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Hi, 

My 14 month old son wakes up almost 3-4 times at night. He has two naps during the day for about 3 hours and 2 hours respectively. He goes to sleep only after nursing or walking him both during nap times and at night. He sleeps at about 11.30 p.m or 12.00 p.m in the night after a nap from 6.30 p.m to 8.30 p.m in the evening. 

He wakes up frequently at nights almost 3-4 times and demands sucking on the breast continuously for almost about an hour to go back to sleep. Sometimes he becomes wide awake and plays and has to be nursed or walked back to sleep.

Am seriously sleep deprived and this has now started affecting my health. 

Please help!!

Thanks, 

Prabha.

Kimberly said:

Hi Prabha,

I can certainly understand how you would be exhausted. But with a little planning and a lot of consistency you can help him learn how to sleep better.

The first step is going to be teaching him to fall asleep on his own and that will mean no longer nursing or walking him to sleep. Nurse or walk him just until drowsy and then put him down to finish falling asleep on his own. Once he learns how to fall asleep on his own, then you will find things will start to improve from there.

He's probably going to protest when you do this. Depending on how you feel about crying, you can either just try to pat and shush him to see if he'll start to settle or if he gets really worked up, you can pick him up and help him to get drowsy again but then put him down. This may take several days or a couple of weeks for him to catch on, but the key here is to be consistent. Remember, you are teaching him a new skill. His protests or crying are not because he thinks you are being mean but because he's upset that things have change. But these changes are in his best interest to learn healthy sleep habits.

For a 14 month old, he doesn't really need to be feeding at night. So you may also want to start working on night weaning. Decide to limit his feedings to once or twice a night to start with and then also slowly feed him a lesser amount during these feedings. This will help his body become accustomed to not feeding all night long. When you find he starts to slow with his sucking, then gently unlatch him and let him fall asleep on his own. Again, he may protest this and become more awake again, but this is where you will need to be consistent and firm with him that he needs to go to sleep without using you as his pacifier.

He's napping 5 hours during the day mostly because he's not getting enough sleep at night. You'll need to work on cutting out the evening nap, because that's really when he should be going to bed for the night. Here is the recommend toddler schedule:

http://www.babysleepsite.com/s…..-schedule/

I would also recommend that you read through this series of posts about sleep training for ideas and tips on how to create your own sleep training plan.

http://www.babysleepsite.com/s…..es-part-1/

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on how it's going.

 Thank you Kimberly, will start trying these tips starting today and will keep you posted.. Thank you so much..

Hi Kimberly, 

Thanks a ton for the help. I tried the schedule and tip for about a week, it seemed to work for sometime. However suddenly, it went worse i.e my son would not sleep for more than an hour on some days at night. I could not figure out the reason for his discomfort. I then let him have his way. He just completed 15 months yesterday. From about a week,he has started to nap only once in a day which means am again in for another change . I still need to figure out the right schedule through the day for him. However am following the nap and sleep routines as suggested by you. I will keep you posted on my progress.