1 year old waking 6+ times and fighting naps...help

[Mummaneedswine]

My daughter has always woken up at 5am so I've never been leaping out of bed full of energy but somethings changed in her sleep and I'm at a loss what to do. I'm so tired.

Prior to the past month she was waking up for a feed and that’s it. I did drop the feed but even after a week or so she was still waking and seemed genuinely hungry so I added it back in. Anyway she had no grumbles or wake ups. Despite the 5am wake-up it wasn't that bad. Now all of a sudden she’s waking up multiple times a night. She has shifted her wake up time to 6am but the 6+ wake ups in the night are killing me. She is also fighting naps and has gone from being a joy in the day to having tantrums and being very teary.

He Her current nap times are a 20 min nap at 9am and then a nap around 2:30 which varies between 30 mins to an hour. I really don’t know what I’m doing wrong. She has been teething but doesn’t wake up with any teething signs at all. Should I adjust her naps? She’s really fighting that afternoon nap so I wondered if she’s trying to shift to 1 nap. Any advice would be great 😅❤️

sounds tough OP. I am not at that age range yet but I'd look at perhaps starting transition to one nap?

I suppose it can't get any worse so worth a try!

Is she 12 months? I've just sleep trained my almost 12 month old using a sleep consultant as I was actually at breaking point. His new routine is 9.30-10am 1st nap. 12.30 2nd nap. He usually wakes at 2.30pm. Then bed no later than 7pm. Hope this helps. Think you may be leaving too much time between 1st and 2nd nap and she's overtired.

She's not sleeping much during the day so I wouldn't cut that even further, but maybe try dropping the first nap and going for a longer second nap. It's sounds like she's sleeping just enough to not be exhausted but not enough to actually be fully rested.

I would look at doing some gentle sleep training to help her self settle/link sleep cycles together.

Do you think she's about to have a development leap? That often ties in with bad sleep.

I thought this but she is so hard to get down when I try any earlier. Also the minute I give her a few hours sleep in the day we go back to a 5am wake up. It's like she need less sleep

I should have said I don't control her naps. I will happily let her have more but she's such a short napper. Also the times she has gone longer she simply gets up earlier the next day

@Mummaneedswine have you done any sleep training at all? My ds was also the same until I did sleep training and now he's sleeping much better. Naps and night time.

What sleep training did you do? I immediately think cry it out and that's just not for us 😅

@Mummaneedswine we hired a sleep consultant and she advocated controlled comforting. So you do encourage self settling but you also do go in and comfort them if they're truly upset. You'll find that they have different cries when they're settling. Fussy cry - leave them. Upset cry - see to them. But obviously it's whatever you feel most comfortable with. I tried really gentle no cry methods with my ds but they didn't work. This method has worked beautifully. He's gone from waking 2-5 times a night to sleeping through. And he's so much happier for it.