Anyone else have one?

My wife and I have had 3 full nights sleep in 16 months, otherwise we’re lucky if he only wakes up every hour.

We seem to have tried everything. Strict bedtime routine, calpol/ibuprofen for teething, detinox and various for trapped wind and medication for reflux…to no avail.

I actually think he is slowing killing me from sleep deprivation.

I have 3 other kids…but this one is a frigging nightmare!!

Sorry just need to vent as he’s doing my head in!!

I was going to suggest reflux but it sounds like you’ve covered that one. Our eldest had her cot propped up on blocks at one end for a couple of years which helped with the reflux.

Aye…done the raising bed thing too.

He’s an absolute angel by day…and demon by night.

He’d better remember all this before carting me off to a nursing home!

Not being funny here but is he hungry ? Until we started to create what i sometimes feel is a mini foi gras our little girl was a bad sleeper. Since we have been stuffing her we do not hear a peep from 7-7 (teething excepted). We worked out that it was because as she moved to solid food and breast she was still hungry. I just keep giving her food now, good food obviously not a mars bar at 11pm, i tend to stick to milky ways that late at night 😉
Beyond that you have my sympathy. Could be teeth as well.

It’s simple. You & your good lady wife just need to stop humping
It’s science.

Unlucky. Was also going to suggest reflux. In your position, I’d consider co-sleeping. Our 17 month old used to wake on the hour every hour, feed and sleep for another 50 minutes. Then I started popping him next to my sleeping wife and slowly, surely, he’s begun sleeping through in his cot. Secure in the knowledge that if he needs his mum, she’s only a wail away.

Could be worse, my daughter ate part of the wall in her bedroom. Seriously.

He eats solids really well and we avoid foods at teatime that we know give him trapped wind.

The most frustrating thing is that we have no idea what’s wrong. Docs have seen him umpteen times but say he’s fine.

Worse thing is he wakes up in the morning at 5am with a big beaming smile as though the last horrific 10 hours have never happened…and me and his mum are like zombies.

Ox – very interesting…must have my genes

DavidB – you didn’t decorate with Willy Wonka’s lickable wallpaper did you?

DavidB – I would say WTF but with a 14month old i can only nod sagely and understand entirely how that can happen.

Well as it’s 0347 on a Tuesday morning, I consider myself to be in exactly the same boat as you. Been up since 0215 with an incessant screaming 15 month old daughter. She’s been saying breakie so took her down for toast in case she’s hungry. Now all she wants is peppa bloody pig. Every time we try to get her back down she screams. Co sleeping won’t work she thinks it’s play time.

I’ve got ones of those buddy. The only way we can get a half decent sleep is if he sleeps next to his Mum. All the recommended techniques failed, doctors say he’s fine, no reflux etc coming to the conclusion that’s just the way he is right now. Polar opposite to his older sister who slept great from early on. I can only offer you empathy!

Sounds ‘normal’ for a lot of people I know :0(, and they are too exhausted to fix things!
However worth keeping an eye it any clues eg wind as others have mentioned, itching / scratching, possible allergy type things; irritation from detergents etc;
Are they hungry, do they look tired but cannot sleep?
Are they on formula, some swear by a bottle before bed as a top up.

‘Good’ sleepers will generally be in a routine so if all else is normal and nothing medically untoward, is there any way you can force the routine. Eg nice wind-down before bed (bath, relaxing stories etx), and lie near them for reassurance.
Gradually wean them of the dependence on you..

Failing that yours might just have a broken sleep sensor :(, return to store for a replacement!

Silence is golden.. duct tape is silver

Is he overtired? My three were all the same, if they didn’t have a good two hour nap in the day ( at the age your’s is) they were up and down all night … Most other parents scoffed but over tired kids just don’t sleep as well.. Just a thought, the ‘symptoms’ sound very similar. Does he sleep in the day?

We had this with one of our three. Two years of maximum 1 hour of sleep.

Again, we went through all the medical stuff and the comfort stuff.

In the end, we just worked out it was a control thing and that became a habit.

We warned the neighbours, and had three nights of screaming. He literally lost his voice and had a sore throat. We just left him to it, and repeatedly took him back to bed silently.

It was tough. It took real effort and teamwork to just ignore a clearly upset child – but it was of his making, and life could not continue as it was.

But, since then he has slept through, although still the worst sleeper in the house. He is now 12.

I hope you work it out OP.

With one of our two I ended up sleeping on the sofa with said small boy sleeping on my chest.

Apparently it’s not advised as you can move and crush/suffocate them, but they survived fine and it got my wife some decent sleep.

I’m not going to be able to supply a tale of cheer our son didn’t sleep through the night until he was 3 and not consistently until he started school. Same pattern as the OP – constant waking, demanding chest/bottle bright as a button at 6am the next morning.

We should have done the controlled crying thing more consistently but, frankly, it was easier to just microwave a bottle or shove a nipple in his mouth and know you could get another 1 or 2 hours sleep. When we did try it my wife couldn’t really cope ‘He’s distressed’.

When he was born we told the placenta was slightly calcified but no more than that. We recently found out this may have meant he was getting enough nutrients in the last stages of pregnancy and was constantly ‘hungry’. Even now (he’s 17) he gets very agitated if there isn’t a meal available when he was expecting one.

One thing, when you’re both tired and stressed and it’s 4am it’s easy to fall out over trivial things. We had a ‘what’s said in the night stays in the night’ rule – it saved a lot of day time stress.

Our daughter was far better.

One thing: They both slept on their fronts. Our son wouldn’t even be put down on his back. We looked at he risk factors (income, smokers, type of property – all significant markers) and we were very low risk.

The best bit;

Wait 10-15 years (I know, but you have to play the long game as a parent) when it’s time to get your teenagers out of bed for school you can walk into the room, bright and breezy, throw the curtains open and spend 5 minutes chatting to them in an animated way whilst they lurk under the duvet muttering swear words. I loved it 🙂

Sounds like its become habit to me if no medical reason. How to change it, well good luck with that one!

It’s simple. You & your good lady wife just need to stop humping
It’s science.

Our little one is sleeping through OK most nights, he obviously knows he’s nothing to worry about on that score 😐

He often spends the evening screaming for no discernable reason, but seems to get it out of his system, or just wears himself out for bed time.

She’s been saying breakie so took her down for toast in case she’s hungry

he only way we can get a half decent sleep is if he sleeps next to his Mum

Unfortunately you are rewarding them for their behaviour – we followed the advice in the toddler taming book about this – basically you leave then to cry for a 1 minute, then 2, then 3, etc – we regularly got up to 10 mins before we went in – but when we actually did it properly (checking by the clock rather than guessing) we knocked it on the head within a couple of weeks after 6 months of very broken nights

They are in a habit of waking, nothing more (probably !)

Good luck, it feels horrible breaking them out of it , but it is so worth it

The best bit;

Wait 10-15 years (I know, but you have to play the long game as a parent) when it’s time to get your teenagers out of bed for school you can walk into the room, bright and breezy, throw the curtains open and spend 5 minutes chatting to them in an animated way whilst they lurk under the duvet muttering swear words. I loved it

There’s something really heartwarming about that grunting, tortured animal noise a teenager can make when you wake them up early, isn’t there? 😈

In the end, we just worked out it was a control thing and that became a habit.

We warned the neighbours, and had three nights of screaming. He literally lost his voice and had a sore throat. We just left him to it, and repeatedly took him back to bed silently.

It was tough. It took real effort and teamwork to just ignore a clearly upset child – but it was of his making, and life could not continue as it was.

This. It’s a behavioural problem. Buy and read Toddler Taming by Dr Christopher Green, 99 pence on Ebay, it will be the best 99p you ever spent.

Blooming heck. Beginning to think it’s luck of the draw. Our first (14 months now) has for the majority of the time slept like an angel from the off.

We’re considering to try for our second but I don’t think I could cope with so little sleep if it turned out to be a monster.

Thanks andyfla for the wise words, and that worked for you, but not us. For many reasons leaving him to scream his head off doesn’t work for us, one of them being that it wakes his 2.5 year old Sister. One non-sleeping child we can just about deal with.

Unfortunately you are rewarding them for their behaviour – we followed the advice in the toddler taming book

Yep, tried that. But when it gets past 5 mins and there’s seemingly no end, we don’t feel it’s beneficial at all. Last night is probably a 1 in 4 occurrence and I genuinely believe she thinks it’s the morning and she’s ready for play and breakfast. Interestingly, as has been said, it occurs when her day nap has been interrupted as yesterday she woke herself up coughing.

But when it gets past 5 mins and there’s seemingly no end, we don’t feel it’s beneficial at all

we had about 3 nights where it had to go over 10 mins, but breaking 6 months of habit was never going to be quick . having said that his behaviour changed quicker than we though.

very diff situation with another child, funnily enough our older one – he was 5- slept though fine.

i have found the little buggers won’t read the book though, makes it very difficult 😀

18 months of c.1hr at a time with our first (now 2.5yrs), sleeping through only really started when he became much more physically active (i.e. walking all the time). You may be at this stage now though OP? If not, then perhaps something to attach some small hope to?

I can’t offer a solution to the crying however are you both getting a night out? Or even a sleepover/break? (take turns occassionally).

It does wonders for the mind/body – you wouldn’t believe it.

Do you have a cellar or a shed ?

We’ve got 3 kids, now 8, 6, and 2, and the middle one was a **** nightmare that was broadly equivalent to your situation OP. Feel for you, it is hell.

basically, what matt_outandabout said was what we needed to do. Strong, coordinated, loving and consistent. Finalyl cracked it when she was 2.

She has turned into the most beautiful, inteligent, wonderful daughter, and at age 6 is showing that the massive obstinate streak has turned into a (mostly!) positive atribute.

Kids, eh, gotta love em!

Have you tried Ashton and Parsons? In the King household this is also known as baby crack. Its predominantly for teething however it has a soothing affect for most things. Honestly, if you’ve not tried it give it a go.

not read all the above as i’m not that interested, but my sis-in-law has a hair dryer app on her phone.

it plays the noise of a hair dryer and seems to send her screaming baby to sleep.

Leaving you with the sound of a hairdryer every night.

Speak to the health visitor and gets child physiologist in. We had one and out really helped, basically her advice was, if you go in when they are crying then it reinforces that there is something wrong. They think mummy and daddy have come in so there must be something wrong with me. When you look at it this way and start to do controlled crying then we found it really helped.

I’d take with a pinch of salt anyone who says ‘this is your problem’ on an internet forum. It may have been the problem for their kids, but every situation is different. Unfortunately they often have the same symptoms. My kids for example only sleep well if they haven’t had a nap.

Fortunately my eldest understood the concept of things needing to be done the proper way. So we were able to convince her that you should be asleep cos it’s night time, and that’s the way things need to be. Also foruntately we went through this through autumn and winter when it wasn’t light at 5am 🙂

black out blinds are your friend

We had this – at one point he was waking every 20 minutes and I nearly lost my mind… Tried everything in Toddler Taming and various other books, checked with docs that all was well, took advice from health visitors etc – none of it worked. In the end, this is what worked for us:

1. Co-sleeping – we put a single bed in his room, when he woke I’d go in and put him in bed with me, and he’d usually sleep much better. That way husband still got sleep so he was capable of work in the morning, I got a fair bit of sleep and at least started the night in my own bed. Had to put up with a lot of judgmental crap from various people about it, but by then I frankly couldn’t have cared less.

2. Accepting that he was a bad sleeper, and it was just a matter of time. Once we’d gone through all the possible causes and tried various solutions, I talked to my family and discovered that we are a family of lousy sleepers. I didn’t sleep through til age 2, my brother’s kids didn’t sleep through til age 5. Accepting this and giving up the search for a magic cure that would suddenly sort everything out was very important for me. It helped me realise that we just had to do whatever we needed to do that would keep us sane, and the rest would come with time.

Our son finally started to sleep through more often than not aged 2, and it’s now unusual for him to wake in the night – he’ll be 3 in July. Co-sleeping wouldn’t work for everyone I’m sure, just like controlled crying doesn’t work for everyone – but you just need to work out whatever you can do to keep yourselves sane. Good luck!

black out blinds are great and we always used them but can cause problems if you try and get them to sleep elsewhere – we ended up covering one of the sleeping pods in our tent with blackout blind material as the kids didn’t wake up when it got light at 4am that way…

Baa Baa blinds are your friend for travelling – they have sucky cups on them to stick to windows – truly awesome

Edit – but won’t make any diff for a pod in a tent !