10 month old still won’t sleep!

[megand89]

My 10 month old baby has never slept well. Naps are terrible and night time sleep is broken and extremely hard to get her to sleep. My biggest problem is that she only seems to be able to eventually fall asleep if she is nursing. There is no other way it seems. We tried to get her To sleep without nursing and she cried and screamed for an hour. We did this for two weeks and nothing changed so we stopped.

She also wakes up constantly at night. I’m so desperate to help her settle and sleep well. She’s walking and very active during the day. We do loads of classes and she has a varied diet. I can’t think what else to do! Any tips welcome!

[Naijagirl1]

My son woke up 3-4 times a night from birth till about 2 years old.

[megand89 in reply to Naijagirl1]

God give me strength !

[Hidden]

A friend is having similar issues with her 14 month old and has decided to contact a sleep consultant; they can assess the whole picture (I.e the parts of your routine that might be unwittingly counterproductive to baby sleeping/settling) and over advice and practical solutions. Privately they’re not cheap, but you can request a referral to a specialist re sleep issues via your GP

[megand89 in reply to Hidden]

I have been thinking about a sleep consultant. But I didn’t know you could get referred by your GP! Will look into that

[Hidden in reply to megand89]

It possibly varies by area but my friend got a referral via her gp, probably a bit of a waiting list on nhs too

[Kempton]

If I remember rightly, my son went through an awful phase of waking up constantly around that age. He was also breast fed. It felt like it was every hour. I'm not sure if they go through a growth spurt or a developmental phase at that stage, but just as it got to be unbearable he stopped waking as frequently.

My son is almost 19 months old now and he generally only wakes once a night, so believe me, it does get better.

In the meantime I'd suggest keeping up a nightly routine. Do it consistently for a week and you'll start to see the difference. I usually do dinner, bath time, lullabies and then breastfeed to sleep. Now he's older, we include play and stories as part of the routine. He generally never fights sleep and goes down by 8 (it was by 7 until a few months ago). I never put lights on when I'm getting him ready for bed as it can surpress the sleep hormone.

My son was the lightest sleeper and I was forever shushing people/cursing noisy cars etc. Now he's like a whole different person and once he's asleep it takes a lot to rowse him!

Good luck and I hope it gets better for you soon!

[megand89 in reply to Kempton]

This is great to read. We do the same routine. I didn’t think about the lights though. I’m going to start having them off from now on! Good call!

Yeh I am the same. Any bit of noise I’m getting annoyed and frustrated. Hopefully she becomes a deeper sleeper !