15 month old baby waking for 2 hours most nights

[rosieandhenry]

Our 15 month old son has started to wake in the night and stay awake for up to 2 hours and it is killing us! He naps for 2 one hour naps during the day and has a healthy appetite. We have had the same bedtime routine for 5 months now - bath, milk and story, bed at 7.45pm. He was weaned from breastfeeding to the bottle when he was 11 months and currently happily takes 3 bottles of formula a day.

Our LO is inconsistent with the time of his wakings (11pm or anytime up to 4am) and the length of his wakings (2 minutes or 2 hours). He can wake once or several times and when he wakes up he crys (not mantra cry). We used to rock him to sleep but couldn't cope with this waking up for 2 hours so now use PD to get him to sleep. He is happy with PD but still wakes for 2 hours in the night. We use PD to settle him in the night and for his naps. When he wakes for 2 hours he just doesn't seem to be tired and wants to play in his cot or with us. We can't leave him in his cot awake as he starts crying bitterly. Our LO has been walking for 3 months and is very active during the day. He is currently not teething and has started to say the odd word (Mummy, Daddy etc.). He has a lovie which he takes to nursery with him and although he is attached to it he would happily go to nursery without it. We put his lovie in the cot at night and for naps.

Any advice or getting our LO to sleep through the night?

[alyssa1]

Do you feel he's getting enough nap time during the day?  Is he overtired at bedtime?   I found that our son who is 15months old was waking for 2 hours in the night because he was overtired and not getting enough sleep.  We started putting him to bed a little earlier at night and that solved the problem.  If he did wake at night this is what we did:
-go in and do pd, say night night - and we left the room
-we were finding that staying in the room made him more awake and he thought we were there to play, even if we were constantly doing pd
-so we would walk out/walk in and pd - he was really upset when we would leave the first couple times but eventually he would lay down even before we made it to his crib.
- we would wait outside his door and give him 10 sec. to settle, if he stopped crying, we would not go in or if he started to cry again, we would go in and do the same thing
-our son thought that pd was play so we began walk out/in - this let him know we were serious about going back to sleep and also we are not in the room with our son when he does go to sleep so this reinforced him going back to sleep on his own
-at first this took 1hour plus but now if it happens it only takes 5 min.
-when we put him to bed a ltitle earlier, the problem went away
Good luck

[Harrisonsmummy]

I agree with Alyssa, sounds like overtiredness. It seems to accumulate and catch up an with them, so may be from a recent cold or teething. A few early nights may well solve the problem. Is he waking earlier than usual in the morning and is he happy when he wakes  - often seems to be a pointer.

Crying on wake-up normally means my ds is tired still! Then he gets an early bedtime.

[imsmum]

Likewise night wakings were (are) usually from overtiredness.  But it seems a bit odd that your lo would be overtired if this was ahis usual schdule and there has been no recent cold, teething etc that has disrupted his sleep.  The other possibility is that he needs to go to one nap but I think before you do this you need to try to get him "tanked up" on sleep by trying the earlier bedtimes.

[rosieandhenry]

Thank you for your replies. Our LO has now decided to move to one nap of 2+ hours and now sleeps through the night with the odd wake up which usually only lasts 10 minutes. . Do you know if it matters whether the single nap is in the morning or afternoon? Our LO seems to nap at either time. Do you think it will settle down to be the afternoon?

[bree4529]

This sounds just like my little girl. Everthing has been the same she only takes one nap. She sleeps with me. Her schedule is like this

7 or 8 wake
eat 
play
11:30 eat lunch
12 in room, sleep at 12:30
between 2 and 3 wake
snack
play
6 or 6:30 eat dinner
8 in room, sleep at 8:30
has been waking at like 10 and saying awake for 1 to 2 hrs.  only happens once in awhile. when she does this she sleeps until 9 or 9:30 the next day.

can anyone help me ?

[imsmum]

I found that 10 pm wake up was usually related to overtiredness at bedtime.  I know a lot of books suggest a bedtime of 4.5 hours after nap wakeup.  My dd who has never sleeps a lot always needed to be asleep no later than 5.5 hours after waking up from her nap or I could pretty much guarantee night wakings.  You could try an earlier bedtime to see if that helps.  You could also probably push her nap back at little bit if she doesn't want to go down at night any earlier for you, but I would try a slightly earlier bedtime first.  HTH