1 year old sleeping problems

[Cheryl_M]

I apologise if this has been around the block a million times but I much prefer advice from you guys rather than the stupid manuals.

My 1 year old, baby M, used to be a fantastic sleeper 11/12 hours a night up until she was 7 months and has gradually got worse. She used to wake at around 5/530am so I would give her the morning bottle then lie in bed with her until 7am. She's obviously got very cosy with this so started waking at 4am, then 3am, then 2am and now won't even last 2 hours in her bed when she goes down in the evening. I'm trying to be strong and comfort her without picking her up but she is becoming so stressed out. Between 1-5am every night for the past 2 weeks she has screamed to get out of bed and play, she's not taking the hint!

I just wanted to know about anyone's past experience? Am I doing the right thing letting her scream then when it gets really bad, put her back in the sleeping position, comfort her then walk out the room? I'm on the verge of giving up and sleeping in her room just for peace but I'm determined not to so any advice would be amazing right now!

[RenF]

Hello,

Thought I'd just share my experience. My LO (now 1) was sleeping through from 5 mths to about 9 months. Then, a house move coupled with (I think) some developmental leaps meant she suddenly started night waking. For about two months she would wake every night at different times, but once awake would be awake for two hours, getting increasingly distressed at our attempts to settle her.

What we eventually tried was to initially go in, give her a cuddle say shh and then settle her back down. After this we would decrease the amount of time we spent in her room, gradually progressing through not picking her up, just gently shushing her whilst standing next to the bed and then shushing from the door. This gradually started to decrease the amount of time she was awake for and slowly she has resumed sleeping through. This may of course be nothing to do with my 'technique' and just due to her being ready to sleep through again, but it felt like a not too stressful way to let her settle herself when a couple of weeks of being in her room for hours just felt it was making things worse!

Hope that helps a bit.

Good luck.

[Cheryl_M]

Hi thanks for your message

That sounds like what I'm trying to do but she gets hysterical when I leave the room! Did your LO always stand up because baby M is on all fours ready to crawl so I've been putting her back into a sleeping position but should I just leave her be and stroke her hair (she loves that)? I'm not sure whether me picking her up and putting her back into a comfortable sleeping position is giving her false hope!

[RenF]

Baby F hasn't yet discovered standing up in her cot fortunately so not sure! Personally if she is wide awake and upset when I go in I always go for a cuddle before resettling. If she's just stirring or crying but not fully awake I try not to pick her up.

On the hysterical crying, we went through this too, but I just persisted. I never leave her crying for long at all but when I return I do go through the above gradually withdrawing a bit more each time and spending less time in the room. A few times after we'd gone through all that she was still crying quite a lot and I admit we decided to leave her. She did settle after 5 mins and I don't think I would have left it any longer, but that's a personal choice...