12am-4am wakings 21 month old

[rlynn08]

my daughter is 21 months. shes always been not the greatest sleeper. it took her until she was nearly 6 months old to get her days and nights sorted. but for the last 2 months in particular weve been dealing with really horrible sleep issues. shes always been a frequent waker...anywhere between 4-9 times a night with 6 or 7 being the most common.

anyhow, the issue we have been dealing with at least 2 times a week for last 2 months is that she wakes anywhere between midnight-2am and wont fall back asleep until 4am. I have tried everything i can think of. i ignore. i rock. i bounce. she stares at me wide eyed. then eventually she becomes a screaming mess and then wide eyed stare and so on until she finally falls asleep. every once in awhile i get a good night and she wakes only 2 or 3 times and is easy to soothe and falls asleep quickly. 2 weeks ago she refused to take any naps at all. i would rock, bounce, lay quietly with her and she would stare at me wide eyed for an hour. i finally got her taking naps again but night sleep is still messed up. i feel like im such a failure. i mean its sleep, how did i screw this up so badly.

she is a fairly happy and social kid. pretty gentle, minimal hitting, few tantrums. but full of energy, climbs, dances, runs nonstop. she was scooting by 4 months, crawling at 5 months, pulling up at 6 months, cruising by 7 months, and walking by 9 months. all this to say shes been a go-go baby from day one. she has her fussy days but overall shes a dream during the day. i just wish we could get this sleep stuff sorted out. i hate that im exhausted...i get up 3 times a week at 4am for work. so yeah doing the math you can see how much sleep i get when we have one of THOSE nights.

we do co-sleep. i still babywear and frequently as we have no car and take the bus everywhere. we have had allergy testing done...all negative. behaviorally as ive said shes a dream child. sweet, loving, gentle, with occasional fussiness.

i dont know i just know i cant keep going with an hour of sleep 3 times a week. i havent gotten more than 3 hours chunk since shes been born. im grumpy and not very nice to my husband and sometimes my sweet daughter. do you know how much a heel its possible to feel after scolding a 1 year old who then looks up at you and asks for a hug? plus im worried how this lack of sleep will affect her in the long term. she is mst definitely not getting 12 - 13 hours a sleep a night.

any advice?

[ihugtrees]

What is her diet like? How much exercise does she get during the day? I am by no means experienced in sleep but those are the first things that pop in my head when thinking of a little one waking in the middle of the night like that.

[rlynn08]

shes constantly running around the house but honestly we live in the nw and its really rainy here during the winter. last week the temp was below freezing. we do have playdates about 1 to 2 x a week. we live off a highway with no sidewalks so that plus the no car makes getting out of the house pretty hard. she is a whirlwind around the house and we horse play quite a bit...dancing to music, etc. but i could probably be better about doing more...just not sure what...as we live in a very small apartment.

her diet is so-so lately. she was a great eater but she's been pickier lately. sometime hardly eating anything during the day. i would say overall though she eats pretty well. her favs right now are rice and beans, hard boiled eggs...broccoli and apples.

i will say that she has been consistently taking night time bottles since birth. no matter how hard we tried to get her to eat more during the day she would refuse until night time. i exclusively pumped for over a year and then we switched to cows milk around 14 months. i know its bad for her teeth and contributing to the night wakings but i'm exhausted and didn't have the energy to deal with it. we have tried watering down but that did nothing but prompt her to wake more frequently and drink more. i decided to cut the bottles out completely last night since i am already getting crappy sleep. she was up from midnight to 4am but not crying for the bottles. she asked for one maybe twice but other than that she was just up and staring at me. she asked me to rock her and i did but it took 2 hours of doing so for her to fall asleep.

i am hoping that once she gets used to the idea that there will be no more night bottles she starts to sleep in longer chunks.

[echoecho1528]

I have a 21 month old with the exact same problem. Same horrible sleep patterns since she was born, same happy energy during the day. I don't know what is going on either except to say that the 12-4 wake ups started when I began to "try" to night wean her. Before that she would wake up 2-3 times during that period, but would easily go back to sleep by nursing. Now, she nurses, nurses, nurses, nurses until I feel like my nipples will fall off, then she gets mad for a minute that she isn't getting any milk, and then she just STAYS AWAKE for hours. She just plays on the bed and stares at me. I thought/think it might be a supply issue for us, so I started offering her snacks and water in the middle of the night. This actually helped a little bit last month when my supply dipped due to AF. She would have half a banana or some popcorn () and water and then drift off to sleep.
So, maybe she is hungry? Like for food and not for milk? For us it didn't set a bad pattern for midnight snacking, as soon as my supply was back up, she didn't do the long wake ups anymore... until last night .
Hope something I've said helps, even if it is the commiseration that is comforting.

[wendyland]

I definitely could have written your entire post with my last two daughters. It took my middle daughter 3 years to sleep through the night, but she has slept very soundly since.

My youngest is almost 2 1/2. She still has a bottle at night. She doesn't like change much. She only gets milk before she sleeps and after that, I'll only give her water. It has helped. She'll go several nights where she sleeps all night. Then, we'll go a few nights where she's up several times. Each time she walks up, she yells "BA BA". The only way we could really do anything about it is to say no and then she'd screem for a long time, which sounds more damaging than keeping up the bottle routine.

I would at least try to get her to have water only bottles in bed. And if she's not too unhappy not having a bottle, I would try to get rid of it. Unfortunately, it's my daughter's most loved object. From age 2 - 3, it seems like they are much more resistant to change. Good luck!

[lurve]

not much to add except my almost three year old did the same thing last night! yawn!! she is a crappy sleeper...

[lisavark]

Just so happy I'm not alone here.

Watching for more ideas...

[echoecho1528]

Lurve and LisaVark - I see the three of us posting in the same threads a lot!

Lurve - I saw your posts in the "You know you have a crappy sleeper when..." thread a year ago! Has anything gotten better since then?

[wendyland]

I forgot to mention that dh and I take turns getting up with her at night. And we don't sleep together so that we at least get a decent night sleep every other night. Last night, she was up at 4 and stayed up until 5. She wanted to get up for the day.

I need a "I'm defeated" smilie at the end of that sentence. I picture a smilie face turning into a puddle.

[mamaGG]

In the same boat with you mammas! My dd is 22 months now and has been a persistently odd sleeper. My biggest accomplishment has been to get her to bed before 11pm consistently for the last few months. Before that it was 1am! She periodically goes through these same periods of being awake for anywhere from 1-3 hours. A few things we've done: 1) my husband and I trade off. Even if I only get 1 or 2 nights of sleeping alone just knowing that I can/will has kept me sane; 2) dd kind of weaned herself at about 18 months when she was ill but she does best getting back to sleep at night with a bottle. We tried cow's milk for awhile but that seems to make her gassy and she wakes more. We give her soy milk now at night and that really seemed to help. I really do think some kids just have a touch of 'insomnia' - busy little heads with all the things they're learning and experiencing. So I'm just trying to hang in until she gets old enough to entertain herself at night when she can't sleep. Don't know if this is any help, but I feel for you cause I'm right there with ya. Good luck!

[rlynn08]

thank you! i think it helps to know im not alone!!! everyone around me seems to have babies with if not perfect sleep pretty decent sleep. it was getting to the point where i was wondering if i should mention it to her ped but im scared to because i KNOW what shell think of our bed sharing arrangements. my husband is getting tired of her in the bed with us and im not ready for the big move....the last thing i need is the ped giving him any fuel. heh.

HOWEVER, i thought i would update. i did take her off bottles last monday....so its been a week and so far she is bottle free. she did better than i thought she would. that first night was painful but it wasnt the bottle per se. she asked for them but when i said no bottle she would fuss for literally a few seconds and then stop. but she did her 1-4am waking...she wasnt crying just awake. the rest of the week though getting her to nap has been easier and shes gone from 5-8 wakings to 1-3 wakings a night. except lst night, last night was kind of rough...she couldnt seem to settle...she never fully woke but she tossed and turned and fussed a lot. i think she is prob hungry...she has been a really picky eater lately so i need to be very aware of her food consumption during the day. she LOVES rice and beans no matter how they are cooked...mexican, indian, carribean; she loves it all...so i may get to find out how many diff ways you can cook rice and beans. anybody have some great recipes? heh.

but yeah...im pretty happy with the outcome but warily happy....as her sleep habits go in waves. i get a few good months (and by good, i mean relative, most of my friends would prob gasp in horror at our "good") and then a whole lot of bad months. ill enjoy it while it lasts and try to see if there are any patterns or things that encourage better sleeping.

thank you again. it helps so much to not feel like i did something horribly wrong.