Hi everyone,
A long time mumsnet fan here - the forum helped me through the initial breastfeeding struggles massively :) I'm posting for the first time though - as I really struggle with my 1-year old sleeping pattern at the moment and hoping I can get some help/ advice/ reassurance here.
My LO's sleep has never been amazing and we've had ups and downs and different phases, including sleeping through the night on one end of the spectrum, through very short, couple-of-times-per-night, dummy-only wakings, to multiple lengthy awake times per night. Typically we were able to identify what the issues were and go back to a reasonable state.
Not this time. It got real bad recently and I'm struggling to pin point what's wrong. Over the last 3-4 weeks, he's been waking multiple times per night, and over the last 2 weeks the awake times became very long (a couple of hours or longer). It doesn't seem like anything is bothering him in particular, he's just awake in his crib, fussing and crying when left on his own.
When me or my husband try to settle him back to sleep the usual way (i.e. on his tummy, us stroking him on his back), he lays still, but doesn't fully fall asleep. The moment we try to leave his bedroom, he cries again. It takes ages to settle him back to sleep, and even when we manage to leave his bedroom it only takes a few minutes to half an hour for him to start crying again. Last night we did this dance from midnight until 6 AM, with most of the time spent by his crib :(
I would massively appreciate any advice/ experiences you could share. It's getting extremely exhausting for us, and no doubt is not good for our LO either.
A few things to note:
the grandma is currently staying with us and sharing the bedroom with the LO. I think it might* have an impact, but even so, I still don't understand why he wouldn't go back to sleep when we try to resettle him
- when I take the LO out of the cot to try and settle him in my arms, he screams and gets tense. Makes me think he doesn't want to be out and wants to fall asleep but is having trouble with it
- we have a solid bedtime routine, but the actual 'falling asleep' part always takes a long time (30-45 min) of us standing my the cot and stroking his back. It's not ideal and I'd like to work on it once my mother in law leaves (in 2 months time), but on the other hand it's not been an issue earlier and he used to sleep through the night at one point regardless
Please help :(