15 months old wakes up at night, crying terribly. Mental health issues?

[Herkule]

First of all, my son only sleep with mom (I am the father), he doesn't sleep in his crib. Even so, he still wakes up 1-3 times at night.

The problem is, every time he wakes up, he is crying horribly. The cries are awful. Very often calming him down doesn't help. Sometimes I can spend up to half an hour at night swaying him gently and lulling him, but it not working.

The only effective method for him to fall back to sleep again is mom's breast. He is sill breastfed. Breast works, I would say, 8 out of 10 times, the other times we just need to cope somehow and not breakdown mentally.

We tried not to give him breast quite a few times and leave him to cry out, but it doesn't help. The problem is, his cries are extreme and horrible, it sounds, at least, like he is being tortured. I am no making this up and this happens only at nights.

Any suggestions, please? We are very stressed and scared. GP's are useless and I liked their latest reply - "I don't know what to do"

Can it be our son has some mental health problems? If so, is it possible to check it somehow? I am not sure if any therapist would be able to work with 15 months old.

Any suggestions or advice please.

That sounds very hard, but there is no sign at all of your son having mental health issues. Unfortunately some babies do cry a lot at night. You’ll get a lot of advice on here about helping your baby sleep, but first off you need to completely drop the idea that there is anything mentally wrong with your child.

Have you ruled out silent reflux?

Has your baby had their ears examined? My daughter used to awaken up crying in terrible distress, being carried helped as did sucking on a smoother upright. Turns out she was prone to ear infections and had her first from it's at about 18.months.

Both my kids had nightmares/night terrors at around this age.

My theory is that as their world opens up, their brain is doing a lot of weird sorting while they are asleep, trying to make sense of everything... leading to bizarre dreams and nightmares. Sounds odd, but that was how I made sense of it!

Lasted a couple of months, and never came back.

My kids and sisters all went through this at around that age, my youngest is doing it now so I understand the exhaustion.
Even though night terrors are not meant to start at that age and are not meant to last all night I do feel it's that or something similar.
They're trying to work out so much new stuff their brains just can't process it all.

Nights are dark and long, and babies need reassurance that they're not alone, so it's no surprise that they cry. Plus, bad dreams, trapped wind, teething pain etc are all a thing.
Personally, if breastfeeding works then that's what I'd do. I've had 5 babies, and not one of them slept though or dropped breastfeeding by 15 months. I know it's hard, but don't worry yourself that it's anything other than normal because in my experience it absolutely is.

Your son sounds like a normal baby to me. I'm not saying that to detract from how difficult it is for you to deal with, the sleepless stages is shit, but I think you're way overreacting to suggest mental health issues in a baby.

My DS had night terrors/ bad dreams at around that age, you just need to get through it, and in a year or so things will probably be much better. Until then just do whatever it takes to all get some sleep. If that means he sleeps with mum and feeds through the night, then that's what he should do. It's perfectly normal and appropriate at his age, and for as long as he and his mum are happy to continue.

My youngest would wake a lot in the night from birth, I started feeling concerned when she didn't seem to grow out of it, and as she became a toddler she would hold onto her knees. She's ten now and has chronic joint and muscle pain and the doctors still won't refer her for tests. When she was small I worried it was my fault somehow, I tried everything, rocking, breast, cry it out, it was useless.
It's well worth speaking to the GP about whether something is hurting your baby in the night (that's when they grow the most) and trying some calpol.

Just another voice joining to say there’s nothing wrong with being breastfed to sleep. 1-3 times a night is not that many.

He’s only 15 months, if feeding back to sleep works 8/10 times then that’s the solution really. He wants comfort and reassurance. You could try upping his milk and food intake in the evening in case some of the wakings are hunger.

It feels so hard at the moment, I know. In a few months he will have moved on to something else and you’ll be worrying about that instead.

The sleeping with Mum, waking and breastfeeding is all pretty normal. He may also be teething or having night terror - which are both very normal too.

Sounds normal

Sounds normal to me. Both of my DC were still waking for breastfeeds at that age.

@Eightmagpies

Sounds normal

So much so, I thought this post was dubious.

All infants have mental health, like adults, sometimes it’s good and other times less so. So in that sense his mental health is not good at that time he’s screaming, as in he’s not ok, he’s communicating something. As others have said, most likely it’s ‘the boob is what I need to make me go back to sleep’! If your wife wants to keep breastfeeding, then you can support by being with him more during the day and letting her sleep. If she wants to stop she can, or even just night wean - there are various ways to do this if you google.

Sounds very much like night terrors. Can be upsetting to witness but all you can do is offer comfort. As far as I know it’s quite common in toddlers and the vast majority grow out of it.

Thanks everyone, a lot of encouraging words  The reason I keep on thinking why my son has mental health problems, is because just when he was born, he was the only baby in the ward crying non-stop, day and night.

So we spent 2 and a half days in the ward with other families and newborns. Met 7 families in total, they come and go. Not a single baby cried like this. All of them had a short periods of crying, they slept at least a few hours at once and our son didn't. No one in the hospital ward could sleep properly, because our son was crying and screaming constantly. He was the only one.
Since he was born he is crying and screaming every night, I think there were only 2 weeks when he slept 7 hours at once.

Is that normal as well, that 7 babies (so all of them) were quite calm overall and our wasn't? Really made me think since then.

@Ahbahbahbah, no, we didn't know about silent reflux. So that's why I'm saying GP's are useless. They didn't even mention silent reflux to us.

@teaorwine, no, he had only ear test when he was born. But again, we not sure what we can check and GP's didn't offer us another ear examination...

@SpongeCakeAddict, tried GP, but they do not offer any advice or test. You also said that they still don't refer your daughter for the test, so that's pretty horrible.

How is your son during the day? Happy? Healthy? Developing normally?

If the answer to those questions is yes then this is almost certainly normal, possibly night terrors. If happening at predictable points in the night you might want to consider gently rousing him before that point then resettling. Won’t necessarily be easier for you in terms of sleep but might reduce his distress if it’s night terrors.