Low sleep needs baby and toddler support thread

[PrincessBuggerPants]

My 19 month old has always been an awful sleeper.

After three months of my 19month old sleeping like a newborn in lockdown, I have finally had a healthcare professional suggest that "maybe he doesn't need much sleep". So I have come across the idea of low sleep needs babies and it does seem to make some sense.

Can we have a thread for other people with low sleep needs babies? This isn't so much a thread for sharing tips (we know they don't work) more more ranting about the awfulness of it and the stupid things people with children who sleep say??

I'll share some resources later.

I’m in!
6mo absolutely awful sleeper, wakes after every single sleep cycle and has done since newborn. Never had any sort of improvement despite a lot of effort and upset (for both of us!) currently trying to get him to settle on his own in his crib but he’s absolutely not having it. Naps 3x a day but absolute max is 40 mins and that’s with a resettle!

A few people have said the same to me, that maybe he just doesn’t need as much sleep... but he seems to have all the signs of being overtired.... or undertired... who knows the difference?!

I feel every bit of your pain... just keep wondering when he’ll grow out of it himself/if he ever will!
Haven’t really looked into low sleep needs myself so would be interested to keep reading this!

Xx

Useful articles:
High sleep needs vs low sleep needs baby
Baby sleep requirements
Baby Sleep Revolution

Books
I haven't read it but
The Discontented Little Baby Book for babies under 5 months

More information about increasing sleep pressure:
What is sleep pressure
Sleep pressure can improve your child's sleep

Groups:
Desperately seeking sleep - a Facebook group for very wakeful babies Be aware they are trying to sell you a gentle sleep training pack for the Baby Sleep Revolution

Poppop87 my toddler was a catnapper (20-40 mins max) who would never nap in his cot until 16 months old. Whereupon he started napping 2h+ after lunch in his cot in a sleep bag with white noise on.

It coincided with the start of lockdown and him starting to walk so who knows what caused it.

This then proved once and for all that the idea that sleep begats sleep is complete bollocks.

Once he started napping after lunch he then slept like a newborn again at night, waking every two hours and getting up at five, for the past three months. Our lockdown has not been easy.

He then started sleeping 11 hours a night straight through since starting back at nursery this week, suggesting he really was just bored and not stimulated enough, rather than being 'overtired'.

It is tough with a 6 month old, as the parents around you are still very much buying into the whole overtired thing and started to do sleep training which may not make much sense when you try to apply it to your baby.

Oh absolutely!
Cannot win... overtired - try for a longer nap, or bring bedtime forward... just wakes for 2/3 hours in the night because he’s not tired!

Undertired... also tried tiring him out, shorter naps, later bedtime... exactly the same result!

Hard work... i just keep hoping he might start to link his cycles himself 🤷🏻‍♀️
Thanks for sharing the resources, I’ll have a read tonight in my 2/3 hour wake up! X

Do you know what really pisses me off? The fact that people who have children at the greater sleep needs end of the spectrum don't realise how unusual the situation is? One yummy mummy in my group has a 20 month old child who sleeps for 16 HOURS a day, including naps.

That's more of an outlier than my child who sleeps about 11 hours in a 24 hour period, but she's the one who gets praise and asked for tips. Honestly, its not occurred to her for a second that something might actually be wrong/its not normal for her child to behave like that. She just croons about how they had him in a routine from 6 weeks.

SO DID WE!!

Can I join? Not sure exactly how much sleep my LO needs, she is 10.5 months and her nighttime sleep seems to have no relationship with her daytime sleep - I have been tracking her sleep using huckleberry app for about 4 months now and she just seems to have good and bad nights regardless of what has happened during the day. Also she has just decided to drop her morning nap and now goes 6 hours from waking to take a nap about 12-12:30 - so more than twice the recommended 'awake window' for her age! But she seems fine - not grouchy etc.

Maybe I should give her a copy of Lucy Wolfe to read so she knows what she 'should' be doing? or maybe it is all bollocks and babies really do all have different sleep needs?

Welcome @popcornandwine !

I think the idea that babies have different sleep needs rather than the 'more is more' attitude that sleep trainers promote with their 'sleep begats sleep' messaging would put them out of business!

That said, Lucy Woolfe isn't the worst imo. She at least acknowledges that night wake ups/early wake ups are developmentally normal rather than a parental failing.

Absolutely, she does have some helpful advice to be fair. I remember trying to follow another programme when DD was tiny, only weeks old. It was a strict routine based programme and funnily enough DD was having none of it... its only when I came on MN that I found out strict routines are pretty much biologically impossible for a baby that young.

Hello!!! I have a 19month old sleep refuser. Dropped to one nap at just 10months. It’s mostly getting to sleep that’s our problem, we do have multiple wake up but she’s easily fed back to sleep. Oddly so hard to wake in the morning or after a nap! Bedtime here is hours later than everyone else I know.
Those links are very interesting!

I wish I’d known more about this earlier. I spent ages worrying that dd was overtired and working on increasing her sleep time. Which just worsened the problem as actually she was getting more sleep than she needed already!

@Zzzzribbetzzzz welcome!

My 19 month old also dropped to one nap before one, on the advice of his nursery who simply couldn't get him to go down in the morning and a health visitor who clearly knew his type!

I wonder when they will drop naps completely

On the one hand not having a break will be hard, on the other hand not having to try to force naps any more might be quite liberating.

VENT ALERT: Another one of the mums I know who has a good sleeper and is planning on becoming a sleep therapist (!) revealed that her 20 month old girl has less than 4 hours between waking up from her nap and going down at night. The guidance suggests 5-7 hours awake time between nap and bedtime, for NORMAL babies this age.

Another example of their child being more off the sleep spectrum than mine, but being allowed to be smug about it .

@PrincessBuggerPants exactly - everything else to do with babies is measured on percentiles with a huge 'normal' range so why wouldn't it be the case that there is a huge normal range in terms of sleep needs too?

Another one of the mums I know who has a good sleeper and is planning on becoming a sleep therapist (!)
These people are the worst!! I had one of those in my NCT group, self-proclaimed expert who thought she'd "trained" her baby to nap perfectly from birth. She once said to me, "Help me understand your POV, burrito – why wouldn't you want your baby to sleep well?" She started a sleep consultancy. I hope her child starts waking up soon and terrorises her at night for fucking YEARS.

Firmly believe that parents of good sleepers shouldn't be allowed to be sleep consultants. Only those of us with demon children who scorn the pram, the sling, the bouncer, the shhh-pat (whatever the fuck it is) can set up business, because we've put in the 10,000 hours of practice.

DD's night sleep has improved recently (sorry), but then bloody back molars have started to wreak havoc. This happened before: decent sleep (by which I mean 3-4 wake-ups) ruined by canines.

Anyway day naps make sod-all difference to her night sleep; if anything, massive Gina Fraud two-hour cot naps just make bedtime a drawn-out affair. I prefer the days where she sticks two fingers up to naps and is out like a light at bedtime then up like a jack in a box almost immediately.

It's so good to read this! I have a two and a half year old. It seems like all of her peers sleep 12 hours over night. She just doesn't need it! Happy as Larry and full of beans all day. Doesn't sleep until 9pm then sleeps until 7am. She just isn't tired until 8.30/9. A single minute of day time nap means she won't sleep until 10pm. We have no grown up evening time. She and I go to bed together at 9! I'm on my knees by then; she's often happily chatting to her toys after I've dropped off. She's just a ten hours a day/late night person. Sadly that's not me!

I could kill people who say their little one goes to sleep at 6.30 and sleeps through. What would I do with those hours???? I doubly hate people who you know are secretly smuggly judging or who suggest that she's over tired. She's not - she just doesn't need that much sleep!!!

If you think about it, it makes sense. Adults need different amounts of sleep - I am quite lucky in that I can function on a night of broken sleep. Not that I like being woken several times by a baby screaming in my face but I can get by the next day. Others I know find it much more difficult. So if adults need different amounts of sleep, why wouldn't babies?

@burritofan it must have taken epic amounts of self restraint not to beat that NCT woman to death with a Sophie the Giraffe.

After having my second child I am now convinced it is completely random whether you have a good sleeper or not. It's got bugger all to do with our parenting skills, routines etc.

My 5 month old has been mainly sleeping through since 6 weeks. Her 3 year old big sister STILL Doesn't 😭

Reading and joining with interest, after 6mo DD was up every hour and a half all night (vast improvement from every sleep cycle, the night before).
Marvellous input from DH a couple of nights ago, “well both X’s children were sleeping through the night at 8 weeks. They just kept them in a room and let them cry it out. We’ve been far too lenient and now we are suffering”.
I did not take deep breaths first, I just let him have it!! 😂😂

That's the best news @ristar . One of the things putting us off another is the fear of having a second one who won't sleep either!

"Help me understand your POV, burrito – why wouldn't you want your baby to sleep well?"

She sounds lucky to be alive.

@princessbuggerpants I was so worried through my second pregnancy that we wouldn't cope. We have just been so lucky this time round. I think she actually likes going down for naps and bedtime!

Slept 8-6 and only needed her dummy put in a couple of times. Unfortunately the same can't be said of her big sister who was up for several hours.

Sounds like you got very lucky second time round Aristarchus!