I have an almost one year old that has never been a great sleeper. He has never yet slept through the night. For the past few months he has fallen into a pattern where he falls asleep at 6pm, then wakes around 11pm for a bottle of milk. During this stage he falls asleep fine and there are rarely issues. I put him down in his cot awake but sleepy and he falls asleep by himself. In the second portion of the night however he wakes up anywhere between 1-3am and will stand up in his cot crying. Until the past week I used to go into his room when he did this and get into a spare single bed with him for the rest of the night. He would then fall asleep with me until 6am. I have tried to stop this this week as I really want him to sleep in his own cot and when we share a bed all his wriggling and bed hogging keeps me awake. Over the past five days my dp and I have tried to get him to sleep in his own
Cot. This has led to 2-3 hours of crying and low level whinging each night before he finally falls asleep. We have tried going in intermittently to sooth him, sitting by his cot to stroke his head. He carries on crying. He will also lie down quietly for a few mins now and then and just when you think he must finally be asleep he decides to get up to start crying again. If I pick him up he stops crying, it is clear that is what he wants. Last night I gave him another bottle which he drank half on but the crying continued for another hour and a half so I don’t think he is hungry. Can anyone advise? It seems going in to sooth him hasn’t worked and neither has letting him cry it out up to 15 mins. I have also tried hallway light on and total darkness.
Thanks