14 month old sleep chaos. On my absolute last straw.

[FruitPoppet]

Baby has never been a great sleeper, always needed lots of support to sleep and stay asleep. Most she's ever slept in one stint is 4 hours, and that's rare.

For the last month sleep has gone to absolute shambles. Early wakes, resisting bed time, resisting naps and waking EVERY HOUR over night and only settling if she can have boob. If I try anything else its an absolute horror show of screaming. She's having 8-10 full breastfeeds over night. Also frequently having a split night where she's awake 2-4am.

I thought maybe she was ready to drop to one nap? So we've been making the leap but she's now only napping for 1 hour in the day and still sleeping like shit overnight and looks shattered.

She eats LOTS in the day and had a bedtime snack, so I doubt she's hungry overnight.

I've been on an ENT wait list for over half her life, and the GP can offer nothing else in terms of support, even though I've said perhaps they can test iron/thyroid. I believe she has some kind of airway obstruction (she's always snotty, gets lots of colds, snores, mouth breaths, sleeps on tummy with bum high, gasps awake)

I don't believe in sleep training and I can't afford any kind of consultant or to go private medically.

I'm back at work and honestly feel like I might die from lack of sleep.

I'm so angry in the night because she's just sat up crying awake, ALL NIGHT. I feed her, unlatch, she wakes, cries more, rinse, repeat.

The only sleep she gets is if I sit up holding her so I can catch when she's waking and rock her back to sleeps or I just keep feeding her all night.

I thought it was a regression/teeth, but it's been a month and getting worse.

Dunno what I'm looking for. I'm just so tired that I'm honestly not enjoying being a mum at all.

Update for anyone who cares.

ENT didn't see any reason to investigate further because she is developing well and a healthy weight, therefore even her airways are causing an issue with sleep,.it's ntk impacting her long term. I'm annoyed and at a aloss.

She still sleeps terrible. Next step is to nightwean. Wish me luck.

Sorry your hospital appointment was disappointing. I have a 15 month old poor sleeper and he was under investigation for other things and I was almost disappointed when his iron was normal because I wanted something to help fix sleep.

Instead of overtiredness, have you considered that undertiredness might be the issue. If she’s lower sleep needs then the 13 hours of sleep in her schedule might be too much. My baby’s 24 hour sleep needs are no more than 11 hours. If she’s undertired then she might need the boob because it’s just so soothing and settling it’s the only way she can sleep when she doesn’t have enough sleep pressure to get through the night on her own. 7pm is a pretty early bedtime. We start bedtime at 8:30 and asleep for 9:00, works to get some decent stretches to wake up at 6:45 because for whatever reason he struggles to do a long night sleep, so we’re still on two naps because that’s better for night sleep. We’ve also started the Mighty Kids magnesium which is expensive and hasn’t been a magic bullet but his sleep has improved and been more consistent since starting it a few months ago. I find ittakesavillagebabysleep has lots of great free advice on TikTok/Insta which is all scientifically backed, and doesn’t support unresponsive sleep training, which I don’t want to do.

I'm sorry OP, how unbelievably frustrating. But perhaps good in another way that there isn't anything deemed wrong? I don't know. I'd keep trying different approaches until you find something that works. Do you have one of those nighttime monitors with a camera? Might be worth getting one so you can record / show a health professional what's going on during sleep. And maybe make a record over a week of sleep patterns, actions taken etc. More pressure on you I know but perhaps a way to work out what the problem might be? Wishing you strength and solidarity, I know it's awful xx

Some ideas: Ask the GP to recommend an anti-histamine suitable for under 2's and trial is for a few nights in a row for allergies. Do you have pet fur or dander in the house? Trial 3 nights of paracetamol if no luck with anti-histsmine to see if its pain related. I like ruling these things out first.