Author Topic: 13 months and nighttime is a nightmare  (Read 1077 times)

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Offline stumpydave

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13 months and nighttime is a nightmare
« on: June 08, 2006, 19:04:36 pm »
Our 13 month old son has never been a good sleeper, but it's getting steadily worse!
He still won't go to sleep without someone in the room, frequently wakes screaming at night, and wakes between 4 -5 am without fail, and very rarely goes back to sleep. We've tried all sorts of methods, but nothing seems to work. Also I have doubts about his bed time routine as he just seems to get more and more excited as the evening wears on.
His routine is basically:
Get up about sixish (if we're lucky)
Breakfast at 7 - 7.30 ish
Nap 11 - 12.30 (useually pretty good with this)
Lunch about 1
Dinner 4.30 - 5.00 (sometimes a little later)
Bath 6 - 6.30ish
last feed (breast) about 7ish
Aim for bed at 7.30

Teething may be a small part, but I don't believe thats the main cause as it's the same whether he's teething or not.
He does sometimes watch a little telly before his bath, but again, he's the same whether it's on or off.
His early wakings may be down to the early dawn, we've fitted a night blind tonight to see if it helps.
He is also worse on the days he goes to the grandparents because my wife and I are working, but it's not a lot different. He's also become a little clingy lately.

To sum up, he won't go to sleep without us there, he takes up to 2 -3 hours some nights to drop off, he still wakes 2 or 3 times a night, and he won't sleep much past 5.30am on a good day!

Any suggestions????

Offline imsmum

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Re: 13 months and nighttime is a nightmare
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2006, 19:36:21 pm »
With my dd her frequent and lengthy night wakings were due to overtiredness at bedtime.  I note that therre is nearly 7 hours between when your son wakes from his nap and bedtime.  Most sleep experts including Tracy recommend that this interval be no longer than 4.5 to 5 hours.  I know with my dd if she was awake more than 5 hours between nap wakeup and bedtime she would wake in the night.  So even if she woke at 5 am she would go down for her nap at 12:30, nap for 1.5 hours and then be asleep by 7.  So I think you should try a combination of slowly pushing the nap back and an earlier bedtime.  This was the only way we got over the night wakings.   HTH

Offline Harrisonsmummy

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Re: 13 months and nighttime is a nightmare
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2006, 20:43:00 pm »
I completely echo imsmum! Need to push nap back a bit and bring bedtime forward. The excitedness in the evening is overtiredness, the chemicals in the brain cause them to get over excited, which looks like they are still raring to go, then it is a nightmare to settle them. When ds is really overtired, I have to settle him with a hand on his back so that he relaxes. A couple of early night may well help to stop the night wakings, then you can push everything forward a bit.

It often takes a few days for the early mornings to catch up though!


Offline stumpydave

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Re: 13 months and nighttime is a nightmare
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2006, 10:12:19 am »
Thanks for the help. So do you think we need to re-introduce a short afternoon nap as well. He moved to the one nap at about 1 year old.

Offline imsmum

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Re: 13 months and nighttime is a nightmare
« Reply #4 on: June 09, 2006, 14:09:45 pm »
No I think the short afternoon nap will just cause him to go to sleep later at night and make things worse.  His nap is at 11 now, so Id' try to push the nap back slowly to 12 or 12:30 and move bedtime early by .5 to 1 hour.  When my dd transitioned to one nap she had a couple of nights where she was fast asleep by 6:15 pm!