DD had severe obstructive sleep apnoea. She had surgery for it 5 months ago, which has seen a HUGE improvement in her overall health (she had been severely underweight as she was unable to eat solid food from about 18 months, would often be blue and floppy from lack of oxygen and had not gained any height in over a year). She’s now a healthy normal toddler (if still a tad on the small side, but catching up!).
Sleep is better. But her breathing is still not perfect - the passages down the back of her nose are still very narrow and block easily (as do those from her ears, which is another story). She is in the habit of waking up and looking for reassurance from me (usually picking her up and cuddling, sometimes a feed) when her breathing is bad.
I don’t want to go down any form of strict sleep training as I think it’s still very scary for her to wake up out of breath a couple of times a night. But I wonder if she’ll get the hang of going back to sleep on her own at some point? Sometimes it’s quite exhausting for me. DH has tried taking a turn to let me sleep more but it didn’t work very well as DD would only settle for him about 50% of the time, and when she didn’t she then got up for the day, even if it was 3am! She’s very used to being sleep deprived, so tiredness is not a good motivator for her.
I’m also having issues with dropping the nap. She’s napping right now..... which means she’ll be up until at least midnight. If she has a nap, even a 30 minute one in the car, she’ll then be up for another 7/8 hours after that point. If she doesn’t nap, she goes to sleep at a good time, but then has horifically disrupted sleep, which has always been the case if she hit “overtired”. It seems like basically her awake time has grown to 8/9 hours, but stretching her to the 12 hours necessary to not have a nap is just too much for her. Currently we are roughly alternating - she’ll be up incredibly late tonight, so will hopefully sleep in tomorrow, have a non-nap day and then go to sleep early, but then have a very broken night so be up early and get an earlyish nap in the following day etc.... is this what people do??? It doesn’t seem normal, but there doesn’t seem to be a 1 day routine that fits her needs at the moment.
DH and I have been considering a second baby. I wonder how I’d cope if I had another with these sleep difficulties. Do people cope?
Not sure if I’m asking for advice, or just hand holding. It would be nice to know if people have been here before, feeling rather lonely about it. If I tell people that my daughter still doesn’t sleep through or still breastfeeds at night most people seem to think I’m a bad mum that hasn’t “taught” my child to sleep well. At each stage I’ve done what seemed necessary for her health and happinness.