Frequent waking to breastfeed in the evenings at 19mo - anyone else?! 💤

[LooIoo]

DD is nearly 19 months old. Until 17 months we co-slept. In practice this looked like me feeding her to sleep on the sofa then contact napping her for the evening until we went up to bed ourselves. Then we would bed share.

At 16 months we noticed that the evening contact napping wasn’t working for her any more. She would want to turn and move in a way that didn’t really work in my lap. It wasn’t safe to leave her for the evening on our bed as it’s rather high. So we got a floor bed and the transition overall has been going well.

At bedtime, normally around 7:30, my husband will rock her to sleep with a song and a story and then puts her down and lies down with her in the bed for ten mins or so. Then leaves her. (When we go up to bed at around midnight, I will then get in with her.)

The problem I have is how long she sleeps until she wakes up to be resettled - not long at all! (See the attached images - I don’t normally track her wakes but was curious!) When she wakes, she needs either my husband to go in and cuddle her again, or more often, she needs my boob.

I’ve worked out on average for the last few weeks, the first block of sleep is only around 2 hours long. I don’t know how to lengthen this. We’ve introduced brown noise which had a lengthening effect for two nights but not since.

Is this just the norm for a baby who is still breastfed at this age? Is anyone else in the same boat? When does that first stretch get longer?

I use the huckleberry sleep plan section. I do not stick to it rigidly as that just isn't my style but I have taken what works for us and it has been really helpful. We are down from 5 feeds a night to 1/2 stirrings with 1 feed or no feeds at all. The big things for me are the routine, white noise and being as close a possible with the suggested sweetspot naps. At 6months LO finally managed to keep a dummy in independently too which helped 😅

I feel for you OP - the disturbed sleep is horrific, especially over a long period of time x

Does it recommend any form of cry it out?

What is her morning wake time and nap time / duration? I’d say she is lower sleep needs than your current schedule is accounting for. Mine is 18 months and we’ve capped her nap 1 hour, usually 45 mins. Has made a massive improvement ti her night sleep, and she has always been BF on demand. I also found i got much better sleep myself when I deleted that app and didn’t look at my phone at night - the blue light will be disturbing both your and your toddlers sleep.

Hi @Peonies12. She wakes at around 7am. Naps with us are around 1.5 hours; at nursery they can go up to two hours. She’s generally awake for the afternoon by 1:30pm. Nursery say it’s not policy to cap naps and they have to let her sleep.

I haven’t tracked sleep on the app for months and months; I’ve only been doing it recently (last couple of weeks) because I wanted to see the reality of what was happening, but I can’t identify any trends. But don’t worry, I’m usually far too out of it to be logging wake times normally!

The attached is from last night. She was well fed at dinner, so can’t have been hungry, but so many wakings. I’m exhausted today.

At this stage, our babies were offered water in a cup if they woke at night. They were not impressed, but realised after very few (less than 5) nights that this was now the routine. They must have decided it wasn’t worth waking up just for water, and they didn’t wake again(unless for other reasons like illness).

Ah fair enough. This worked for mine although it sounds a bit mad, I’d try capping her night at 11 hours. Most toddlers cant do 1-5-2 hour nap plus nearly 12 hours at night. So maybe bedtime 8pm, and wake her at 7am whatever the night has been like. But im also appalled your nursery won’t wake from naps, we’d honestly have to move elsewhere if our nursery has that policy. Mine is very low sleep needs so any more than 1 hour nap and her night is terrible! Average sleep needs are 11-14 hours within 24 hours so if yours has 2 hour nap, most likely she’ll only need 10-11 hours overnight.

Hmm, that’s very interesting! I hadn’t thought about the total sleep needs like that, as silly as it sounds. And I asked ChatGPT who said that the likely problem was overtiredness!

We’ll try a slightly later bedtime going forward and see how we get on!