Split nights .. I'm at a loss!

[Olivia199]

Hello,

Just searching the hive mind for some experience regarding split nights.

My daughter is 18 months and has always been extreme with sleep. Either extremely good 12 hours plus 2 hour naps or extremely awful with 5-6 hours a night broken up. She normally goes through a tricky patch and then reverts back just as I hit breaking point.

The last few weeks she's been doing split nights. Sleeps from 7:30-12ish and then awake until around 5:30 when she'll conk back out for a couple hours.

Often, my alarm is set for 5:30 for me to go to work so as you can imagine I'm nearing my breaking point fairly quickly here!

Some nights she'll wake regularly within that first block and some nights she'll sleep through. But once we go past midnight, when she wakes she seems.... done!

I feel like I've tried everything - Less day sleep, more day sleep (a couple of unfortunate nursery days with NO day sleep), warmer, cooler, big meal before bed, light meal, milk, no milk, even calpol... nothing seems to be making this any better.

We have a fairly solid routine but she naps anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. (More sleep happening at home, less at nursery).

She seems perfectly happy. Not really overtired or grumpy, just a bit wild at times with a slightly shorter tether when it comes to being told no.

I follow exactly the same routine when I go to her in the night. Red light on, cuddle, shhh, back in bed. First half of the night she immediately goes back down. Past 12 and she's either laying in my arms with eyes wide open or pushing herself down to play and chat. Asking for toast and to go to the park or have a shower. If I leave the room she doesn't appreciate it. These midnight parties sadly come with a mandatory invitation for me.

We're currently on holiday and nothing changed. I expected either worse due to new environment or better due to sheer exhaustion from activities and swimming etc. It's just the same.

Any experience of this and maybe what I'm doing wrong?! Or is it just one of those "stick it out"?

Whenever this has happened before she's just gotten over it and gone back to the 12 hours eventually but until now I've always been home. Functioning at work on sometimes genuine zero sleep is killing me off. Need some hope!

Thank you!

18 month olds average 11-14h sleep. Some may require an hour more or an hour less, so ten as a minimum. Where are her 10-11 coming from? 4.5 hours at the start of the night…then what happens? How many extra hours in the morning? How long is she napping for?

See this is my worry! She's getting the 4.5 hours, sometimes split up into half hour blocks with wakes, then only an hour in the morning, sometimes two. At home she'll potentially nap for a couple hours but more likely 1. At nursery she's getting half an hour at most but more and more refusing. She's got to be so beyond overtired now but she just will not give in. Even a car journey which used to send her off whether she was tired or not, is just time for more playing and chatting.

A couple of months ago we had the glorious 14 hours for ages. Then this started. We had a brief reprieve and I thought it was finally over but turned out she was just getting quite poorly. As soon as she was better she went back to whatever this is!

Look, you're doing your best and you're doing great! In my experience, as awful as it sounds you do just have to stick it out. Stay to your routine at bedtimes, don't change anything from your side in how you handle this and how you manage bed times and naps and just wait until she's back to normal.

You'll drive yourself bonkers wondering if you can do anything difference but the fact is you have previous hard evidence that what you do works, she DOES sleep great in periods. This is a baby thing not a you thing.

All I can suggest is roping in any family or friends that would be good enough to have her for a night so you can try and rest up. Even for an afternoon so you can nap!

X

We had this and it broke me. Eventually I put ear plugs in and ignored.

What worked for us was moving bedtime later and capping the nap at 90 mins. It didn't work immediately but it did work eventually.

You have to also be very consistent with just leaving her when she's awake.

I've tried a few different things during the night. Firstly I just persevered to try and get her back down. Then when that obviously didn't work, I tried getting up with her for an hour and then trying again. That didn't work either. One night I was so bloody desperate I drove her round to see if that got the sleepies back into her. Nope. Chatted the entire time.

If you've tried all changes there's not much help I can offer except...
What are her nappies like? I found that DS slept better at that age when he had a really good night nappy on. He's always got big nappies in the morning so I assume he was uncomfortable.
Have you tried 'waking' her ever so slightly at around 11pm? I know this can work for younger babies to break a waking up habit.

Funny you should say that actually, we've had a weird few days with nappies. I've always used pampers at night as it was the only one that she could go through with. But because we are up so much they've not been holding so we have had to do a few changes.

But the last few days, she's wet through clothes here and there (drinking tons at the moment... and eating just as much!). But I'll check her nappy before dinner and it'll be fairly dry. Then half an hour later she's soaked through EVERYTHING. It's been months since we wet through things.

I hadn't actually thought of doing a little mock wake, I did that around 5 months when she was waking after each sleep cycle so only managing 40 minute naps. Gentle wake at 30 mins and she'd do much longer.

I will try this!! Thank you!!

Can you put a mattress in her room? I managed to provide sufficient chat for my DS not to be enraged while probably about 85% asleep. We had a single bed in the room and I sort of dangled my hand over the cot, like a finger puppet version of a mother. This was when he was going from 2 naps to 1, so it felt like there was a reason for it and he did settle once the one nap kicked in.

DS was a bit like that at that age although he was generally awake for around two hours and it was more like 2-4am. It gradually stopped but did last a while I’m afraid (maybe up to a year but I can’t remember exactly).
what I will say now he’s 11 is that he likes to fall asleep listening to audio stories with a light on. He still struggles to get back to sleep if he wakes after 5am and has a bad dream or something on his mind. So I think it could be an over active mind at night. Perhaps you could try audio stories as it might give her something to focus her mind on which will help her get back to sleep. There are lots of devices designed for younger children now which play audio stories which she would be able to learn to use herself when she gets a bit older.
I don’t think it’s a particularly bad habit to get into. DS is now able to fall asleep whenever he is tired at sleepovers etc when everyone else is talking all around him and the lights are still on 🤣 sometimes he gets two hours more sleep than everyone else!

I also let him come in with me so i
Could try to sleep although he was generally wriggling around too much!

She started climbing out her cot around a year old so she's in a bed with a "crash pad" mattress as I like to call it, on the floor. I have definitely taken to sleeping on that. Or at least... laying on that while she bounces on my head!
I think that's part of the issue.. not knowing the reason and therefore not knowing whether its going to improve on it's own or whether I'm doing something wrong or missing something.
Last couple of times (once at 4 months and once at around 9-10) she reverted back at the flip of a switch.
We did, however, escape any issues in the nap switch. She just.. did it. She really can be a unicorn sleeper. Or a nightmare!

Thank you - she often doesn't hit the 90 minutes of a nap but I'll definitely bare in mind to cap if she does. She's always sorted it and gone back to sleeping well on her own previously so I'm not too keen to leave her upset yet. She does get so so distressed if I'm not there. So although I keep it consistent to cuddle, kiss, back on her bed and leave, I do go back when she's screaming at the door for me three seconds later.

That's interesting, I'll absolutely try it! She's got a Toniebox which she's more than confident in using so will try leaving that in her room tomorrow night when we get home. See if she can't entertain herself for a bit in the night at the least!
I've always liked falling asleep to books or music so maybe she just takes after me! Oh bless him, he's got it made with those skills!

Hello, Nanny here, amd mother of two ds. Ds2 was a terrible sleeper, and dropped his day time naps at about 18 months (ds1 napped until he was nearly 3, so they were totally different) He then continued to wake on and off for about a year in the night, at least 3 times. He was still in a cot, and what worked for him is he was still in a sleep sack and a baby gro, therefore he couldn't move around too much, and he was toasty warm. He was also still having a bottle of milk in the middle of the night if he woke. But he was never allowed to 'get up'. I would change his nappy, feed him his bottle, pop him back in his cot and leave his music on quietly. He soon got the hang of it, and it meant that I was only up for about 25 mins once a night. He went to bed at seven and got up for the day at 6am, which has continued til now amd he's nearly 8!

I've been very consistent with never being allowed to get up properly until lately and we tried a couple times as a last ditch effort but that didn't help either. I've never minded frequent night wakes when she's had them. But man these looooong wakes and total inability to get her back to snoozeland is hard.
Here's hoping she goes back to the long and peaceful night's soon?!
7:30-7:30 was glorious!
I am lucky in that she's never done the consistent 1-3 wakes a night. It is usually a solid night but on the flip side, when sleep is bad, she honestly baffles me with how she's still functioning on so little shut eye!

Been there. We had to cut down the nap to one hour but it took a good week to see a difference in the night time waking. She’s still not a great sleeper but as long as she’s well we don’t seem to have the hours and hours of awake time any more in the middle of the night. I feel for you it’s so hard.

Have you thought to give her a bottle of milk? I mean she could be hungry? I would still give milk at night at 18 months if any of mine woke up and straight back to sleep. They were probably still on bottles then though.

Mine were deffo in sleeping bags still then and in a cot lowered to its lowest level. They could climb out but couldn’t in a sleeping bag.

sometimes if they woke I’d just bring them into bed with me and DH.

Probably going against the Western parenting ideal here but I grew up in an extended family and never slept alone until I was ten. No night wakings, I slept snug as a bug with my Grandmother.

I would definitely try a dream change at 10.30/11 to allow her to start a new sleep cycle then and get an extra four hours out of her.

@TauroLomo 👍

My eldest slept really well 12-18 months then at 18 months something just changed in him and things were shit for a while.

He's 4 and a half and obviously much better now but now I've got his nearly 1 year old sister to contend with and it's hard!

You're not alone I tell myself it's not forever.

Thank you - it's certainly proving tough. I just don't understand how she's so full of energy! I'm desperately hoping she goes back to being the amazing sleeper she used to be and this is just a bump in the road..!

Yeah a bottle is normally one of the first go to's when she's not going back to sleep. She'll often drink some at least, but seems to use it to fuel her further..! I dug out all her bottles when this started as it'd been a while since she'd wanted any night milk or any milk from a bottle.

She's still in a sleeping bag, just one with legs now so she doesn't fall. Sadly even with the sleeping bag on, she managed to climb out twice.. and once headfirst which was just a lucky catch on my part. She slept so much better when we moved to a bed and would happily take herself off to sleep. Bonus that she'd then play when she first woke up, giving me time to quickly get dressed. We tried co-sleeping again last night and she still woke and played for hours. Got her back to sleep at 5.