Sleep help for 16 month old

[tomo]

I need help! My 16 month old has always been a poor sleeper. We did some sleep training around 10-11months which did help and he has generally been sleeping through from a 7pm bedtime till around 5am (5.30 on a good day). We've resigned ourselves to the fact that he's an early riser and take it in turns to get up with him then.

However in the past couple of weeks he has been waking earlier and earlier 4.30am and more recently 3am! His room is completely blacked out, so it's not light waking him. We thought it might have been teething pain causing him to wake, so have been giving him some calpol and telling him it's still sleepytime (his sleep cue), he will lie back down and go quiet but then wake again between 15-30 mins later only for us to do more controlled crying going in every couple of minutes to give him his cuddly toy that he's thrown out of his cot and lie him back down. Sometimes this will work and he'll go quiet again for a short time, but we invariable give up by 5am. It's exhausting!

I've recently given up his bedtime breastfeed, so he only has one breastfeed in the morning now (hoping to give that one up too soon). He's never taken a bottle and doesn't drink cow's milk as he doesn't seem to like the taste of it, but eats a good varied diet and will eat lots of yoghurt cheese etc. I'm wondering if this might be the reason he's waking up? Has anyone experienced anything similar when giving up breastfeeding or is it just a coincidence? Not sure what to try next!

He still has a very short nap in the morning at around 9.45 which I cap at 10mins and then an lunchtime nap at around 1- 1.30 usually for 1hour 30mins, although if he's very overtired he sometimes only has an hour.

It's all feeling at bit soul destroying at the moment, so any advise anyone can offer on what worked for you would be gratefully received.

Thank you!

[Pickle]

Sorry to hear this, I remember you posting when he was smaller. My daughter is the same age (will be 17 months on Monday). I'll hold my hands up and say she is a great sleeper, and always has been - so my advise is limited to what we do. It may be luck, but I've done the same with all 3 kids and they all sleep well.

At this point we have been on one nap a day since April. Our day goes along the lines of up at 7:30am, breakfast (includes milk in a beaker - she won't drink cows milk so I'm reluctantly using "toddler" milk). After school drop off we usually spend the whole morning out at a playgroup or something equally stimulating.

Lunch around 12 and in bed by 12:30, as any later than this and I find she is overtired and won't sleep well. I always get her up by 2:30, 2:45 at the latest. Dinner at 5:30pm, bath, milk and bed at 7pm.

I have just made the decision to stop breastfeeding her, so she has started having a small bottle of milk at bedtime (around 2oz), but it doesn't seem to have had any impact on her sleep.

When he starts the day at 5am do you start his food etc. early? This may have a knock on effect meaning he's hungry early the next day - so maybe worth holding off till as near as "morning" as possible with food/milk if you don't already.

Teething is a real possibility at this age, as the nasty big molars tend to appear.

Sorry, probably not much help!

[Convex]

He sounds a lot like my son.

We were feeding him to sleep, are you doing that by any chance? We found that gradual retreat and teaching him to fall asleep in his cot has helped things. Though we haven't managed to progress to where he falls asleep alone and have just accepted that.

Ours is an early riser - if we make it through to 6am it's a happy morning,

I really feel my son needs more sleep, on the rare occasions he gets up closer to 630/645 he is in a much better mood. But we are accepting where we are now, always in bed by 10 (us I mean) and take turns having a bit of a sleep in on the weekends.

If you find anything that works to get him sleeping later please post back!

[tomo]

Hi Pickle, yes he's sleep has always been a battle! He'd certainly only be having one nap if he didn't wake up so early! I sometimes push him through and do an early lunch at 11.30 and he crashes out at 12pm. But then he has a bad night and I can't face jollying him along till lunch, so give him the power nap to see him through to lunch. Interesting that your daughter will drink toddler milk. My son's never had any formula. Did she drink it willingly initially? I do breastfeed him first thing in the morning, so we can all doze for a little while longer. We don't give him breakfast until closer to 7am though. I do wonder if things might change once I give up the morning feed.

Covex, my sympathies! Early morning waking is a unique kind of hell! 6am would be a dream in our house. I start worrying if on the odd occasion he's slept through till 6.30! Our son goes down to sleep awake in his cot since we did the sleep training, so it's not a sleep association thing.

He's starting nursery for two days a week soon so that may have another knock on effect.

[AnyaJoeli]

I don't have much advice just solidarity as I have a bad sleeper and early riser and it's a pure torture at times. But he's now nearly 2 and finally seems to be getting better, we started doing some training with him at 15 months using a book called gentle sleep solutions by Andrea grace and it basically saved my life. I haven't looked at it for a while because he's so much better now in every way, but his better is horrific to someone whose baby sleeps until 7am (or I occasionally get people telling me gleefully that theirs sleep until 7.30/8/9...can't even imagine, as 5.26am is about the latest he can manage, 6am would be a glorious lie in. Anyway so we tacked a load of night waking issues with the book and I should probably go back and reread the bits about early waking, but I'm a bit too tired.

But it's a really good, really practical yet sympathetic book, and I've read them all. So might be worth a look?

I feel your pain and hope it gets better soon!

[Pickle]

She is funny with milk - is happy to have cows milk on her cereal, but any time I have tried to give it as a drink she point blank refuses. All of her milk was breast milk until April when I had to go to NZ for a week without her. Thankfully about a week before that I had tried the toddler milk and while initially she was reluctant to taste it (she could see it was milk!) once she did she was fine. It is a lot sweeter than cows milk, and while it frustrates me to be buying formula having survived without for well over a year, I figure it is better than nothing.

I started out replacing her morning milk with it (she has this at the same time as breakfast). Sometimes I try adding a little bit of cows milk, but she always notices!

Personally, although it will be tough initially, I would stop giving him milk when he wakes. It means his little system is used to having food at that time, so food wise his day is always going to start at that time unless you try and break the cycle. You could do it gradually, push it back 5/10 mins a day?

[oimissus]

he may well be teething and a dose of Calpol isn't providing sufficient pain relief - on bad nights we would give a double whammy of Calpol and Calprofen, plus teething powder. Maybe give it a try - if it makes no difference it won't have done any harm.

[SebsC]

Just a thought for those whose little ones won't drink cows milk or whose mums are reluctant to give formula, I gave my son goat's milk. It was actually suggested to me by a cranial osteopath who saw my son who was suffering from severe reflux at the time and we never looked back. It took him a couple of days to get used to but he loved it after that. We got it from Health Matters in a powder form. Might be worth a try?

[JulieP]

Hi, I sympathise, I have been there!

Do you think he is waking as he knows he will get a BF in the morning (the earlier he wakes the sooner it comes)?

Was the earlier rising associated with dropping the evening feed?

My youngest when he finally stopped BF moved to bottles of cows milk (thank goodness he would drink it) and still seemed to need / want lots of milk.

[srisky]

Another suggestion to help the transition to cow's milk is to add cows milk to the formula/ebm and gradually increase the proportion of cow's milk until that's all they are having. Formula tastes so different to cow's milk that it probably tastes like a completely alien drink to them!

[Saila]

Agree w pickle, sounds like it could be a 'waking to feed' thing?

Then, once that's dropped start to gradually reduce the daytime sleep, esp that morning nap. Once those two things have been done, you should at least get to 6am?

[tomo]

Thank you all for your replies. We had a slightly better night last night with 4.20am the first wake up (yes that's now considered good!) I've been offering him water when he wakes and he does seem thirsty, so think that he may not be taking in enough fluids during the day to compensate for the dropped bedtime feed. He doesn't ever seem to sit still long enough to have a big drink. Will definitely try alternative milks to see if we can find one he likes.

Julie P, I think you're right, that he looks forward to the morning feed. I think I need to give up this final feed before we'll see any change.

[tomo]

Sounds the same as my son, he'll happily eat cereal with cows milk but when he's offered it as a drink he sips it then rubs it off his tongue. Will maybe give toddler milk a go, although feel similarly having not ever had to buy formula. But it'll hopefully only be a short term measure.

My husbands away with work at the mo, but once he's back we'll tackle giving up the morning feed. Giving up the bedtime one wasn't as difficult as I thought it might have been, fingers crossed the morning follows suit.

Pickle Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> She is funny with milk - is happy to have cows

> milk on her cereal, but any time I have tried to

> give it as a drink she point blank refuses. All

> of her milk was breast milk until April when I had

> to go to NZ for a week without her. Thankfully

> about a week before that I had tried the toddler

> milk and while initially she was reluctant to

> taste it (she could see it was milk!) once she did

> she was fine. It is a lot sweeter than cows milk,

> and while it frustrates me to be buying formula

> having survived without for well over a year, I

> figure it is better than nothing.

>

> I started out replacing her morning milk with it

> (she has this at the same time as breakfast).

> Sometimes I try adding a little bit of cows milk,

> but she always notices!

>

> Personally, although it will be tough initially, I

> would stop giving him milk when he wakes. It

> means his little system is used to having food at

> that time, so food wise his day is always going to

> start at that time unless you try and break the

> cycle. You could do it gradually, push it back

> 5/10 mins a day?

[KateW]

Our daughter, who was a brilliant sleeper both for naps and through the night at that age, did like to wake up early (5.30am ish) until we dropped her morning nap at 14 months. Once we stopped giving her that 15 minute catnap, she had one long nap after lunch and that cracked the early waking (never woke before 6.15am after that and only early if teething). I would:

1) Agree an acceptable get-up time for you (say 6am) and don't get him up before then.

2) Stop giving him the BF when he wakes. We gave our daughter her breakfast first, then milk, to stop the association of getting milk on waking up.

3) Tell him it's still night time and tell him to go back to sleep. Reassure him, but don't get him out of the cot and tell him that you are going back to sleep.

4) Ignore his shouts. he will soon learn to lie quietly (and hopefully go back to sleep)

5) Be consistent. Agree a plan and see it through. It can take a week or 2 to combat early waking.

6) Our daughter always woke early when teething and we found Nurofen eased her pain much better than calpol.

7) She adapted better than I thought she would at pushing through until lunch for her nap. Very quickly she was on 1-3pm nap.

8) Get to bed early yourselves and accept that, for the time being, you have an early riser. I found accepting the situation was a big help to me.

9) good luck. Early mornings are a killer!

[minder]

From your post it sounds like your 16 month old isn't getting a lot of daytime sleep.

Could you bring the morning nap forward as sleeping at 9.45am is quite late if he's been awake from 4.30-5am (that's just my opinion)? Some 16month olds do still need a morning nap. If he had a half hour nap from say 8.30-8.45 and then had another sleep after lunch (at least 1 and a half hours, not just an hour) then hopefully he would be able to go through the night to around 6-6.30am.

After a while, he probably won't need the morning nap but still carry on with at least 1 and a half hours after lunch.

[Sol]

At that age, I think he still needs a bottle/milk in the evening before bedtime. He is probably waking up hungry.

[KateW]

At 16 months, he will be getting/should be getting all the nourishment he needs from his daily intake of food; in other words, milk at bedtime is more of a comfort/enjoyment thing rather than a necessity. If you are worried he is waking hungry, I would up his calorie intake during the day. Also, sorry, but I disagree with Minder about the earlier nap: if little ones wake early and then have their first nap early, this reinforces the early waking because their body clock knows they will be able to catch up on the sleep in a few hours after waking. The theory behind pushing through to a later morning nap (yes, lots of 16 month olds still have a quick morning cat nap) is to break the waking early habit, so they have a quick cat nap, before a big nap after lunch. By the time he is managing on just a 10 minute nap, you can drop this out altogether and push on through until after lunch. Just a thought.

[tomo]

Thank you for all your input.

I have to agree with you KateW. Everything that I have read on the subject of early morning waking (which is a lot!) suggest that the morning nap can be used as a catch sleep for the last section of night time sleep. So pushing that nap out is the way to go rather than making it earlier. I don't think it's hunger that's waking him, he eats really well, except sometimes when he's obviously teething, but even then it doesn't seem to make a difference to when he wakes up. He has yoghurt and banana before bed so isn't going to bed hungry.

He's definitely teething at the moment. He's getting his top incisors through which isn't helping matters but I do think he's waking early for that first morning feed, which we need to finally drop.

[KateW]

Aaaaah, incisors! Our daughter suffered terribly with her canines - her last molars were a walk in the park after those! Take heart in the fact that, if he is eating well, it is most likely his teeth that are causing him to wake early. My daughter would cry out in pain at 3/4am when cutting her canines: I would give her Nurofen, a quick cuddle, then back in her cot and she would sleep til 6/7am. When I knew she was teething, I would often just curl up on a mattress in her room and dose until she went back to sleep. I