Hi all, first post here!
My youngest DS is just about to turn 14 months and he is absolutely KILLING me sleep wise recently. We sleep trained at 7 months by slowly reducing how much we needed to do to get him to sleep and then slowly reducing our presence at sleep time until we could put him down and walk out the room. It was rough, it took a while and there were ups and downs but we got there eventually and had way more good than bad.
Recently though he’s gotten into the habit of waking up for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night and is buzzing. Literally he’ll sit and throw things at me whilst laughing, dance in his cot, purposely stick limbs through the bars of the cot at awkward angles knowing I’ll intervene when he starts squawking because he’s stuck (you can tell it’s on purpose cos he’ll repeatedly do it because he knows we’ll react, he’s not silly hahah). But despite being able to fall asleep perfectly on his own, we cannot leave the room during these episodes otherwise he screams blue murder. On top of that he caught a cold after these episodes started and now on top of the 2/3 hour wake, he’s waking every 40 minutes expecting one of us to sit there til he falls asleep and then the cycle starts again. Up to this point I’ve just done that, gone and sat in the room with him or on really bad nights brought him to bed with me for the sake of a bit of sleep. He’s had phases before where we’ve needed to sit with him in the night but these were usually for much shorter periods of time (under half an hour), only needed to happen once or twice in the night and usually only for a couple of nights then he’s fine again. But I’m 21 weeks pregnant with our 3rd and already the size of a house, bed sharing is incredibly uncomfortable already and not something I want to continue, nor do I want to continue having to sit on the bedroom floor for hours on end whilst things get progressively worse.
He has 1 nap a day 12.30-2/2.30 and has done since he was 12 months as that’s what he started doing at nursery and found it easier to just replicate this at home. Bedtime is 7.30, wake time is anywhere between 6 and 8, although the average is 6.30ish I’d say.
I’m open to pretty much anything at this point (bar bed sharing so please please don’t suggest that in the nicest way possible!), any suggestions outside of bed sharing are welcome. I’m quite apprehensive because he’s easily my most stubborn out of my two and is LOUD. Everyone I know comments how loud he is when he gets upset and he is very difficult to calm again. Plus I live in a terraced house and worry the neighbours will report me to social services because it honestly sounds like we’re hurting him when he gets going, which I realise is probably irrational because babies/toddlers cry, but nevertheless it still worries me that people will think there’s something more going on other than a stubborn baby not wanting to sleep. I’m worried sleep training using a different method to before (which did garner some tears but was a very gradual process so not too painful tears wise) is going to be a nightmare. Having said that, I’m at a total loss so as I said all suggestions/advice/reassurance etc welcome bar bedsharing.
Thanks for reading my monologue of sleep woes x