16 month olds sleep is making me suicidal

[Clemfandango95]

16 months in and her sleep is still horrendous.
Tonight she has been up crying at 10:30pm, then resettled and woke at 01:40am and is still up screaming 2 hours later. Ive been back and forth to her room, tried to settle her in my bed to no joy. This is a pretty typical night.

Either she is up 4/5 times a night for milk, waking for long periods wanting to be silly, waking for the day at 4am.. honestly every nights different however the sleep is always bad.

Bedtime routine is brilliant, cracked at around 7 months and she settles lovely in her own room. However she will not stay asleep.

Everyone said she will sleep "when she starts solids" "when she starts nursery" however 16 months on it's like I still have a newborn.

I feel so alone. Husband works shifts so isn't here 4 nights a week. All my friends have children who sleep 7-7 or wake to go into their bed and then resettle. I would happily cosleep if it would help however she is not interested and if anything seems worse when in our bed - deliberately trying to jump off/pulls my hair/ rolls around being silly.

She is a normal happy baby in the day. It's like she's a different person at night.

Health visitors response was "she's a baby not a robot" no actual advice given...

My mother says "well none of you slept" and that's about as far as her advice goes....

Cry-sis support line only go up to 12 months.
I spoke to the GP when she was younger and the advice was essentially cry it out.. however we have tried this and she would just continuously scream and it's horrendous.

I work full time and I'm broken. All the joy she brings me has been spoilt by this. There is just no end in sight. I have nothing to look forward to.

We have centre parcs booked for a few weeks time with friends and I want to cancel. It's shared accommodation and honestly I am going to be absolutely exhausted and unable to enjoy, and ultimately it's going to be embarrassing keeping 3 other families up all night.
This was booked a year ago and we booked shared accomdsitom because "OF COURSE SHE WILL BE SLEEPING BY THEN". :(

Get a sleep consultant

Paying for a professional to support you through this and help, will be totally worth it. It was a game changer for me. Sleep deprivation is hell

Oh you poor thing, it's awful whennothing works. I would get rid of the milk and get a sleep consultant as suggested (maybe the other way round so they can help you drop the milk).
In the mean time can you just bring out peppa pig on a tablet and milk galore (with you dozing) during the holiday and tackle afterwards?!

Mine was like this at that age. Sleep training worked in three nights.

Consult a sleep coach for children. She will be able to help. Not cure but get things on a better track. You cant go on like that.

This just sounds awful, sleep deprivation just affects your entire life.

If you haven’t already I would read Dr Ferber’s book. Even if you don’t do “the method” it’s still useful - it describes lots of different case studies that you can probably relate to.

I’m a massive fan of sleep training, I did it with my DS at 6 months (much easier than 16 months obviously) but we also had to re-do it at 20 months as he’d been ill and got used to us being with him to go to sleep. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but we were just undoing a few weeks of bad habits not starting from scratch.

I think in your case a sleep consultant probably would be best.

You will definitely need to stop the milk though whatever you do, it’s teaching her digestive system to expect milk and be hungry at those times.

Also, when you say she settles well at the beginning of the night in her own room, do you mean she falls asleep by herself? Or are you there? And what does this routine include?

The theory is that every time she goes to sleep you should be doing the same thing… so if she has milk at bedtime before she goes to sleep, she’s going to be expecting milk at 2am again to go back to sleep.

Try magnesium, and get a sleep consultant. There's no other solution, you need help as it's almost impossible to navigate out of sleep issues on your own when you are already chronically sleep deprived.

If she is having frequent split nights (i.e. waking for a long period in the middle of the night) and/or waking quite frequently through the night, her bedtime could be too early and she doesn't have enough sleep pressure to have more consolidated sleep. Average total sleep over 24 hours for 1-2 year olds is 11-14 hours so that might give you something to start with (later bedtime and/or reducing daytime sleep if needed). Any schedule change may take up to 2 weeks of the consistent new schedule to affect sleep.

It sounds really tough, so be kind to yourself.

Its so hard @Clemfandango95 - I had a very similar baby so I really do feel your pain! And my DH works offshore and is away for 4 weeks at a time so I was completely alone too.
Im sure you’ve tried everything but I’ll ask questions just incase -

• does she sleep with white noise?
• does she have milk before bed?
• are you breastfeeding?
• does she nap? If so, when? And how long for?

Is your husband going to Centre Parcs with you? What kind of accommodation are you in? If he’s going, please use this as your time for some rest. Take earplugs or something for yourself and let him deal with resettling for the night. Or when she wakes at silly o’clock in the morning and won’t resettle he can get her wrapped up and go for a nice big walk in the buggy while you have a lie in!

I had one of these - a baby you survive!! I couldn’t bring myself to sleep train, when we tried controlled crying it for a few mins he screamed until he was sick and he was shaking with stress. No conductive to sleep. Didn’t feel at all right to me. We looked into sleep consultants but they were booked up months in advance, especially as I was not into sleep consultants who advocate cry it out.

we now think he has a bit of sleep apnea and that was waking him up.

honestly I was so desperate and my husband went mad with it and was so angry with lack of sleep. I ‘joked’ that I used to see every hour of the clock. He definitely cemented himself as our last baby!

But for my LO the switch flicked around his second birthday and now he sleeps like a complete angel and never wakes up. He runs into his room, understands about going into his cot (and wants to go in), settles himself etc. honestly we don’t really know what happened, he just got it. I would never have believed it a few months ago.

I just wanted to add that in case you end up gritting it out like we did.

good luck OP. Be kind to yourself. Know that it will change.

Thank you all for taking time to reply to me xxx💖

@Babychewtoy yes she falls asleep alone. She completely understands her bedtime routine and will wave us goodnight. We usually get a couple of hours in the evening.

I did have a free consultation with a recommended sleep consultant , however it sounded like it was cry it out with saying it. Which we tried ourselves from research online. However as @OuiLaLa said she will just continuously cry despite us trying Ferber.

However I will look into a consultant again.

Totally hear you. I was the same with mine a few years ago. Nothing worked. If I had a four hour block of sleep I was ecstatic, it tended to be every 2 hours awake. I was desperate and got a sleep consultant. Kept a food diary. It’s food. Or it was in my case. At 16 months I added an extra (filling, healthy) meal of smooshed avocado and weetabix, shortly before bed. It bloody worked. It’s so obvious now, but mine was waking up because he was hungry.

it’s amazing how warped your mind gets when you’re tired. Things will get better.

Will she sleep any better in bed with you? It sounds like there is space if your husband works then.

Tell the people you are going to centre parcs with that it will be loud at night, so they should bring ear plugs. Remind them that it is only a few nights for them, but every night for you, so they can put up with it temporarily. Also ask someone to give you a break in the day and look after her so you can sleep, jacuzzi, exercise class or whatever you need to relax.

I went through similar with ds1. There was an end and when he was 2.5 he slept through the night once, then continued every night. Would take a bomb to wake him up now! I do think part of it was him waking for milk in hindsight, so dropping the night feeds might help you. Good luck.

I will try this! I try my best to make sure she's having enough food throughout the day but she's hit and miss. Thanks x

I had one like this.

Sleep training never worked. Just made everything much worse. She was later diagnosed Audhd.

What did work was this. When she came into our bed it was initially party time. Just like yours she wouldn’t setttle and got giddy.

Lying down with an arm over her in our bed eventually settled her. It took a few days. She could get lively again.Buy we just lay down arm over her and like held her down.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I used Sarah carpenter sleep. She changed my life. Our baby sleeps now and we didn't do cry it out

We just used Hattie Frank as our sleep consultant. She doesn't do cry it out. And she can do everything remotely as she works with you over a 2 week period. Would highly recommend.

How long did you try to sleep train? It's took me 2.5weeks, I wanted to give up after the 1st week, I was literally in tears every night... but persevered and he then slept 12 hours straight through from then on.

How much sleep is she getting at nursery?

If she's sleeping a lot in the day she might be lively at night, her time clock will be out.

Yes, some supper with carbohydrate and milk before bed might help.

Another plug for sarah carpenter. She looks at everything, naps, food, reflux. I did not think anyone would be able to sort my daughter out, but I did the video package for 3 nights, and she started sleeping through with just a bit of grumbling, no crying it out.
Good luck xx