Sleep issues

[bangkok mum]

Hmm my wee girl is almost one year and is an utter delight but sleep is still a little erratic.  We did have success with night wakings down to one which i was so happy about but alas didn't last long (i posted on success stories and now i just read it wistfully!)... so here we are I am back for some more advice. 

What we are doing now

DD currently sleeps in our room in her cot for about half the night and then at about 2 comes into bed with us until morning.   She falls alseep in our arms, I sit with her on my bed and hold her until she falls asleep and then put her in her cot.  She doesn't have a lovey, but has a dummy. she has bedtime routine bath, feed, bed.

her routine is
7am wake up
9.30 nap - 45mins
1.30-2ish nap for 1 1/2 hours
7pm bed

She wakes up several times (and most of these between 12 and 6) in night, currently she is feeding at night at about 10.30, 2.30, 5.30ish, the 10.30 one she takes quite a lot and sometimes also 2.30.  she is BF.  She can also wake up 2.30, 3.30, 4.30 oh dear those nights are hard!!!

Ok so what we want to do is:  Put DD in her own room, help her fall asleep by herself, and not feed her at night.  yes quite alot i know and not planning to do all in one go - I am just not sure WHAT ORDER to do it all in.   

also my husband wants to get rid of her dummy - this is kind of feasible as he gets her to sleep without it, unfortunately i am abit more dependent on it and want to keep using while we get her sleeping independently. 

We have tried not feeding her between 11pm and 4am but after two weeks (yes 2 weeks) couldn't cope any longer - as she ended just being awake for often an hour at a time and at 2am that is pretty hard.   I thought this approach would be relatively straight forward and she would get it in a few days - but we were prepared for longer - and thankfully too, but really two weeks???!!!

And lastly dd has been an utter nightmare to get down for naps this last week particularly morning one- i have to admit have completly lost my cool and for the last three days dh has been putting her down as i just can't cope! not that he is having much success either but am wondering if nap is at right time, should i keep her up for 3hours now?

thanks for all advice

[mari]

Firstly, I would think that the problems with naps could be due to her being ready for the 2-1 transition.
You could try to reduce the am nap little by little and gradually bring the pm nap a little earlier until eventually you are down to one log nap.  (sounds easy but there is a more indepth explaination on the naps board)
As for the night wakings.  Does she eat well during the day?  If so then she shouldn't really need any food during the night.  I would go for topping her up as much as possible towards bedtime and perhaps keep the 10.30pm feed but try to phase out the 2.30 and 5.30am feeds.  My guess is that it has now become a habit.

I would keep the dummy (pacifier) for now as I think that it will be a bit much for her.
I would also hold off the other issues like co sleeping and sleeping in her own room for a while.  I would try to eliminate the milk to start with and we will go from there. 
What do you and DH think? 
It will take time and lots of hard work but with the great advice and support our fellow Babywhisperers you will get there.  We'll help as much as we can.
Mari

[bangkok mum]

Hi Mari

Thanks for your advice, yes agree with cutting out milk feeds, and yes it is really just habit as she eats plenty during the day (she is about 11kg about 22lbs i think about 90th percentile!!).  Last night made conscious to reduce the amount that she eats and it didn't affect her much, i actually think it helped her sleep better.  I have done this once before on advice from BW and it worked really well (far better than cold turkey approach!), - that is how we got down to one night waking but with one thing or another it got worse again and sort of felt that reducing amount of time of night feed had stopped working but that was probably becuase i was just not focused enough on it. 

So will keep on with reducing feed time and go from there.  and will keep dummy!

As with naps - yes I was wondering if she could start to go from 2 naps to 1.  I just thought she might be a bit young still.  will have a look on nap board.

thanks for help and will post to let you know how it is going!