Split nights are killing me - 17m

[louchelashes]

DS is 17mo, eats well, happy boy, very chatty and mobile. Runs everywhere! At nursery 4 days a week. During the weekend and my day off we are outside and doing stuff at least once a day,
plenty of opportunity to wear himself out etc.
Split nights are breaking me, he’s had them 95% of nights for over 3 weeks now and I’m at my wits end. They have no set time and vary every night.

He is generally happy during them, just chatting away to himself. He sometimes gets upset or whiny in which case I’ll eventually go in; replace his dummy and give him some bum pats. But my god the chatting, it’s loud and constant and can last up to 2 and a half hours - in which time I’m wide awake listening to it.

We have tried capping his nap to 1.5h max but that doesn’t seem to be helping. Sometimes going in helps and sometimes it doesn’t, tonight I’ve left him to his own devices and it’s nearly 2 hours of being up and showing no signs of sleeping. He is so busy in the day. He often starts bashing his head into his cot mattress, not sure if this is normal or not?

I don’t know what else to do. I am at breaking point, I can deal with wake ups where you can resettle a baby/toddler but when he’s just so awake and chatty it’s impossible.
What can I do????

Hi! I have no experience in this regard whatsoever - but I would get earplugs to try and sleep through it if he settles by himself anyway!

I’ve been here… it’s SO hard.
ours were waking at 1-2 and 5ish or just a good old fashioned 3am-er. Almost every single night.

we made the mistake of giving milk when desperate. She then started waking MORE looking for bloody milk…

I did the no eye contact no chat no play just be calm and still thing.
i mentally took myself elsewhere to stay calm and occasionally would give dd a little friendly finger nibble and smile which got some giggles.

my DH likes to freestyle more so some of the above, some play and general chat AND some semi annoyed shushing with loud whispers of “why won’t you sleep” “ what is wrong? Tell meeeeee” 😅

Advice:

• we had cut down on bedtime milk so re-upped this. She’s 20/21m and still gets a bottle at 6/6.30 she’ll drink anywhere between 50ml and 280ml and brushes teeth after. HC say no bottles after 12m but It just wasn’t a hill I was prepared to die on…
• no milk at night
• sleep improved gradually. We now have 5/6 unbroken nights vs other way round.
• Stay calm and go to your “mind palace”
• my DH and I would agree who was “on shift for the night” in advance. I’d rescue/take pity after 90min/2 hours and he’d do the same.
• consider earplugs if you are the “sleeping parent” not the one on shift.
• we put an adult bed in her room so one of us could at least lie down and rest while this torture went on 😅 it helped, a lot
• if she was in the cot and calm we left her to resettle herself /sing twinkle twinkle for the 11 thousandth time when we could get her down.
• somewhat contradictory but when she cried sometimes fast attention meant she went back to sleep a lot faster. BUT she later got to the point where ignoring it was often better and she cries halfheartedly for 60 secs and then resettles so going in makes it worse…

this too shall pass.

Could you just get some earplugs? If he's just chatting to himself until he falls back to sleep it's probably OK to just ignore this. The issue is the sound is waking you up. Get some earplugs. You can still hear and will awaken to proper crying (I know as I wear them and still wake up if one if my kids cries a floor down) At over 1yo there's no need to be alert to every sound he makes 24/7.

No advice but I am currently in this hell with my 8 month old. Even once he’s back asleep and in his cot I’m wide awake for hours!

We had this around the same age - read up on it and apparently a common regression. Rode it out and it suddenly stopped after about 7 weeks. It was hell though you have my sympathy.