HELP!!! 20.5 months and waking up to 7 times a night!!!!

[FroggyMom]

I always seem to find myself back here in the sleep board...sigh.  DD is now 20.5 months. She was a wonderful, independent sleeper until she reached a year old. Since that time, we have fought poor naps, NWs, and EWs off and on. This past week I have reached the point of exhaustion and even feeling physically ill and weak myself (have an autoimmune condition that requires me to get sleep) and am just almost in tears as I sit outside DD's room trying to get her to go to sleep. 

For the past week, she has napped 30-40 minutes and gotten up anywhere between 2 and 7 times a night!!!!  These wake-ups range in length from 5 minutes to 2 hours at a time!!!  DH and I have tried letting her resettle on her own. That didn't work. We have tried going on and placing a hand on her back and using a sleepy phrase. She is calm and laying down when we so this but stands up and cries everyone we go to leave her room. Basically, the only way we can get her back to sleep at all this week is if DH or I go and sleep on the floor in her room. Everyone is so tired, including DD. I feel that she is now overtired and also believe SA may be playing a part in this for some reason.

Before this all started, this was her routine:

6:30-7 am - wake up
7 breakfast
9 snack
11 lunch
12 nap (DD has never been a great napper so this was only ever 1 hr 20 min at best and a lot of times less)
2 snack
5 dinner
6 bedtime sippy of milk
7 bedtime

I have reached the point where I just want to let her come sleep in my bed because we all just desperately need sleep at this point to function. However, I don't want this to become a habit so I'm trying to fight it. I want my independent sleeper back!!!  Any ideas on how to go about this?  Thanks so much for your help!!!!!

[ginger428]

Hi Froggymom, So sorry for all the sleep troubles! Many hugs. I'm back every couple months, so I hear ya. You said this was her routine before it all started... has the day routine changed? How long has her nap been set at 12? I might consider pushing nap to 12:30 if she wakes at 7 more often than not. I agree that SA is playing a part... I remember this period... and sleeping on the floor with his baby blanket over my shoulder, hand through the rails on his back. Multiple times a night. The NWs did improve for us.

What do you think about pushing to 12:30?

[FroggyMom]

Thanks so much for stopping in to help! I can't quite remember how long her nap has been set at 12...maybe 2-3 months. I have not recently chamber her routine. It's just that we have been all over the place lately trying to figure out what is going on. I have tried nap at 12:15, 12:30, and even 1 when she started sleeping later in the mornings. There was one week that she slept until 8 or 9 am for some reason!!!!  She sure doesn't do that anymore...haha!

So, last night she had 2-3 NWs I believe and was up for the day at 6:40 am. It seems like her first NW is always between 11-11:30 pm. I did put her down to nap at 12:30 pm today as we had been out to DS's tball game this morning. It is now 1:45 pm here, and she is STILL not asleep. She hardly ever totally refuses a nap!  Just usually naps about 45 min or so though. What should I do for the rest of today if she doesn't nap at all?!?!

So sorry to hear about your LOs sleeping troubles as well. It's so hard, isn't it?  Did you do anything to fix the NWs or did it stop on its own?

[ginger428]

oh no! What happened? Did she fall asleep at all? Wow, she has been all over the place. Us too, drives me nuts.

Funny, DS refused one nap a few weeks ago and hasn't since.

If i'm not too late, I would bring bedtime one hr earlier. If it happens again, APOP immediately for 15-30 mins or just forego the nap. When it happened to us, I waited too long and the catnap in the car was way too late, ended at 4. Ran into trouble at bedtime. I read somewhere not to let toddler naps go beyond 3pm.

6:40 is great! I hope it continues.

Our DS also went through a phase waking around 11:00. After the first week or so of it when DH and I always went in and patted him or held him, we started waiting longer to respond to him.  10 mins max and if he was really upset I went in right away anyway. For us it happened around the 17/18 month mark. Is she self settling at these NWs? Did you have to intervene?

Most people have told me that by toddler age, set naps work best. It does and it doesn't for my DS. After tracking his sleep, I found he always fell asleep after 6.5 hrs in the morning. (lately it's back to 6). A time to bed was 5.5 (but now I'm not sure). I had wu and bt in mind and worked around them. When wu's and nights were crazy, A times helped. When things were stable again, set times helped. Does that make sense at all? (Btw DS is Lsn so it makes for long A times because his night sleep is shorter).

NWs did get better overall on their own. Hang in there!

[ginger428]

Btw, fwiw I think if you need her to sleep with you for a night or two, it's fine. It's my personal opinion and some people here may disagree. But I feel like when the parents suffer so much, it doesn't help anyone. My experience has been that if I do that for one or two nights, especially when he's sick or something, he goes right back to sleeping on his own. I just pretend like the sleeping in our bed never happened. Haha.