Stopping the overtired cycle, 14 month old

[Fantail86]

My daughter is 14 months old. She exhibits signs of overtiredness within an hour of getting up for the day, eye rubbing, sneezing, hiccups etc. We get through each day but it feels like we are merely existing. Her concentration is terrible and she often appears very hyper but is actually very tired. We have contacted napped since she was little (rightly or wrongly) as it has been the only way that I've ever been able to get her to nap during the day and even this has been a huge struggle and she fights every step of the way. Overnight her sleep has now fragmented, waking every couple of hours with an early morning wake. I really don't know how to fix it. I'm happy to sleep train, it's probably what needs to happen but my understanding is that it only really works if your child isn't completely overtired to start with. I have tried co sleeping but rather than being comforting I think it just over stimulates her.
Could someone suggest how we make a start on breaking the overtired cycle. Would it make sense to drastically reduce her wake windows?
So far her day is roughly as follows
6am wake (can be much earlier)
9am to 10am nap one
1pm to 3pm nap two
7pm bed.
She's often very overtired by her first nap but trying sooner seems to fail too.

A friend of mine had something similar, she spent 3 days having very, very quiet days. So curtains drawn when at home, only quiet activities, no TV but lots of fresh air in a carrier/pram and as much sleep as they could fit in to those 3 days. She felt that it did help 'wind down' and then sleep trained. I couldn't have done either (practically and the emotion of sleep training) but my friend is sure that it made a positive difference for them. Good luck

I had absolute hell with our DC and sleep. I totally get it, it’s the pits.

Im no guru but I hope this makes sense; our DS relied on us totally to help him get to sleep, it was like as if we had to be touching or moving constantly for every nap/nighttime sleep. Ended up paying a sleep consultant who did help A LOT. Ultimately though, the thing I think that got us out of the trap was just standing our ground and getting DS1 into the habit of being ok lying down still when he’s tired then dropping off in bed. It meant if he woke up, saw that it was dark and he was in bed then he could put himself back to sleep.

He still sleeps in our bed, I like it, DP likes it so that is how we live at the minute but he sleeps all night and sleeps for hours at nap time without any help.

It took weeks, weeks of us being stubborn and not helping him. We would just lay with him as he rolled around getting more and more tired in the bedroom, exhausted, but happy. Then slowly he started to realise that going to bed when you’re tired is ok. He stopped fighting it/us.

Today for instance he started looking tired so I carried him to bed led next to him and held his hand, he drifted off in about 8-10 minutes and I went back downstairs whilst he slept for 1.5 hours.

What do you do when she gets up super early? Do you leave the bedroom?

Soporific breathing also helps (learnt that word on here), I started it when I was just trying to keep myself calm and it’s like witchcraft, slow deep calm breaths which they then match (because biology is great) and drowsiness ensues.

@MissSmith80

A friend of mine had something similar, she spent 3 days having very, very quiet days. So curtains drawn when at home, only quiet activities, no TV but lots of fresh air in a carrier/pram and as much sleep as they could fit in to those 3 days. She felt that it did help 'wind down' and then sleep trained. I couldn't have done either (practically and the emotion of sleep training) but my friend is sure that it made a positive difference for them. Good luck

Thank you for your good wishes. I'm not sure what we are going to do re sleep training, my ongoing belief has always been that they need us for emotional regulation but maybe my daughter needs something quite different from me. Going to at the very least try a few very quiet days and see where we go from there

@FTEngineerM

I had absolute hell with our DC and sleep. I totally get it, it’s the pits.

Im no guru but I hope this makes sense; our DS relied on us totally to help him get to sleep, it was like as if we had to be touching or moving constantly for every nap/nighttime sleep. Ended up paying a sleep consultant who did help A LOT. Ultimately though, the thing I think that got us out of the trap was just standing our ground and getting DS1 into the habit of being ok lying down still when he’s tired then dropping off in bed. It meant if he woke up, saw that it was dark and he was in bed then he could put himself back to sleep.

He still sleeps in our bed, I like it, DP likes it so that is how we live at the minute but he sleeps all night and sleeps for hours at nap time without any help.

It took weeks, weeks of us being stubborn and not helping him. We would just lay with him as he rolled around getting more and more tired in the bedroom, exhausted, but happy. Then slowly he started to realise that going to bed when you’re tired is ok. He stopped fighting it/us.

Today for instance he started looking tired so I carried him to bed led next to him and held his hand, he drifted off in about 8-10 minutes and I went back downstairs whilst he slept for 1.5 hours.

What do you do when she gets up super early? Do you leave the bedroom?

Soporific breathing also helps (learnt that word on here), I started it when I was just trying to keep myself calm and it’s like witchcraft, slow deep calm breaths which they then match (because biology is great) and drowsiness ensues.

It's so good to hear that I'm not alone, it can feel so miserable and I'm so glad to see that you are out the other side with what sounds like a lot of persistence. Did your son get even more tired whilst you were making changes? That's my fear at the moment as our daughter is already in such a state. I do know that I need to hold on to a longer term approach. Re the early mornings, I've made things really really boring.. fake being asleep etc she generally gets a reaction as she does things like tap my face etc.

I would say you need to have a few quiet days, as PP said, then sleep train using whatever method you're comfortable with, and that works for your baby.

I've tried everything with my 19 month old - staying with her until she slept, gradual retreat, co-sleeping, cuddling/feeding to sleep. The only thing that works is controlled crying. I know it's unpopular on MN, but every child reacts and responds differently, and mine didn't respond to anything but CC.

Babies need good quality sleep. Whilst CC is not fun for a few nights, if it helps baby sleep better long term then in my view it's worth it. Bear in mind though you might need to do mini-versions occasionally if sleep gets disrupted by holidays etc.

My GP recommended a book by Millpond sleep clinic, it has various scenarios and issues along with suggested methods to use, might be worth a look x

@BirdIsland thank you. I feel like I'm in a similar place to you, it feels like I've tried everything too and I need her to sleep because on the rare occasion that she has been well rested she is a much happier girl. Did you use CC for naps too?

@Fantail86 my DD dropped her morning nap at about 13 months, so is always so ready for her lunchtime nap and usually goes to sleep pretty easily anyway. But yes, the sleep consultant we spoke to said to use CC for all sleep times. She also said you don't have to increase the intervals if you don't feel comfortable - we stuck at 2 mins until she was settling and then left it a little longer.

It definitely doesn't fix everything (we can't sort the v early wakings, for example) but does seem to help overnight sleep. It's hard though, there always seems to be something stopping them sleeping properly - cold or cough, teeth, immunizations - and it's felt like a constant challenge for us to make sure she's getting good sleep. It definitely doesn't come naturally to her!

@Fantail86 yes, for a short while at least. We had to watch him get so tired and worked up then eventually crash. It felt wrong at first, there weren’t any tears though just frantic type crawling/rolling/fussing.

Prioritise sleep for 2 or 3 days and don't worry about routine at all for those few days. It will make sleep training much easier.

There will always be times when you have to go off routine for a "reset", so it's a good thing to get used to it now. The most obvious example is coming home from holidays - routine is always screwed and DC will be am over tired hot mess. So 2 or 3 days of much shorter awake windows, quiet subdued environment all day, loads of help to sleep. Then it resets things ready for going back to normal. Also often needed after illness, significant teething disruption, and a million other things that take the sleep-equilibrium off kilter.

@FATEdestiny thanks. Unfortunately my daughter doesn't agree with the reduced wake windows but I am persevering.
Things are particularly bad as she has had illness after illness since she turned 11 months, we live in NZ and it seems she has all the winter bugs.
How drastically should I try reducing her wake windows by, it's no exaggeration that I'm seeing overtired signs from the beginning of the day but she just won't settle.