14 month old terrible naps (40 mins) and night waking lots

[Sae178]

Hi

I'm feeling very frazzled as DD has never been the best sleeper but I feel like things are quite bad at the moment. I need some advice or to hear I'm not the only one! Ds wasn't the best sleeper either but he would nap from 2 hours at about 1 year old and I thought things would improve with DS by this age.

DD is breastfed but doesn't feed to sleep for bedtime or naps. Few weeks ago she was doing really well for night time and we night weaned and she was just waking at 5am for one feed. For her that's amazing. However, now she's gone back to waking about 3 time a night and only way to settle is feeding. Even that doesn't work sometimes!! She goes to sleep around 7pm.

Then her naps are even worse. She will only nap for 1 x 40 mins a day. Mostly in pram but sometimes in cot. She's so unsettled when sleeping and will stir after 10 mins. Then again at 20 mins, she goes byack to sleep but then wakes after 40 mins! Her day time sleep has always been like this. She's constantly tired and clingy. I worry she isn't getting any restorative sleep. If I go out in pram I have to continually push her.

Has anyone got any suggestions for a tired mumma :-)

I’d maybe suggest ruling out illnesses/ teething if her sleep patterns have changed suddenly. If those are ruled out you might want to make sure she has built enough sleep pressure. There is so much talk of overtiredness but what I’ve found with both of mine is that pushing them a little to stay awake longer resulted in longer naps and better night sleep.

Hi did you get anywhere with this? My DD is the same, hasn’t always been a great sleeper but we seem to have gone backwards. We were co-sleeping but thought moving her to her own cot and room would be better as might be me disturbing her but it’s not got any better. Her sleep cycle is 37 mins and she wakes up after that, her dummy settles her and she goes almost instantly back to sleep most of the time but we still have that wake up.