13 month olds sleeping pattern!

[RoseJadeH]

My lo is now just over 13 months old and his sleeping pattern is somewhat erratic, after a spurt of teething, a bug and ten teeth later sleeping is either very good or very bad! Just wondering what tips/ideas anyone has to get back into an everyday Normal sleep routine as I have tried it all! Baths, dinners, snacks, milk...playtime nap time and everything under the sun! When he is not at home, at Nannys for the night he sleeps almost perfectly.. When at home we have 4-430 am wake ups, hours of battling to get him to sleep in the cot..then on the odd night or so he will sleep until 8am!

[oimissus]

probably being controversial, but I am a great believer in routine and the fact that Mummy and Daddy know when it's best for Baby to go to bed. We have a great sleeper and a lot of that is to do with the fact that, from an early age, she knows that when she goes to bed, there she stays.

At that age she would have been heading towards one long lunchtime nap, between about 12 and 2. Lots and lots of outdoor afternoon time. Set bedtime routine, which for us was / is: bath, milk, teeth and stories on the sofa in her room (in her sleeping bag), and into her cot. She always has her bunny blankie, plus a few other soft toys. We've always gone on about how lovely and snug and cosy her cot is, made it somewhere she wants to be, to the extent that these days (2.5 yrs) even if she wakes and cries she wants to stay in her cot, we just sit with her for a few minutes. Once she's in the cot she stays there. We've always tried to leave her to settle down but keep an ear out and go in a set intervals to settle her down (but no lifting out of the cot) - so kind of controlled crying if needed. If she wakes in the night but isn't poorly or teething we shush and stroke her back then sit for a bit and sneak out when we think she's asleep. But at that age quite often she would wake, so again, left her to try to settle (which quite often she would within a minute or two) and then go in and do it again. But, unless she absolutely wouldn't settle, we never picked her up, would cuddle in the cot.

All this could take a long time, my husband (much better at nights!) would sit with her and be in and out for ages. But, it has been worth it. Now, she goes to bed no bother, rarely wakes in the night, and if she does either settles back down within seconds, or within a couple of minutes of us being in the room with her. I know this way isn't everybody's and I'm sure someone else will come along with an alternative, but it has worked for us.