I know things could be worse, but I’ve had disrupted sleep since 2019, with pregnancies and babies, and I’m staring down the barrel of 2024 and I’m so done with disrupted sleep.
20mo DD seems to need around 12 hours’ sleep in 24. She has a 45 minute morning nap (around 11) which she is more than ready for. She would happily nap longer, we wake her up. After nap she is fine all day til bedtime at 7.30. She isn’t overtired and often doesn’t seem that tired at bedtime but DD1 needs to go to sleep so we tend to put them to bed at the same time. She is tired and yawning by 8-8.15 if she stays up later, though.
On a good night, she will sleep 11 hours through which is wonderful. On a bad night she will be awake for no obvious reason for 1-2 hours (recently we had 2.5). She isn’t upset unless we try to leave her alone. She usually settles a lot faster for DH. Unless she’s ill or upset we just give her a drink of water and lay her back down and tell her it’s sleep time. Eventually she will go back to sleep but she can be wide awake in the meantime. Elder DD was really similar but started sleeping properly around 18m and has been a fantastic sleeper ever since. I just really thought that we’d be in a better place by now with DD2, as she was a much better sleeper than DD1 as a tiny baby.
DD2 has a good routine, dark room etc. settles to sleep by herself as long as she feels tired and ready for sleep.
DH and I alternate nights since I stopped BF but both of us have demanding, high risk jobs. We are really struggling with the lack of sleep over such a sustained period.
Is there anything that anyone would suggest for this? I feel so defeated and I don’t know how to break the cycle.