17 month old awful sleep

[BeTaupeBear]

My nearly 17 month old DC has only ever slept through the night a handful of times which I’ve come to accept- wakes on average once or twice a night easily settled with a BF.
However recently he hasn’t been going to sleep till 930/945pm meaning me and DH have no down time at all.
It takes ages to get him to sleep at night and we have a bedtime routine. He is BF and used to feed to sleep but will now feed, look at books and then go to sleep.
He has one nap a day for about an hour and a half around 1pm.
Wakes up around 7am normally.
We go out loads in the day plenty of opportunities for him to run about.
Any advise please it’s exhausting.

Sounds like you need to ditch the nap. That'll bring bedtime forward significantly. If they can get through the day go for a ten minute car nap and then get them out again.

Don’t drop the nap, he’s too young for that by far. I think he needs the nap bringing forward. Get him down by 11.30-12 latest so he is more tired for bedtime by 8ish.

Oh also, I’m sure you already have good blackout blinds right? Because if not that’s an essential. Otherwise summer bedtime will always be late.

Before dropping the nap, I'd be tempted to try bringing the nap forwards and stretch out the time he's awake before bed time. So he might be ready to go to sleep earlier. I'd try putting him down for a nap around midday and get him up after an hour and a half, rather than down at 1pm and see if that makes a difference.

Ditch the nap for a few days and see how it goes.

If its carnage, try a earlier nap.

Or try the other way, early nap first.

Yes we have blackout blinds

I’ll try putting him down for a nap earlier and see if that helps
I I found putting him to bed too early like 630pm he was up for the day at 4am!! I’m hoping to find a sweet spot

I'm in hell with my 17 month old as well.

Never slept well but past 2/3 weeks was taking 3 hours to get to sleep on an evening, so ended up walking in a pram which got it down to 1 hour.

But past 2 days have been awful. Was up at 7am, nap 12:30-1:30pm, tried to get to sleep at 7:30pm and was still awake at 1am! Was awake 8am, grumpy as all hell (duh!), and then same with a single nap 12:30-1:30 and is just so so so mad but won't sleep! Won't play with toys, won't be put down, just wants to be carried and headbut and hit things while whinging.

Surely can't be lasting well on about 8 hours sleep a day, and even those 7 hours overnight is waking every hour. We both work full time as well so we really can't sustain this.

Yeah you might not want to hear this but my 16 month old sleeps 7.30pm - 5am with 1 nap (up to 2 hours but usually 1h30).

If he's taking ages to get to sleep he's probably just not ready. If you want him to go to sleep earlier you can try capping the nap or waking him up earlier.

How often is he waking through the night and how is he getting back to sleep?