Sleep - and lack of it

Just The One

Our daughter is 16 months and has never slept through the night. Usually waking for a few minutes to one hour and then back to sleep again.

About 3 weeks ago we had another baby and the sleep pattern has got progressively worse.

Now she is waking at night for anything from an hour upwards. Last night it was three hours of screaming.

We have tried many different approaches. We have tried going into her and sitting with her while she calms. When we do this she will lie in cot and keep opening eyes to make sure we are there. Eventually when we think she has fallen asleep we sneak out of the room but usually by the time we reach the door she starts to scream again.

We have tried the controlled crying, 5, 10, 15 mins. We have tried picking her up and giving her hugs but she has started to wriggle to get out of arms.

We don't know what approach to try next... we are getting about 4 hours sleep per night.

Any advice will be appreciated.

littlebug

I always end up replying to the no sleep threads
Your daughter sounds just like mine was:(. The most obvious cause is of course the new arrival... at 16 months she's too young actually voice her feelings about the "intruder" in her little life so maybe her frustrations are coming out through disturbed sleep patterns. I'm sure you're already making sure she's getting lots of exta one to one attention by day but boy I know after prolonged periods of sleep deprivation daytime becomes all about just surviving and anything extra becomes really hard!

The other thing that springs to mind for me is teeth? How is she normally when she is teething? Mine was a bad teether and expecially when it came to molars her whole routine would go right out of whack for at least a week... I remember her screaming for hours at night even when she was close to 2 years. I recall watching a baby einstein dvd over and over and over in the middle of the night because that was the only thing that would settle her )at least until the dozol kicked in ). I also remember being so happy one night when was closer to 2 and the screaming was going on but she suddenly stopped and said to me "mouff sore"... oh the the relief when they can finally actually tell you what's wrong.
Check out the gums.... if you think she might be getting a tooth or two then a wee spoonful of calpol (or better again teedex or dozol) will do no harm.

If it's not teeth then I'm not sure what to say other than the obvious lots of extra cuddles by day. I think she's a bit big for controlled crying to be honest. I also think you should stick with one approach...maybe rubbing her back calmly til she drifts off? Does she have any of those "things" that project pretty lights around the room? An aquarium with nice relaxing wave sounds was great for my daughter....eventually all we would have to do was push the button and she would relax and drift off again.


If none of those work well you're just going to have to weather the storm. When my daughter was still up at night (a lot though she was 2 1/2) when her brother was born we just took charge of one child each and slept in different rooms so that on any given night at least one of us had some chance of getting some sleep. We were actually in separate rooms for quite a few months til both had settled which wasn't ideal but it was the only way to stay sane.

witchywoman

poor you, my twins were exactly the same, i survived on 2 hours sleep for a year and a half, i think there is no real solution to this other than time, they grow out of it, i tried everything under the sun and nothing worked, sometimes you just have to accept that your child is like this..