12 month old waking constantly- sleep training?

[August21yellowbaby]

My baby has never been a good sleeper. If I’m honest it has caused me to be a very depressed, angry and I’ve lost all my personality and life
i follow wake times, he eats more than enough in the day, he has the bath bottle bed routine every night, white noise, dark room, dry nappy but he still wakes up more than hourly through the night screaming the house down

my question is, will sleep training work? Is it cruel? I will feel extremely guilty but right now if I don’t do something I will end up going clinically insane
i have 0 support, no family no friends no partner who would give me any kind of help
i want to be a happy mum for my baby like I was at the start
any tips welcome please be kind I’m constantly in tears

just to add- in the day he is extremely laid back happy baby, no crying in the day whatsoever but at night he’s a different baby

Solidarity

Does he have reflux?

First of all, sending huge hugs! It's so hard to go through this.

Just wanted to share my personal experience incase it might help.

So, with my first, I was absolutely adamant I wouldn't sleep train, the idea filled me with anxiety and I read loads which supported my feeling that sleep training wasn't in the babies best interest. However, we got to 11 months and I felt very similarly to you and our little one woke all the time and eventually wouldn't even go back down in their cot. Something had to give - so I did the pick up put down method. There was a bit of crying but I was there to support them the whole time. Within a week they were sleeping through. We were all happier with more sleep and, personally, at that point I changed my opinion that babies probably do need a bit of help to learn how to self settle. This can be done in a gentle and supportive way and it is really tough but ultimately better for everyone, especially if your mental health is suffering.

Just done the same with my 9 month old and had the same positive results! Can give you more details on method if you are interested.

X

I did CC ferber method around 6 months. She was waking 1 to 2 hourly from 3.5 months I couldn't do it anymore. It worked for us. She still calls us in the night if she needs us and Generally a good sleeper now. Except the obvious like teeth and being unwell.

I feel your pain of sleep deprivation there's a reason it's used as torture. Just remember what ever method you chose. Stick with it, don't cave and stick to your plan and have a glass of wine around too.

@GoodnightRain Sorry to jump on here but can you explain what you did?

I've been there, both of mine were terrible sleepers. I always felt guilty at the thought of sleep training and then I'd look on here and see things people said about how awful it is to do it so I wouldn't try it. However when my daughter was 14 months she would wake in the night and be upset because she couldn't settle on me because she couldn't get comfortable as she was getting bigger. I was waiting for the day when it would just click and she would sleep through but it never did and there were so many wakes, I was exhausted. One night she cried for 45 minutes and that was with me there holding her. The next day I decided that I had to try something as it wasn't fair on her. The first night I left the room and it took 17 minutes before she was asleep and she has slept through the night every night since and she is 2.5 now. I didn't leave her to cry the full 17 minutes without checking in on her, I went in after a few minutes to reassure and explain that it was sleepy time.

I also did it with my son at 11 months, I tried before that but it didn't work. With him I sat on a chair next to his cot and stroked his face with his comforter, he cried but I was there next to him reassuring him. Eventually he took it and started rubbing his own face and went to sleep. He took a few nights of this before I was able to leave as soon as he was in the cot.

They will both still call out for me in the night if they're hot, cold, unwell etc so it hasn't taught them that they've been abandoned. I would try it.

@Terriblethirtytwos of course, I actually used a YouTube video and pretty much followed it to the letter so will link that below, if you have any further questions though happy to answer!

What I will say is that it can take absolutely ages the first time you try it and you probably will hit a wall thinking - is this going to work? And then all of a sudden they fall asleep! (Took about two hours the first nap but then the next nap and bedtime was much better - and everything quickly improved - exactly the same with DC2!) X

I’ve always been so on the fence with the idea of sleep training with my twins, I tried it around the 6 month mark but on reflection was a probably a little too early and I struggled with the crying so used to cave and go in and revert back to rocking. Fortunately they slept well from 9 months so I was feeling like i hadn’t created too many bad habits, until now!! 14 moths old and we have reverted back to new born days apparently!! I’m going to try some gentle training today after 9 nights of awful nights and now co sleeping with my little boy (whose never wanted to before!!) I personally think as long as it doesn’t feel “wrong” and when they are “really” crying you act accordingly and try not let them get hysterical I don’t think. A baby could sleep in that state anyway?! Give yourself a max amount of time your comfortable sitting outside their room for and go for it!! Please keep us posted how it goes xx

You have to be prepared for it to be hard for a few nights but if you are consistent then it can work. I think waking hourly at 12 months is very exhausting and you do need to do something to break the cycle. I did it with dc and although I struggled it was worth it for ds knowing he could settle himself and it gave me some sleep back which helped my own mental health. Good luck

Are his molars coming in? My little ones sleep went haywire when molars broke through.

Whatever decision you make is the best one for your family. There’s some really good advice here. Xx

I think it’s almost always food or pain when a child doesn’t sleep. Check for new teeth and if so try and see if calpol will give him some relief.
Give him a tablespoon or so of something like porridge as a late supper before his bath bottle bed.

My daughter is 17mo and still wakes around 3 times a night, but a lot of the time that starts at 4:30 so really she sleeps a good chunk before then. When she was 3.5 months she started waking every hour and I was in hell.

We co sleep so she is in a cot in our room and I still breastfeed her to sleep, it's a lot easier than rocking and helps me get back to sleep too.

But it's true what another poster said, sleep always goes haywire when your child has teeth coming or they're poorly or just generally going through a lot, but also it can be because they're cold/hot, scared, hungry, thirsty etc. Basically they wake because they need you.

A lot of parents sleep train, so if you have decided to do that you're not alone. But it is not what is best for any child in my opinion and saying it is is just lying to yourself. What is best for a child is to be listened to when they ask for you.

Saying that, we all have our limits and we can only do our best.

Someone said to me once that if a vulnerable elderly person was left to cry alone in a wet/dirty nappy, in pain/discomfort, there would be an outcry that this was unacceptable. But we're quite happy to leave a helpless child.

I've been there and people talking about teething etc just don't get it. You've never had a good sleeper so it's clearly not that. Some babies are just better sleepers than others no matter what you do so don't blame yourself. We ended up doing controlled crying around 13 months as I was going back to work and had tried everything else. He was still waking every few hours and often then awake several hours at a time. The controlled crying was a miracle. He slept through from night 2 and ever since. The longest he cried for the first night was 40 minutes (but you go in in intervals within that time so the maximum time he was crying was 5-6 minutes each time). It's hard but it so worth it for you and baby.

@GoodnightRain thank you for linking the video

@RedRobyn2021 you’re right that if a vulnerable person was left in pain or a dirty nappy and they were crying that would be awful. But that’s not the equivalent of sleep training. If you were caring for a vulnerable person and you were sure that nothing physical was wrong and they were crying because they were tired, you would have to resort to checking on them intermittently and reassuring them as ultimately you can’t force any other human being to sleep.