18 month sleep regression- Please help, losing the will to live now

[Dramallamabanana]

My 19 month old seems to have hit the 18 month sleep regression really hard. For about three months she has gone from sleeping solidly 10-12 hours a night to waking for hours in the night. I am absolutely shattered- I feel like I am barely functioning. I am trying to lose weight and train for a half marathon but I've not done any training for 3 months and I am so tired I am just eating crap to try and get me through the day. I am actually starting to resent DD (and I feel fucking awful for saying that)

She will go down at about 6.30-7pm and usually wakes again between 10-12pm and can be awake for hours. We have tried controlled crying, cuddling until relaxed/asleep before lying back down, getting her out of bed and letting her play for a bit before doing bedtime 'routine' (brushing hair, story, clean nappy), offered food/drink. She stopped BFing of her own accord at about 13 months and doesn't like any other type of milk so I can't give her a warm cup of milk or anything.

Sometimes she will sleep through the night but that is maybe 2 nights out of 7 now.

Routine is-
Awake- 5am-ish
Nap- About 3-4 hours after wake up (she did this even before the sleep regression) and nap can be anywhere from 1.5-3 hours
Lunch- 12.30
Usually we do some sort of activity in the afternoon- playground, walk etc
Dinner- 5-5.30pm
Bathtime- 6pm
Bed- 6.30-7pm

She eats plenty during the day and is generally a happy lovely little baby but I am absolutely tearing my hair out here. I am really starting to feel like a bit of a shell of my former self.

Can anyone offer any advice/guidance or things they found helpful? I am willing to try anything!

I will add that DH is great and will help me when needed but he works full time whilst I am a SAHM at present. His work involves operating heavy machinery so I try my very best to let him have a good nights sleep when I can as I don't want him going to work tired.

Hey @Dramallamabanana . Hugs to you because I know how bloody hard it is. We're going through the same right now with our 18 month old and seem to be hopefully on the other side of it.

DS has always been a terrible sleeper but like your DD started to be up for hours at a time and waking super early.

We spoke to the health visitor in the end who suggested stopping the bed time bottle of milk and swapping it for a banana. Apparently the banana helps release sleep hormones. We were dubious but it has actually worked. He'll now sleep from 7-5.30/6ish. We've also stopped his afternoon nap from being any longer than 2 hours.

Really hope you get some sleep soon. And please don't be hard on yourself for how you feel. Not sleeping really is the hardest part xx

Thank you for your reply, I will try a banana after dinner and see if that helps.

I think I'm finding this hard because she was an awful sleeper until five months, and then woke a few times a night for feeds (which was fine because I could feed and soothe her back to sleep so it was 'easier'). I was thinking that her sleeping better last autumn was finally a bit of good karma for her not sleeping when she was a newborn. And now this! Ugh

Hi @Dramallamabanana and @yellowspot I can only recommend the book the baby whisperer by Tracey Hogg. A friend gave it us before we had our DD it's a bit of an old school book and we've never read the whole thing - you just go to the problem you have! It's basically got us through all 3 of our sleep regressions - for us it was the sshhh-tap at 6 months, the pickup-put down at 18 months and now the put down at 2.5 (still working through this one). It's not one for controlled crying but it has lots of good techniques.
I always recommend it because it's saved us each time!

@Dramallamabanana my advise (based on the book) would be do your bedtime routine before bedtime then it's just pick up put down when she wakes. Dont get her up and start doing stuff or offer anything unless she seems poorly. You could have a sippy cup of water available but that's it I would suggest. Once you start doing anything after 'bedtime' it's mixed messages that this could be play, good, fun time.
So pick up put down from the book is basically what it says... pick up, bit of a cuddle and ssshhhh, say the same thing 'night night' or 'it's bedtime' whatever you usually say, then put down and leave the room. Keep interaction boring and repetitive so there is absolutely no benefit or fun for her waking and lights stay off etc. If she gets straight up when you put down or cries straight away (like mine used to) then still leave the room, give it a sec then go straight back in and do it again. Don't leave to cry for anything other than out the room and back in - unless you want to do controlled crying, but that's a different method and in this instance being left to cry will get her all hyped up more.
Keep going in picking up and putting down whilst she's awake. The message is it's bedtime, it's boring, there's nothing else you're going to get to do here!
Keep a tally of how many times if it will help your sanity. The first night we got into triple figures with DD before it went quiet and she'd given up. Then the next night it was double figures. It took a couple of weeks to fully get over it and then up until a recent sleep regression she went straight to sleep generally for 11 hours.

Hope that useful, it saves you reading the book right now! X

Thanks @lamby12. I will try that method. DH was the one who started getting her out of bed and letting her play for a bit, it seemed to work the first time so he kept doing it and yes I agree I don’t want her to start thinking there is a ‘reward’ for being awake in the middle of the night.

I’ll try the pick up/put down method, I have literally got nothing to lose as it can’t possibly get any worse!

Thank you for all your kind words and advice!

@Dramallamabanana I am in the same boat, I feel like I'm losing my mind with exhaustion and am totally at the end of my tether. Ours started with DD waking at approx 1am, happy as anything and wanting to play. After doing the shush it's nighttime etc (but not as often as @lamby12 suggests which is possibly why it took about 4 weeks 🤦🏼‍♀️) she started to sleep a bit better just waking a few times but settling straight down again after giving her the dummy. Phew we thought, getting back on track to sleeping through again. Then bam she got a cold. Well, since the cold arrived she is now crying to the point of hysteria even if we go in and pick her up to try and soothe her, it's like she's frightened of something and only calms down when she's out of her bedroom and distracted. It's absolutely awful and I have no idea what to do, she's crying so hard it sounds like she's going to be sick. I just don't understand why, from about 6 months she slept through for about 11/12 hours and once she started walking would actually take herself to her cot when she was ready for bed/sleep! I'm totally at a loss as to what to do and utterly exhausted and fed up.

@Dramallamabanana my 18mo is also out of whack at the moment, it's painful times. My only observation from your routine is your dd wakes quite early for the day, has a nap quite early in the day and therefore has a long wake up time before bedtime. She could be overtired because of that long wake up time.
Overtired-ness classically causes early wake ups and resettling earlier in the night. I know that's the case when any of my kids have had a crap daytime nap for some reason. I have googled and consulted baby sleep people, it seems pretty standard. All though not all kids are textbook, so just a suggestion!
Perhaps try and stretch out the morning nap to be 5-10 minutes later each day so eventually the nap is after lunch (say 12.30) and more in the middle of the day to even up awake times either side.

@Summerx i am going through the exact same thing as you at the moment. My LG has been a relatively good sleeper but since she has had a really bad cold for 5 weeks, it’s like she is scared to be in her bedroom herself. I don’t need to be touching her for her to go to sleep. I can put her in her cot but have to stay in the room with her. If she wakes up during the night & i’m not there, that sets her off again and it’s another battle. She won’t be left alone and screams like I e never heard before, like she is being hurt & ends up nearly being sick with it. How long did the stage last for you? Any tips? I feel like this is going to be my life, Sleeping on the chair next to her bed!

Thanks 😊 x

I would suggest capping her nap and moving it to the middle of her day. Maybe cap it to 1.5h initially (the lower end of what you say she does) and if she is still waking for long stretches overnight cap it further to one hour.

@BettyBooGC it felt like an eternity but o reckon lasted about 8 weeks all in all. She is so much better now. Just keep telling yourself it will pass 😘

We would take her out of her room and into ours until she had calmed down, distraction with an episode of Peppa or similar whilst she had a cuddle with us in bed usually did the trick to help her forget whatever she had been scared of and then I ended up sleeping on her floor quite a few times when we put her back down. I hope your LO settles back into happy sleeping again soon, it's so hard 😣

Split nights are how all humans slept before society determined we should sleep through the night. It’s biologically correct to have 2 shorter periods of sleeping a day and work etc in between. (Extremely common that post-menopausal women find they can’t sleep for long periods which seems to hark back to this.)

Obviously you can’t change society, but I find understanding the biological imperative helpful in understanding sleep. And that children go through phases. (Mine would sleep midnight till noon and have her wakeful spell at 4am.). I went with it and made sure I napped during the day as well to catch up. (DH worked away so was only home for 1.5 days a week and no family within hundreds of miles.)

It’s a slog but it does pass.

[quote BettyBooGC]@Summerx i am going through the exact same thing as you at the moment. My LG has been a relatively good sleeper but since she has had a really bad cold for 5 weeks, it’s like she is scared to be in her bedroom herself. I don’t need to be touching her for her to go to sleep. I can put her in her cot but have to stay in the room with her. If she wakes up during the night & i’m not there, that sets her off again and it’s another battle. She won’t be left alone and screams like I e never heard before, like she is being hurt & ends up nearly being sick with it. How long did the stage last for you? Any tips? I feel like this is going to be my life, Sleeping on the chair next to her bed!

Thanks 😊 x[/quote]
18 months is also a separation anxiety peak. Sounds like you’re doing all the right things to manage that.

I would definitely move the nap to later in the day. Generally for 18 months I believe this is 5-6 hours after waking. You might have to move it forward incrementally. Napping so soon after waking is essentially a continuation of night time sleep so it will take a little while for your child to adjust.

Thanks everyone! I think it’s a bit of separation anxiety as well as a sleep regression. I’m going to keep going with what I’m doing & persevere with it! X

I am having a similar issue (20 months), he was sleeping fine 7-7 for months. Now he has figured out that he can climb out of his cot, he is waking at 4am, climbing out and coming into my room ready to start the day, every single day.

I have literally tried everything:

• earlier naps/later nap (he has a really good daytime nap still)
• earlier bedtime/later bedtime (zero difference)
• banana before bed
• cut out dairy
• sippy cup with water next to cot
• baby gate on door (stands at it and screams or climbs over)
• pick up/put down (tried this for a week, up to 20 times a night, then gave up)
• sleep/gro bag
• tried taking the cot rail down, to transition to bed, for 2 weeks and it just made things 100x worse

I'm a single mum, currently working a full time job, and a part time job. This is really starting to affect my mental health, I love my son more than anything in the world but as OP bravely stated, I am feeling a lot of resentment and anger and I literally sit an just cry sometimes at feeling this way.

Follow fox and the moon infant sleep on Instagram she is really really good. Often does free q&as on her stories too. I went to her for some sleep help for my 2 year old and she was brilliant x