Desperate; 13 month old awake for hours EVERY NIGHT

[Suzywooo]

13 month old daughter, healthy in every way. Happy in the day.
She’s never been a great napper, I have a routine in place (aim for 6.30am awake, 9.45 nap for half hour, then 1.30 lunch nap for around 1hr) but no matter how strict I am she just is so different every day. Most days if I can get an hour nap in total we’re lucky. She’s happy to go to sleep drowsy, after a moan and a quick check she’s off.

The trouble really is the bed time..6.45pm calm bath, book, black out blind up, sleeping pod on, white noise on, bottle and bed. Same every night. Yet EVERY night, she wakes up. Sometimes 11pm, sometimes 1am, but always for around 1-3 hours. She moans and cries non stop. We have tried controlled crying to the letter, and the moving chair, I have slept on the floor next to her, even tried just holding her but nothing works.
she doesn’t seem to want me, just can’t seem to get back to sleep.
she’s been like this since around 4 months old and I am just exhausted, frustrated and at the end of what I can do.
my partner gets frustrated with her, plus works full time, so I do the night waking all myself.
i call the health visitor often and she just tells me to carry on but I can’t just carry on. My mental health is suffering, my relationship with my two other children is suffering and I’m meant to be returning to teaching shortly which I fear will just finish me off. Help please x

Split nights can be hell! It can help to work out on average how many hours your little one sleeps in a 24 hour period, and engineer a routine that works around that. For example at the minute your little one is meant to be sleeping 11h45 overnight but they simply might not be capable of that. They may be able to do 13 hours in 24 hours for example, 2 in the day and 11 overnight. Or whatever it would be that they need individually! I'd do some tracking if I were you - naps and night sleep and take the average across a few days!

We had this with my eldest for a bit. I put a mattress on her floor and took her in with me and just let her thrash about.

Ferber! You said you tried cc, what happened? Done properly it will work but does take time and stamina

We followed the Ferber timings but after a solid 3+ hours awake for about 7 nights straight I gave up. I suffer from IBS and it just made me so ill so unfortunately I decided to relent and sit in her room with my back to her, which also then didn’t work 🙈

She isn't feeding to sleep is she?

I would be aiming for one later longer nap to replace the early half one?

I think I’ll do what you say and jot it down, maybe a later bed and earlier morning may help condense her night 👍

So the last 3 days I’ve tried to stretch out her morning and drop the morning nap, she’s done that fine but still will only have 1hr at around 12/12.30. This means her bedtime has been 15 mins early as she’s struggled to make it to bed time