My 1 year old (13 months) is waking up for 4-6 hours at night

[tetra]

Has anyone else experienced this? I feel like I am losing my mind. A few times this week, my daughter has taken to getting up between 11-12 at night and absolutely will not go back to sleep until 5 or 6 in the morning. We had sleep trained her around 5 months and it worked beautifully, but using the same principles this time around does nothing to help her calm down and she seems even more angry when we try to settle her. I tried letting her CIO last night but she screamed for 45 minutes straight and was hitting her head on the wall, so had to intervene.

I don’t know how to fix this. We tried letting her play and not forcing her to sleep, she never acts tired. Eventually I put her in the car at 6 and we went for a drive. She finally slept from 6-8:30 and is now up again ready for the day. She sleeps between 2-3 hours for naps during the day, usually an hour and a half in the morning and 30-40 minutes in the afternoon. She goes to sleep at 6:30 and wakes up between 5-530. We have a bedtime routine we follow every night and she eats well during the day so I don’t think she’s hungry.

Is this normal? Should I chalk it up to teething or constipation or a sleep regression? At a loss now, and husband is also out of ideas

 

[surreal_platypus]

@tetra She might need to drop her second nap - most kids do around that age.

 

[daisyjo]

@tetra Ours went through a period of sleeping 8-1 then not getting back until 3 or 4. It was hell but short lived. Hopefully it will pass quickly. We also needed to resleep train around 14/15 months as it stopped working.

 

[yunella]

@tetra Definitely time to try one nap. Stick to it for 7-10 days (there will be fussiness). She's telling you that 1) sleep is not independent and 2) she's undertired.

You want to aim for the first wake window being 5 hours, followed by a 2 hour nap, then another wake window of 5.5-6 hours.

It's very important to be consistent in how you respond at night and not try to "help her" get back to sleep - she needs to learn to do it by herself.

If she wakes and is hard crying for a while, you can do a Ferber style check, but no eye contact, no talking - you need to commit through your actions and body language the boundary that nighttime is for sleeping.

 

[lawrence90]

@tetra Cut out the afternoon nap and push the morning nap later, a bit closer to midday and don't let it last more than 2 hours at most. She might be fussy in the evening as she adjusts, which is fine. It means she's tired enough for bed. If that isn't enough, you could try pushing bedtime later as well.

Our MOTN wakes weren't usually as long as this, but we definitely had a LOT of split nights like this when we were trying to force too much sleep on baby. We ended up capping the nap and pushing bedtime back by an hour to fix it. 5 months later we had to push bedtime back again!

 

[chriver]

@tetra What does the 11-5 timeframe look like? What do you do with her?

 

[tetra]

@chriver We try to do all the tricks to get her back to sleep first. Dad and I will spend 30 minutes trying to rock her back to sleep. Then we tried taking her into our bed. When she fussed I gave her a little water and some Tylenol. We played in her room with toys for another hour. When we finally made it to two, I put on one of those baby sleep videos and gated us into the living room that’s baby proofed so I could sleep while she watched for a bit. Fell asleep for 2 hours, then back to trying to rock her or walk her to sleep when I woke up and finally put her in the car for a drive

 

[chriver]

@tetra That sounds like a lot of different things! Try to stick with one. When my littles wake up, they dont leave their rooms, and the lights dont turn on. We can sit in the rocking chair and rock, I might bring a small snack (like a fruit pouch) or a water in, but we stay in their room.

When you rock her, is she crying or is she chill? Does she take milk in a cup you can give her? But other than that, dark and boring and geared towards sleep. I bet moving locations and more people and more stuff might not be helping as much as she needs. She might cry. Be there for her. But set a boundary. We stay in the room. I'll hold you, we can read a book with a nightlight, I'll have food if youre hungry or a drink. If you personally get tired, tap out and let dad come in, one at a time. Trade off every 30-45 minutes so you both get some rest. Try that for a week or so and see what happens.

 

[tetra]

@chriver Thank you! I’ll try this out tonight

 

[sushiburger]

@tetra She’s under tired. Might need to start capping the nap hours. 3 hours total is probably too many hours. What’s the wake window before bed? 6:30 may be too early

 

[tetra]

@sushiburger 3 hours is few and far between but it happens occasionally. She usually only naps for 2 and her wake window before bed is 2-5:30. At 5:30 we start her bedtime routine

 

[retro_reactive]

@tetra Oh, she's absolutely not tired enough for a full night's sleep. Drop the late afternoon catnap and push bedtime back at least an hour, maybe 90 mins. Be consistent with an absolutely boring MOTN routine; all of that moving locations, playing, putting on videos is only stimulating her further.

 

[sushiburger]

@tetra Ok so she’s on two naps and her wake window is 3.5 hours? How long til she’s actually asleep? For two naps the wake windows would normally be something like 2/3/4 or 3/3/4. So there would be about 4 hours or even more at that age before she’s being put in her cot.
This is what I’ve learnt with working with multiple sleep consultants and being a regular follower of sleeptrain sub.
I would head to sleeptrain for a schedule check. I still think under tired. Mine moved to one nap around 14 months old