...

When everything went downhill with my 12 month old (waking at night and taking hours to get back to sleep) I did sleep training where I stayed in the room with him and comforted him but didn't lift him out of his cot and didn't feed him. Took three nights and then he slept through, which continued for months until he started getting lots of molars all at the same time.

We taught ds1 to self settle using the gradual retreat method. So initially I sat with ds in my lap and rocked him/sang to him etc, then after a few nights we did not rock - just held, after a few nights we led next to him, then gradually moved further away until we were outside the room. It was not easy or without crying but I never left him to cry. We followed the instructions in a book called ‘teach your child to sleep’. It has lots of practical information and different methods to try. At night time we always rocked him to sleep on our laps until self settling was established.

Thanks for the replies!

mswales, did your DS ever get hysterical in the cot? Or tended to give up and lie down?

Well, he’s slept 7.45pm (light off at 7.15 but took a while to settle) til 5.15am, breastfeed, and now is still asleep at 8.30am...! But he did have a snotty nose yesterday and tends to sleep a lot when ill... so either early bedtime has fixed the problem in two days, or he’s got a cold! But I am much happier and more rested.