1 year olds sleep. SOS

[Thefaceofboe]

Long story short my 12 month old is a horrendous sleeper, wakes constantly, has split nights and wakes up at 5am for the day. I’ve tried changing her naps but nothing has remotely helped.

i work full time and leave the house for work at 7am and get back at 6.30pm, I’m exhausted.

i never wanted to sleep train but I feel like I don’t have a choice, DD is constantly exhausted from having a bad nights sleep. I was looking at the Ferber method and have some questions.

When I check on her in the recommended time? What do I do? She will only stop crying if I pick her up but start crying the second I put her down. She won’t lie down in her cot at all, she’ll just hold onto the bars and cry till I pick her up.

I don’t know if I can do but I don’t know what else to do 😢

Maybe You could look up pick up put down method? Might work better for you if lo won't lie down.

We did ferber at 6 months and yes we have repeated it when we have had little blips. We go in lay lo on her stomach physically not harshly obviously (belly sleeper) stay 30 seconds to 45 seconds, we rest our hand on her bum and between shoulder blades. Sometimes I stroke her hair.

Some people pat. Some rest their hands on them. Some shush their lo. It's what works for you and lo. Too much stimulation here for our lo makes it worse.

Yes lo will be quite frankly annoyed and pissed off. Be strong. I wore ear plugs or headphones. Yes i could still here my lo but it's not so heart wrenching.

Some people do wine while their doing it. Or go make a cup of tea.

Hi @ChittyBang1987 sorry for the late reply I’ve been too busy and sleep deprived to even check this thread.

Is it worth trying to sleep training during a potential sleep regression? I’ve tried pick up put down but my DD just stands back up, this will go on untill I give in and pick her up and rock her. She gets so so hysterical she almost makes herself sick and doesn’t show any signs of calming down, i just can’t do it.

last night she woke at 10pm (bed at 8-15pm) absolutely hysterical, even in my arms, didn’t want milk and was thrashing about screaming. This went on for almost 3 hours so my husband took her out in the car which thankfully calmed her down but she was still awake. When they got back I rocked her to sleep which worked but she would only stay asleep if I kept rocking.

I managed to get into bed at 4.15am but then she was awake an hour later needing rocking again. She then was up for the day at 7am

She’s miserable because she’s so tired and I’m just at a complete loss

luckily I was off work today on annual leave but I don’t know how I’m going to survive this week if it carries on.

I’ve considered teething so gave calpol but makes no difference, offered milk and/or water, tried co sleeping (this used to work) but she just won’t settle now.

it’s as if something is bothering her but we went to the doctors previously to check for ear infection etc but he said she was fine

Is it a split night???
What's naps like?

I read waking 2 hours after bedtime or thereabouts is overtiredness.

We done sleep training in Regressions when we had blips as I call them.

Lo always rocked to sleep??

Hahaha realise that's lots of questions

@Thefaceofboe hello. This sounds really rough. I hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread as my DS is similar. He's 15m now. At the moment our nights look like this:

8pm he goes to sleep
10pm I go to sleep
11.30pm he wakes up
1am after an hour and a half I manage to get him to settle in his bed
4am he wakes up, I bf him and he comes into my bed. He fusses around and I have to continually pat him on the back etc
5.30am up for the day, DP gets up with him while I sleep for an hour

He's also only ever been rocked or fed to sleep. We're thinking of sleep training too, as we're TTC no2. I know he's going to stand up and scream. I'm not actually convinced getting him to go to sleep by himself will solve all the problems. He seems to have really bad separation anxiety.

So any advice on this thread would be great. Sorry to have none to offer atm! But sending sympathy instead.

We sleep trained at 6 months but sort of did a cross between Ferber and pick up/put down. So we used Ferber intervals, but picked her up until she calmed down because patting or anything else other than picking up caused her to scream worse than if we'd not gone in at all. It worked really well for us. We'd still rock/bounce her (on an exercise ball) to sleep at bedtime but it became about a 5x quicker process after the sleep training.

She's now almost 16 months and we tried the same technique again during subsequent bad blips as PP's have called them but I agree it is harder as they are older and can sit/stand up in their cot. So we let her cry for a few mins, if she's stayed lying down she usually settles back to sleep herself, but if she sits or stands we go back in and bounce her until she's drifting off again. The trick to putting them back down is to gently ease them down, put their head down last and as you do so put a hand on their chest- not sure why it works but the pressure of your hand somehow stops them from waking again.

So I'd defo recommend a version of Ferber that works for you, get a Swiss ball, and do the hand thing. Also I always hum a repetitive tune which I think she now associates with going to sleep.

Also- 8.15 might be a bit late for bedtime so maybe try earlier? What are her daytime naps like? She may be ready to transition to just 1 nap if she hasn't already.

@Housenoob

Thank you for sharing that.

Her bedtime is usually 7/7.30 but we tried 8pm in hope it would help her sleep better if she was a bit more tired, but it made no difference so will go back to being a bit earlier.

her naps tend to be 45 minutes in the morning around 10-10.45 and in the afternoon 2-2.45, then bed at 7pm.

it’s hard trying to control her naps too much because she’s in nursery 5 days a week

@ChittyBang1987

I’ve just posted naps previous. We have rocked recently as a last resort to get her to sleep during these wake ups but she has always had some kind of help getting to sleep, such as patting and shhhing.

she sometimes has split nights, other times just wakes loads but goes back to sleep fairly quickly. She used to sleep fairly well and only wake twice on the same routine, which is frustrating

and with overtiredness, she will sleep for ages when we contact nap so I have played around with the length of her naps on a weekend and nothing makes a slight difference to her night sleep

@Billyv

hi, that sounds really hard.

my dd does that where she will only co sleep if i pat her back so I get no sleep anyway. It’s so hard isn’t it. I feel similar about separation anxiety, I don’t know if sleep training will help but I’ll try anything right now

In your shoes I would absolutely do ferber / controlled crying with interval checks. At the check in, definitely don't pick up. Just reassure verbally, keep it all very quiet, don't stay in long. No one wants to do this but honestly it's worth it for you all, not just you, in a few days you won't know yourselves.

i could have written your post OP, we’re in an identical situation. It’s so desperate now we’ve decided to dip into savings and pay for a sleep trainer. She’s doing two nights next week - will report back. Might be worth considering? Everyone I’ve spoken to says that trainers are worth their wait in gold… if it works

I had this with my 10month old. I downloaded a sleep course from 'just chill mama' (she's on Instagram) had quite a bit of crying for a couple of nights and now my baby sleeps 7-6am.

Have a look into it, might work for you

Sorry it's 'just chill baby' not mama!

@Reluctantadult

ive got to the point now where I’ll try anything, but it’s got so bad I can’t see it helping. My parents are here at the weekend so I think it’s try it once they’ve gone. I want her sleep better for her just as much as us, she’s so ratty during the day 😥

@LadyHalesBroach

My husband and I have spoken about it but we’re just unsure whether we can afford what I’ve seen online. I’ve seen the cheaper packages but not sure if they would be worth it. Please do report back and let me know how it works for you. How old is your little one?

@lady725516

thank you I’ll definitely have a look. How old was your baby?

She was 10months at the time. She turned 1 last month and apart from the occasional waking for her dummy she sleeps through and it had a really positive affect on her napping in the daytime too

@Thefaceofboe I've very much been there. Worked with a sleep consultant with both mine in the end, for different reasons. I was convinced controlled crying wouldn't work for my son when he was 12m. He had a split night too. It did work, and pretty much straight away. In hindsight my going in and trying to 'get' him to go back to sleep was actually fueling his wake up. I also needed to tweak daytime a bit, including putting him to bed much earlier. I did that first to set him up well, then 2 or 3 nights of controlled crying, but actually he barely cried. I'm telling you this to give you some faith!

I've heard good things about the huckleberry app, which didn't exist when mine were little. Mine are 7 and 5yo now.

@Thefaceofboe he is 10months old but my 6 year old DD was never like this, she was a regular sleeper from about 6 months.

part of the issue, I’m convinced, is that he’s also a bottle refuser. But since he gets three meals a day and boob, he shouldn’t need milk through the night - or so I am told.

some friends used this lady we’ve booked and swear she sorts out the issue. I checked out her reviews and they all say the same thing. Currently DS goes down by 7:30, wakes at 11 and then feeds on the hour until he’s up properly at 5am. The thought of the clocks going back and making it even worse fills me with horror. I actually now go to bed at 9pm with a sense of dread because I know how bad the night is going to be. It’s worse than a newborn. And it’s also destroying my marriage. So yeah, for us it’s worth the £600. But it is a lot of money.

So we started sleep training last night kinda using the Ferber method. I went in and comforted her every 3 minutes if she was crying, but didn’t pick her up. After a few check ins she stopped crying and spent half an hour faffing before going to sleep. She then only woke twice in the night, barley cried and fell asleep on her own both times. Tonight it only took half an hour to get her down with basically no crying.

im in shock and maybe jumping the gun but I’m amazed at how well she slept last night. It was wake ups every 45 mins on Sunday night

That's brilliant! Consistency is key now - don't give up, even if there is a blip. You could also space your check ins out longer than 3 mins if she isn't crying.

Oh fantastic, well done you @Thefaceofboe and your little.

night 2 went amazing, slept almost 12 hours and only woke once at 11pm for about 20 minutes. Night 3 and bedtime took 13 minutes in total :) I’m so pleased.

Well done!!
Long may it continue!

This was my DS! Didn't sleep through till be was 14 months.

We were exhausted and had tried everything. The onlt thing that eventually worked for us (on advice from our health visitor) was controlled crying.

It was 3 nights of hell but it worked and he began to sleep well, no waking and waking up at a reasonably time (6-6.30am)

He's not nearly 2 and can self settle at naps and bedtime and we are all so much happier !!

It's not for everyone but we were both at our wits end. I was suffering with PND and my relationship was at breaking point due to the lack of sleep.

If you're interested I can give details of what we did.