Help with toddler sleep

[BrambleRoses]

DS is 14 months. We had a really terrible patch between 10 and 12 months and then things got better. Still waking 1/2 times but easy to settle.

Now he’s started being very difficult to get to bed - usually around 830 when he goes down - and wakes in the night and takes around an hour to settle.

Any tips? He wakes at around 7 and usually naps for 2 hours 12-2.

The most likely reason is sleep deprivation.

The average baby of this age would still be on two naps per day - you should be expecting around 15 hours sleep in 24 hours (usual in the form of 2h awake in the morning, 3h awake between 1st and 2nd nap, 4h awake before bed).

Sleep deprivation becomes a self-perpetuating spiral because a baby who isn't getting enough sleep is likely to be harder to get to sleep and find it harder to stay asleep, especially when sleep pressure is low (like in the daytime).

So the answer comes from breaking the spiral. It takes big, big focus on getting more sleep. Work on the rule any sleep, any how. For about 3 weeks focus only on getting more sleep, rather than focusing on long term sleep habits.

Once out of the overtired spiral, then focus on developing better sleep habits so that it is less hard work to get baby to sleep.