Q&A: One-year-old not sleeping

Once again, when it rains it pours. A grand cascade of 5 emails, and one real-life friend, in the past week asking what the heck is going on with birthday babies. Let me write you a composite sketch of the emails:

"OMG Help! We made it through that !@#$% 9-month sleep regression, and my baby was only waking up once per night (which, believe me, was a miracle) by 11 months. But my baby just had a birthday and is now waking up 4 times a night again. Help me! What am I doing wrong? Why does my baby hate me? Is this ever going to end?"

In the order in which the questions were asked:

You're not doing anything wrong. Your baby doesn't hate you. Yes, it will end.

Your baby is ramping up for the 55-week developmental spurt. I forget what happens at this spurt, and my Wonder Weeks is packed in a box while I paint my living room, so I can't look it up. But there's a great summary here.

It's going to be over in a couple of weeks, and then your baby will go back to sleeping at least as well as before, but maybe even better.

Sympathy, commiseration, anecdotes (either of your kids or of things you did because this regression threw you for such a loop), or any other musings welcome.

Here's my musing: I thought it was so bizarre to get to one year, and then feel like my child was in such flux. It made 365 days seem completely arbitrary. You think, when your baby's an infant, that a year actually means something. To me it just seems like a big period of flux in all sorts of areas.

Comments

[hedra]

@Hope, my only recommendation is to night wean between stages. It may or may not 'stick' through the next wonder week stage, but it likely will be easier to work through if the expectation is already 'no nursing at night'. Whether it is this stage or the next is entirely up to your instinct about your child. You can try it, if it seems to be useful (generally seeing definite results in 3 days or less, is my definition), then you're done. If it doesn't seem to be an easy transition, then skip ahead to the next stage break.

@r+k+mama, glad you switched docs. Sheesh, that one seems kind of mean.

@sudru (and others frustrated with the 'oh, my baby sleeps fine!' thing) - 30% of people have a gene that makes them very insensitive to dopamine, which means they have even temperaments, tend to be easy sleepers, not fussy babies, just calm, nothing bothers them, tra-la-la-la-la. 30%! BUT, while this sounds grand, the knee-jerk 'just you wait until they're teenagers' reaction (you'll get yours!) actually holds true, because they're equally immune to that gut-dropping feeling when their life does or might take a bad turn, so they don't learn from their mistakes, punishments have little to no impact, they have a hard time figuring out what they really want to do (everything is fine, nothing is really all that bad), they're not motivated by good parenting, they're relatively immune to bad parenting, they drive their parents NUTS. At that point, those parents get to learn the same thing that everyone else learns - that it isn't all what we did, that the way they are is more about them, that we can't control everything, etc. Eventually these kids figure out their direction, too - but it tends to take a lot longer.

So, some of the parents who are saying 'easy baby, sleeps when I ask, naps all the time, never fussy' are not lying. Some are, but some are not. The ones who have miserable sleep and fussies are less likely to be out in public! It kind of skews the sample.

@hush, I don't know that I said that, but I do think it. I recall there was a conversation here where a lot of people said that. I definitely had a lot of experience suggesting that the doctors could be totally full of it, and that it is valuable to find a doctor who doesn't think they know everything...

@RBee, Moxie actually has a post here that was something like 'toddler wonder weeks' or 'tell me what other fussy stages you have experienced' - I have to run, but maybe you can find it in the archives... otherwise, I suggest the Ames and Ilg books, which detail the signs of the dysregulation phases from 2 1/2 up. The timing stops being quite as regular, though.

[MamaBird]

I can be a (apparently rare!) voice of both sympathy and hope here. My daughter was never a great sleeper, and at 7.5 mos we did sleep train her (Weissbluth style). That, plus being on a VERY tight schedule has been really helpful for her. She is like an ad for sleep-begets-sleep, and routine-begets-happy! But she was still up 1x a night (I'd feed her) till about 11 mos. Then she slept through for 2 blessed weeks (7pm-6am!). Then... up for 1-2 hrs, 1-3x a night, until 13.5 mos. UGH. And then just last week, she decided she was done. Back to sleeping through.

No idea what caused it, but it did indeed pass. We didn't re-sleep train, since it seemed less developmentally appropriate at this age. Good luck to all of you going through this... and I hope it passes quickly!

[Jen]

once again, askmoxie is as timely as ever.

after night #2 of waking up multiple times with the 14-month-old crying, crying, crying and only getting back to sleep in our bed, i thought "hm, i wonder if this is a sleep regression - i should check moxie." and boom.

information AND validation - score!

so...she's probably cutting molars (i'll be checking tonight) and experiencing a developmental surge - it's probably not the best time to cut out nursing before bed, i'm guessing?

we're down to only nursing in the morning and to sleep at night - only solids during the day. maybe i should just stick with it another month or so until she's over the hump and the teeth are in?

i'm so thankful that this blog exists - i've gotten more sound and useful information here than the stack of parenting books at home. thank you, ladies!

[pleasedontcryatnight]

Wow! Scary how the timing fits sometimes. Little S is nearly 14 months, and was up 2x last night, howling with misery. I never thought to check for molars. The second time I gave the Motrin and that really helped, plus another bottle (she's been night-weaned for 5 months.)

We also went through a period of a twohour middle of hte night wakeup - she wanted to play. We went down to one nap a day, and that stopped.

[suzanna]

12 months was tough for us. Twins @ 12 months + husband away for 7 weeks = tough.

One thing that really bugged me was that they would wake frequently between putting them down at 7pm and when I 'went down' at 10pm, ie during my few hours of break. Oh, and then 3+ times each per night. ughhhh!

Co-sleeping was the only way I managed to get any rest, but even that didn't work well since they'd tend to disturb one another (and me).

It got better around 14 months, I think. Husband returned, one got out of our bed. Now (17 months) we still have rough patches, and only random 'through the night's, but it's so much better than at 12 months.

[CTalley]

Crap, my girl has her 1st bday on 9/17 and she's been a "good" sleeper for about 7 months (knocking on wood now). Hopefully, this doesn't ring true for us. Good luck to the rest of you...hang in there!

[hope]

thanks hedra. i am not sure what to do. i guess i like to know that i have that feed "in my pocket" if i need it. at the same time, i really think it is habit at this point and he would probably sleep better if i helped him break the habit.

anyway - for all - i found a description of the 55 wonder week on the site below for those of us without the book:

http://figur8.net/baby/2008/02/13/wonder-week-55/

[Jen]

just wanted to come back today to tell you that last night, our bed was baby-free thanks to some suggestions from here! there was still a waking at 1230 but with some patting, a drink or two of water, monotonous repetition of "lie down, it's time for sleeping" and NO picking up, she finally laid back down in her crib and was out. THANK YOU.

[libbyllama]

Thank you, thank you for this post. My son turned 1 at the beginning of the month and we've had a hell of a time. Just AWFUL. He's never slept through the night and only given us 6-8 hours a handful of times. Most often we are up 2x a night at least. And those 2x change every night-never the same hours, no consistency to work around. My husband wants to try CIO, but I just don't think it will work and I don't want to do it, anyway. I'm trying to hold off on nightweaning until he's closer to 15 months, but Lordy how I dream of it day and night.

@Gale-I think I saw on kellymom.com that her guidelines were 25% solids during 12-18 months, after that 50%, etc. She wasn't saying it in a strict fashion, just if you wanted to kind of shoot for something, I think. Anyway, in my sleep deprivation I could be misquoting, so you might want to check it out.

[becca]

Hope ... just wanted to tell you what worked for us with the early am feeding. Around 10 months we were finally down to the one 4 am feeding. If I sent my hubbie in or tried not the breast feed he would freak out completely. So, a friend recommended I start reducing the number of minutes gradually. It worked! I was shocked. I would only reduce by 30 secs at a time and if he cried when I put him down I would feed him for the same amount of time the next night. Once he was ok with the amount of time, I would reduce another 30 secs. When we got to about 4 min, he just stopped waking up. we did have a few nights around 12 months that were difficult and I did go back to feeding him b/c he couldn't be consoled but then again I started decreasing the amount of time I fed him and it worked. He is now 13 months and pretty consistently sleeping through the night.

[sarahb]

Such a timely post. My LO is just a few days over one-year old, and I'm just about out of my mind with exhaustion. We co-sleep, and he awakens every.single.hour. and won't sleep til he gets some boobage--sometimes just a few seconds of it will get him back to sleep, which is more annoying than having him really nurse. Anyway, we've come to a crisis situation here: DH and I haven't been in the same bed for a year now, I don't get enough sleep, DS is turning into a toddler and parenting isn't just about keeping him alive anymore, and I just realized yesterday that I'm not being the parent I want to be because I'm so freaking tired!
I'm not in the CIO crowd, but I can certainly see why parents resort to and even embrace it...

[sleeplessinstamford]

holy c@@p, the only thing that was getting me through the living hell that is our 9 month sleep regression was the thought that it might get better from here - still, forewarned is forearmed...

I depend on this site for my sanity in a world full of friends with Babies Wot Sleep, but haven't posted before. It's a longshot but if anyone can help me I will be as grateful as only someone else who hasn't slept for more than a three hour stretch in nine months can understand.

Our problem is that our baby doesn't fit any profile I can find of your average nursing-to-sleep-dependent crappy sleeper. Thanks to this site I have worked out that he is a tension releaser for naps and for bedtime, and I can put him down in his sidecar cot wide awake and with his paci and after a few minutes of shouting (cross crying, not miserable crying) he without fail takes himself off to sleep no problem. But when he wakes at night (which at the moment is *every* 1 1/2 hours) he HAS to nurse for a few minutes before going back to sleep. He doesn't actually fall asleep nursing though - he picks his paci back up, stuffs it in, rolls over, and goes to sleep. This works for the first couple of wake-ups - after that it may or may not work and sometimes he is up for an hour or more in the night. If we leave him to cry he gets himself worked up, and NOTHING else (rocking, walking, singing etc) ever works. We're happy to co-sleep but it makes no difference at all.

He isn't a comfort nurser during the day at all - in fact he seems completely indifferent about it, and only feeds for a couple of minutes when I offer, and is eating a fair bit of solid food I think.

I have always been very very anti-CIO but to be honest I would now try anything if I thought it would work, because we all desperately need more sleep, especially him. But the thought of putting us all through it and for it to fail is too much, and I don't really understand what problem we are trying to solve.

Has anyone out there had a similar experience? Anyone?!!!

[Britt]

I love this @*!&%@# site. It has been my island of sanity in a difficult year.
My 13 month old girl wakes up at least once a night, usually more often. She is still happily nursing to sleep every night. I'm not in any rush to wean her as long as she still enjoys nursing. Getting up lots of times a night is definitely not my favorite. I have tried co-sleeping, but she has been completely uninterested since she was about 3 months. I just keep thinking to myself that the night waking is a very small part of my life, and soon I'll have to struggle just to get her to let me hold her at all! These thoughts help when I get super grouchy. Of course, if I had an outside job to go to in the morning, it'd be a different story!

[Baranda]

Thank goodness someone can tell me that what I am going through is normal! My son will be a year old in 2 weeks. For the past month, he has went from putting himself to sleep and sleeping through the night with no feedings, to having to be rocked completely to sleep, waking 1-3 times a night, and one night feeding. I have tried the "check, leave, and come back method" as well as the short term "cry it out method" and neither seem to work. My son will cry till he is shaking and gagging till he throws up if he doesnt get picked up, rocked, and fed. The wakings arent the biggest problem. How do I stop the night feedings? I have tried to just NOT feed him, but he simply wont go back to sleep. It is wearing on me and my husband as we are both working parents. Any advice?

[Sheki]

Good Luck with getting her to sleep. Chase doesn't sleep eitehr unless he is in bed with me, but than *I* can't sleep. I am thinking of trying a toddler bed for him and putting him in Aislinns room, she is totally down with this so it is worth a try!That is a super cute picture of Alice.

[Amy]

Hey mate,I was just researching Polyphasic Sleep as I'm going to be rieevwing the Uberman sleep cycle for 21 days and stumbled across this. How have you been getting on with it?Great post, and if you get a chance, fill me in on the 8-months without shampoo that's written on your about page!Ed