1 year old sleep gone to pot

[Lentil24]

My DS is 15 months (13 corrected) and his sleep has always been very up and down but we had a period of a few weeks up until around a month ago where he was almost sleeping through from 7:30-6/6:30 with maybe one quick resettle in there somewhere or he'd wake, have a grumble and settle himself without intervention after a few minutes.

We have a solid bedtime routine, room nice and dark and he can and does settle himself to sleep when put down at the start of the night.

But now... He's waking 3/4+ times a night starting between 9 and 11pm. Immediately standing up and properly crying and he just cannot resettle himself from there and isn't amenable to being resettled in the cot with some patting etc. so we have to pick him up which is fine. But even when we give it a good 10 or so minutes after he's dropped back off he will wake up within a few minutes of going back in the cot so each wake up turns into 3 or more smaller wake-ups before he finally stays put for a couple of hours and then we rinse and repeat.

Last night he was up at 9, 11:30, 1 and 3:30 before waking up for the day at 6:30. We've tried tinkering with layers/togs in case he's getting too hot or cold at certain points. We have also tried anbesol/Calpol right before bed in case it's his teeth bothering him but nothing has made any appreciable difference.

I should add, he's still on 2 naps a day and I don't think he's ready to drop to 1 yet as he's usually done in by 10am and I just don't see how we can push that out any further especially when he's not getting enough sleep at night just now. He usually naps for up to 2.5 hours total across both naps and we don't let him go past 3:30pm to try and keep him on track for bedtime. Normally naps at around 10 and then again at around 2, give or take 30 minutes.

Is there something I'm missing here?!

I am going through similar myself. Since about 2 months my daughter has slept all the way through until recently. She is now 14 months old and is really fighting her sleep. She has recently dropped a nap because she fights that hard it’s not worth it. She wakes up several times in the night really crying out and is really hard to settle. I’ve also tried calpol etc but it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve been told that round 12 months ish it can be a sleep regression period

Yeah same here, I think it's a common regression period plus peak separation anxiety. We sometimes cap one of the naps to preserve a 2 nap day but TBH our baby often only has 2 half an hour naps so rarely have to cap! just do whatever works, he won't have lost his ability to self settle. I'm hoping when mine can take steps it might help as often their brains are working hard whilst they're learning something new.

It's tough out here isn't it! I'm really struggling since I'm back at work now and about to start a new job in a few weeks, my brain is basically soup.

Last night he woke at 11 but wouldn't stay asleep as usual so after an hour of up and down I took a guess that he was hungry and grabbed some milk which he devoured and then slept through the rest of the night. Falling asleep but not staying asleep after a wake up was always one of his tells when he was littler that he was awake because he was hungry but he hasn't had a bottle in the night for ages now so I think we've been overlooking it. Think I'm just going to go with the flow for now, maybe try a bit of supper before bed if he's waking hungry at 11 and see if that gets us somewhere. He eats loads during the day as well but maybe just needing a boost just now!

Really common around this age. Try to just go with the flow