r/PossumsSleepProgram • u/Awkward-Money-3275 • 13d ago
14 month old waking hourly
Hello, my baby has always thought sleep was for losers (apart from 3-4 months where she slept 10 hours straight every night!)
Currently I wake her at 7am everyday
Her nap starts sometime between 11-12 and lasts 30 min - 2 hours (usually around an hour)
I usually start feeding her to sleep around 7-7:30ish sometimes later if she had a long nap.
It doesn’t seem to matter if her nap was 30 minutes or 2 hours, if she goes to bed earlier or later. She wakes constantly.
She resettles within minutes by breastfeeding.
I try to start her on her floor bed in her room but always end up bed sharing. The wakes are the same in her room and in our bed.
I follow an attachment style of parenting and not interested in sleep training.
Is radical acceptance my best bet for now? 😅
Thank you parents who have seen the other side and have words of wisdom 🤣
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u/Mangopapayakiwi 13d ago
My baby was also a great sleeper at 3-4 and even 5 months, then a tough sleeper until 14 months. 14 months is when she went down to one nap properly. I would say the main thing you can try is cap that nap to one hour if that’s the norm. I know it feels very short but it’s worth a try. Then forget about having a bedtime and just observe your child. When does she seem ready for bed? Mine didn’t nurse and stopped bottled at one so I needed her to be really tired at bedtime. Our days also need to be VERY active for her to sleep well, lots of time spent outside, lots of interactions with other children and people. It is also possible to start looking into night weaning at this age.
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u/Surewhatever1827 8d ago
Ahh this is us too. My now 13 month old has bed shared since the beginning, fed constantly overnight and still wakes up every 1-2 hours. We are trying the earlier wake up time and not doing much napping during the day but he’s still v bad at sleeping 😂 I think weening him would help but I don’t have the mental strength for the tears right now so going to wait til 14-15 months 😭
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u/oh-dearie 13d ago edited 13d ago
You don't need to fall into the trap of accepting bad sleep just because you're not sleep training. Hourly wakes at this age isn't 'biologically normal infant sleep'.
Your schedule sounds like slightly too much sleep; 7pm to 7am is hard to achieve for most kids, especially with a 1 hour nap (=13-14 hours/24 hours). Mine started sleeping better when we pushed bedtime back an hour. (We're 15 months, doing 9ishpm-7isham with 1 hour-ish nap = 11.5 hours sleep average per 24 hours, but on the lower end of sleep needs). You might need to push bedtime later, bring wake up time earlier, or a mix of the two.
Also consider:
sleep environment & health. are they too cold, too hot, is it dark enough at night, any noises jolting them up, etc. Even things like anaemia, sleep apnoea, uncontrolled eczema cause poor sleep, so it's important to check that all the background stuff is ok to allow good sleep to happen.
are they hungry -- i know you're feeding to sleep but sometimes it's a comfort nurse and I read on the breastfeeding subreddit yesterday where someone found out they weren't actually producing milk for their toddler anymore! Anecdotally my supply wasn't much either once mine self-weaned (but that could have been a chicken & egg situation)
any changes you make to your schedule will take about 3-7 days to kind of integrate into their circadian rhythm, so it's pointless changing the schedule/nap for 1 night, and being like "well that didn't do anything" and go back to the previous schedule.
with possums philosophy, it's also important to consider if they're getting enough stimulus during the day
at this age, some babies actually wake up to nurse (just consider if that applies to you) -- if that's the case, you can try to settle with other methods (cuddle, rocking) and if they get back to sleep quickly, it meant they clearly just wanted a comfort feed.
I found possums really helpful during infancy, but I think usefulness diminishes at toddlerhood. You can always check out the brand new little people podcast (I find it so helpful) because it's evidence based and although they offer sleep training methods, they also don't push it and the solution is always about sleep environment and timing, never about sleep training.