Still not sleeping

[beckycook1]

My lg is nearly 11 months and has still never slept for more than 5 hours in a row and that's a rare good night! We were getting somewhere but there always seems to be something setting her back. She was self settling really well but has recently started wanting feeding to sleep or shush patting again and sometimes wakes up every half hour all night. There is no rhyme and reason to her good/bad nights. Sometimes she barely naps in the day and sleeps badly whereas other times she sleeps better and sometimes she naps well and sleeps terribly at night. Today is a typical day, her routine was

7am wake up
Breakfast 8am (she has milk at 5am)
Nap 9.15-10.00
Activity until lunch at 12.30
Nap 1.50-3.20
Tea: 5.00
Bed: 7

She woke up every 40 mins all evening and needed a shush pat to get back to sleep!

Help! I don't know why she is such a terrible sleeper at night!!!

[jessmum46]

A few thoughts - routine-wise is she waking naturally from both naps?  Or are you waking her?  I wonder if she might benefit from having her day structured a little differently and see if that has any impact.  It's common to have one shorter and one longer nap at this age, but sometimes playing around with that can help.  For example, you may find that a longer morning nap suits her better (often does for unsettled night-sleepers) - so you could work on pushing her morning nap 10-15 mins later every few days until it lengthens out (ideally to 1.5h or more) and then offer a shorter catnap in the afternoon to get through to bedtime.  Alternatively you could keep your current short am, long pm structure but just tweak it a bit - I would suggest perhaps pushing the morning nap slightly later and cutting it shorter, and bring the afternoon one earlier

e.g. WU 7
Nap 9.30-10 or 10-10.30
Nap 1ish -3ish
BT 7

Other than routine, it may help to work on getting her back to independent sleeping - happy to help with a plan if you need one  

And also just another thing to consider - is she in any discomfort at all with reflux, allergies or similar?  Looking back my DS was a very unsettled sleeper in a similar way to your DD, and I very belatedly realised he had issues with dairy/lactose.  Not sure if that will be relevant for you or not but thought I'd mention it in case

[oofy2016]

Hi becky,

I just wanted to say hi - it sounds like we are having very similar issues at the moment. My little lady has just turned 11months and our sleep is very inconsistent. :-(

I love the phrase 'it's just a phase' but it's a terribly long one!

We are def getting there with falling asleep independently, but reflux and milk/soy allergies have really hampered us. As Jessmum says , it's def worth checking these out. My GP assured me my lo was 100% healthy and recommended cio, but it turned out she has a severe, anaphylactic allergy to milk so they don't always know best. Once we sorted out her diet and got good reflux meds her sleep improved. We are still battling it, it's still exhausting, but it's better.

Wishing you really good luck. Hope it all starts to get better soon.

X x x

[beckycook1]

Hello. Thanks for your replies. I will try altering her nap times. On her child minder days when she has had less sleep she tends to sleep better so could she be sleeping too much?

We have always thought she has some food intolerances as there are nights she self settles and only wakes once or twice and other nights when she is up every 40 mins! We realised berries were making her very uncomfortable but cannot pin down anything else.

Any suggestions on how to get her self settling again would be great. Since starting with the child minder 2 days a week she gets very upset when I leave her so I'm always feeding to sleep and then either shush patting or feeding/being a human dummy to get her back to sleep.

[beckycook1]

Oh and she's just learnt to crawl and is walking with support. I don't know if thst is affecting her sleep!

[jessmum46]

Hi again.

On childminder days what is a typical nap routine for her?  Wondering if that may give us some clues...she could well be a bit lower sleep needs although you always have to bear in mind that some kids will crash and sleep through when totally exhausted too.  Developmental silly things definitely don't help either!

Might be worth a chat with your doctor about the food issues - I would have thought they could refer to a dietician/paediatrician for you?

In terms of getting back to self-settling, did she do this consistently in the past and did you do any sleep training previously?

[beckycook1]

There is no real pattern to her naps at the child minder. She sometimes only naps in the morning and sometimes has 2 short naps. They are really struggling to get her to nap. She's not very good at switching off when there is a lot going on. She won't sleep anywhere except her cot at home.

We shush patted a lot and gradually withdrew that until we got to the point where if she woke up I could put her mobile on, stroke her hair and pat her briefly and leave. She would cry but just winge and then go to sleep. If she cried longer than 4 mins Id go back in, stroke her hair etc and leave again. Sometimes we would go in and out a few times but she only ever wingey cried whereas now she gets really distressed so I don't leave her!

[jessmum46]

I'm so sorry I missed your reply  how are things going?