Beyond my breaking point... desperate for advice

[poppyinyourhair]

I can count the number of 'full' nights sleep (uninterrupted stretch of 6 hours) on less than one hand in TWO YEARS.

I am so, so so, exhausted. Even when DH does the night shift I am still woken up by DS crying. Once I'm awake it's really hard for me to quickly fall back asleep. I feel broken and my mental health and work performance are really starting to suffer.

DS is 16 months now and I swear slept better as a 4-6 month old than he does now. 2-3 night wakings are regular occurrence, usually solved by finding the paci and a few back pats but sometimes when he is truly inconsolable (30 mins or more of crying) we give in and give him milk. This instantly settles him and sends him back off. We don’t ever feed to sleep though, he always goes down awake and puts himself to sleep, but It seems like the only solution when he is really worked up in the middle of the night.

I really don’t want to set this precedent of reintroducing night feeds. He seems to eat ok (not great) in the day and even if he doesn’t people say he’s old enough to fast through the night at this age?

I don’t know what we’re doing wrong. I don’t understand how anyone does Controlled Crying or any other sleep training when half the time it seems like he is genuinely hungry or teething etc.

Today I’ve been up since 4 am when he woke, unable to go back to sleep from anxiety thinking about work today and how I wasn’t going to be rested for an important meeting… fast forward to now and I never was able to fall back asleep, now requesting the meeting on Zoom as I need to WFH, feeling a complete and utter failure and that I’ll probably get sacked. I don’t think I can go on like this.

I really can't bear the CIO. My 5 year old sleeps amazingly but my 4 year old still wakes 3 times a night. Yes if we left him he'd sleep through eventually, but that would be because he would know crying was futile and his mum and dad wouldn't come? That's awful?
It is really difficult but try and think of the long term good you're doing by comforting him.
Can you bed share? Then you all get sleep. Who cares if it's a bad habit, he's not in a good one now waking up all the time 😂 but this way you all get sleep!
Or alternate bed share night so one night you sleep in the spare room and the next night your partner does. The other night you bedshare.

We as married adults don't sleep alone but expect little babies to be happy to do it.

He may be struggling with his teeth at night because he's lying flat as opposed to being up during the day. Hope you find a resolution soon

🙄

take him to sleep school

I'm on my 6th year now.....my eldest was getting up every night until his sister was born last April, she's been a 12hr sleeper but then I still get disturbed by eldest, then now she will have nights where she wakes up, they were both up last night

I feel for you my son is nearly 18 months and is the same. He's terrible with food and isn't fussy in what he eats but is fussy on when he eats! He's just so disinterested at times. My friend gave me a tip and said if he hasn't eaten much during the day then crumble a rusk in his nighttime bottle to help fill him up. Which I've done and omg it's a godsend He's slept through the night everytime I've done it. Feel for you hun hope you get some much needed rest soon

This is so hard and I, like many others, have been there. I promise there is light at the end of the tunnel even though it doesn’t feel like that. However, none of that helps in the here and now. Unfortunately what you describe can be completely normal sleep behaviour for a young child. What you describe about your own anxiety, low mood, difficulty sleeping etc may not be “normal”. Have you considered speaking to your GP? Not suggesting the situation isn’t really really hard and being at your wits’ end is totally understandable but it’s important you look after yourself too, in a way that is “independent” from DC.

Apologies if am repeating things already said - no time to RTFT but wanted to chip in and help if I can.
We had this situation with one of our twins at the same age and I was as desperate as you sound! Someone suggested having a phone consultation with Mel at Sleep Nannies and I did that. (It was about £65 at the time but we would have paid more than that)
She was amazing - her most effective suggestion was to increase the amount of fat in his diet because lack of satiety can really affect some toddlers’ sleep. It wasn’t something I’d have ever thought of. So things like cream, butter, almond butter, proper full fat yogurt, avocado, coconut milk etc. Apparently parents often feed their toddler stuff with a lot of bulk like Weetabix which isn’t especially nourishing.

Anyway we did that and honestly he slept MASSIVELY better from the first day of the change in food. Maybe give it a try if you haven’t already?
(Just to reassure - he and his twin are now 7 and very tall and slim, so I didn’t break him with lard in pursuit of a decent night’s sleep)