We would be really grateful for some help with our one year old’s sleep. She is 12.5 months old and for the last month or so she has been waking regularly at night and/or waking early (5-5:30am), having previously slept through the night until at least 6am.
Her routine is pretty inconsistent at the moment, partly because she wakes up at different times every day and partly because she is tending to fall asleep in the car or pushchair which then throws things out. I have just gone back to work and she started with a childminder last week which makes it even harder for us to control her routine.
We are in the thick of the 2:1 transition and we have a mix of one nap days and days when she has a short morning nap and longer afternoon nap and days when she has a long morning nap and shorter afternoon nap.
As an example, here is what one day last week looked like:
WU 5am
A 5 – 9:30am
E Breakfast (first half) 6am
E Breakfast (second half at childminder) 8am
S 9:30 – 10am
A 10am – 1:25pm
E Snack 10am
E Lunch midday
S 1:25 – 2:40pm
A 2:40 – 7:35pm
E Snack 3pm
E Dinner 5pm
E Snack 6:30pm
S Bedtime 7:35pm
NW 11:20pm (very upset and awake on and off until nearly 1am)
NW 2:05 – 2:10am (settled very quickly when cuddled)
WU 5:30am
(no milk since I stopped breastfeeding (last week) as she refuses to take milk from a bottle or cup – she eats pretty well though and has milk/other dairy in food so the health visitor has advised us we don’t need to push her to drink milk)
This was a particularly bad night for the NW but was not an unusual day.
The one thing that is fairly consistent is bedtime, which is at around 7:30pm. Apart from the odd night when she protests, she usually goes down fairly well at bedtime but needs patting/stroking in the cot to get to sleep. We used to be able to leave the room before she was asleep but recently she has been getting upset if we leave before she is asleep, so we stay with her and keep a hand on her in the cot until she is asleep.
When she wakes at night, she’s often quite upset and takes a long time to settle, which we usually do by cuddling her and then keeping a hand on her in the cot until she is in a deep sleep. Before I stopped breastfeeding recently, I would occasionally feed her at night but not regularly. I used to feed her in our bed when she first woke in the morning and I know she has come to expect that but now I’ve stopped doing that, she is happy as long as we distract her by going downstairs and playing.
Most nights she tends to get no more than around 10 hours sleep, so if she sleeps through she will wake at 5-5:30am. If she has woken in the night, that might push her wake up time a bit later (we’ve had a few nights where she has been awake for around an hour in the night so she has then woken at about 6-6:30am). How much sleep should she be getting in total and how much is it realistic to expect at night?
Before Christmas we had a few days where she did one long nap just after lunch and she slept solidly for 2 hours and then slept better at night. It felt like she was ready to drop the second nap, but then the night wakings started again. Plus the last week or so she has been waking at 5-5:30am so there is no way she can make it to lunchtime to last on just one nap.
So we just don’t know where to go from here and would really appreciate some advice on what we can try. We don’t have all that much control over when she naps when she is at the childminder’s (3 days a week) but there might be changes we can ask the childminder to make. I'm really struggling with the lack of sleep now I'm back at work so would be really grateful for some help. Sorry for such a long post but any advice would be very welcome! Thank you.