My DS is 1 year old this week. He has never been a brilliant sleeper but we did have a window from about 6 months on when he would vaguely sleep through with the aid of a dream feed at our bedtime. He had seemed to get the hang of self settling but then lost it again when anxiety kicked in and I would say for the past 3 months has woken several times a night.
DS eats well and we try to give him fresh air and active days so he is properly tired at night but it doens't seem to make much difference.
Bedtime is never a problem - we have a good routine - either of us can pop him in his cot and he goes off to sleep without a peep. Same for his daytime naps (although it took a long time to achieve this....). It's just the frequent night waking that I find hard to deal with particularly on work nights. I actually feel more tired than when he was little and I was BF (cos I think the BF hormones keep you more chilled out about it).
He will wake at about 11-12 - I will give him some milk and change him. This seems to help him go through for another 3 or 4 hours and he would wake a lot more frequently otherwise. I try not to interact too much or cuddle him but just lay him down & maybe place a hand on him. Recently he is becoming more wakeful and will stand up repeatedly and throw his dummy and comforter out of the cot. I have to keep replacing these because he eventually will need them to settle.
I have done a couple of experiments with controlled crying which I hated, and he will go off to sleep but if he wakes again at 3 or 4am I find it very difficult to muster up the will to do it again at that time of night. We spend half the night on a mattress in his room as it is easier to jump up and resettle him if he keeps getting up.
For some reason I find it hard to relax and sleep if we bring him in to our bed - I worry he will wake up if I am too deeply asleep and crawl off the bed!
DH has to get up at 5.45 on weekdays. I'm back at work albeit part time so the burden of the broken nights is mainly on me though DH does do a weekend night to try and help me catch up on some sleep.
Neither of us are coping very well with the broken sleep. I worry it is affecting our relationship as I get tearful when I'm overtired and DH can't deal with that very well. He also thinks it would be a bad idea to have any more kids because we don't deal with lack of sleep well.
I feel guilty that sometimes I am so tired I haven't got the energy to play with DS or pay him enough attention and that makes me feel like a crap mum who perhaps shouldn't have any more kids even though the thought of DS being an only child makes me so sad .
I read about good sleepers / bad sleepers on here, and people getting het up about CC or not to CC. I know there's probably no magic solution to this but if anyone has any ideas I'd be glad to hear them because I'm at my wits end about this now.