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!

Not at all, I'd be more than happy to co-sleep but sadly it doesn't fix the problem. And in some ways makes it worse. If she goes down in the evening on her own (and she does always go down easily first thing!) Then 75% of the time she'll sleep through until her big wake. If I go in with her, she wakes frequently and wants to play or bounce on me. Last night we tried again and she spent a fair while trying to pry my mouth open with her hands while trying to shove her foot in the gap she created.

I'll give that a go tonight. Sadly last night she'd already woken by 10 so I missed the chance.. (Though admittedly this was likely due to someone loudly talking outside her window.) We are home now so hoping for the best tonight!

Oh bless you, I hope things aren't as bad this time around. It's definitely taking its toll. She's slept so well for so long and I just don't understand how she's still functioning!

Thank you all for your suggestions... it seems she was just waiting for me to get to the end of my tether a bit before reverting back to a solid 13 hours. Hopefully that is the end of the rough time.

I think part of this might be to do with not having a cot to contain her, is there anyway you can make her bed more contained? Bed rails along the side? I think baby's/toddlers need the feeling of being contained and safe to sleep well.

If it were me I would ignore and not go in unless she's really crying/distressed, then I'd quietly comfort, check if she needed a drink or nappy change, put back to bed and leave again. Repeat until she understands she has to sleep.

Have you tried relaxing music/white noise?

Can someone else do a couple of nights for you?

Since moving to the bed 6 months ago she's slept better than ever, consistent 12 hour stints until this issue, so I'm not sure the bed is the problem. She was getting very upset as soon as I leave so it was for seconds at a time. This is so out of the ordinary for her that I was sure something must be going on. But last night she got herself into bed, snuggled down and slept 13 hours straight. So I'm hoping it was a phase like last time and that it's over now! It seemed like she just didn't need the sleep. She wasn't tired or whingy in the day. Happiest baby! Not sure how she was still functioning but glad she's had some rest now.

Hi Op,
Do you have any updates? A year on, is she sleeping better? How long did the split nights pattern last? Thanks xx

@Mamoun - Hi! Oh goodness so much better. She snapped out of it the night I wrote the last post on this board and went back to being a great sleeper. She's had a few phases again where she seems to need so little sleep (and she dropped her nap painfully early!) But it did end and she's a through the night girl once again! X