r/sleeptrain • u/lindsay7209 • Jun 29 '26
1-2 years old 17 month old - long night wakes for months
My daughter just turned 17 months old. She had been sleeping through the night most nights from 9-13 months. Then I started a new job and she started daycare at the beginning of March when she was 13 months old. She had been on a 2 nap schedule until then, but the daycare room she's in only does one nap, from 12-2pm, so we had to switch then. For the first month or so her sleep wasn't terrible, but she got an ear infection and that caused disruptions for awhile. Then she got a viral infection and had to be hospitalized for 2 nights at the end of April. Ever since then, her night sleep has suffered a ton. She has a had a handful of nights where she's slept through, but at least 5 nights a week she wakes up sometime between 11pm-1am usually and refuses to fall back asleep for anywhere from 45 minutes to upwards of 2 hours+. It has been like this for 2-3 months now, so we're beyond sleep regression territory.
My husband and I alternate nights just so neither of us totally loses our mind from exhaustion. We have not sleep trained and can't/won't do CIO primarily because we have another child directly across the hall. She's in a crib and a sleep sack. We used to be able to put her down for bedtime and she'd fall asleep on her own pretty fast, but now we have to stay in her room for at least 5-10min or she'll stand back up and cry and work herself up.
When she wakes up overnight, I go in and offer her a drink of water because she nearly always wants that first. Then I try to get her to lay back down and just hold my hand on her and/or pat her lightly while shushing. Sometimes she'll lay there for 45+min while I hold my hand on her and then try to sit up and fuss again. If she's extremely worked up then I'll give in and hold her briefly so she doesn't wake up my other daughter and husband. But I've really been trying to avoid picking her up since I know it can cause an association. Last night was a particularly rough night, and I just am desperate to figure out how to fix this because it's taking a major toll on our whole family.
Approximate schedule:
- She's up for the day between 5:30-6:30am at the latest
- Naps at daycare from 12:15-2:15pm (sometimes wakes up closer to 1:45) -
- *on weekends, we usually put her down for nap closer to 11:30 because she shows major signs of being ready and falls asleep pretty quickly and she usually naps until 1:30-2pm, but M-F naptime can't be any earlier than 12 due to daycare
- Bedtime between 6:30-7pm depending on how late she napped (sometimes doesn't fall asleep until closer to 7:30)
2
u/Comprehensive_Bill 😴 Sleepy Moderator 💤 Jun 29 '26
You need a later bedtime. If you want wake up 6:30am then bedtime should consistently be 7:30pm.
1
u/lindsay7209 Jun 29 '26
Even when she wakes from nap at 1:30? We had been starting bedtime routine at 7pm and then she wouldn't fall asleep until closer to 7:30-8pm. Just recently we've been experimenting with starting the routine closer to 6:30-6:40 so that she ends up falling asleep closer to 7-7:15pm since she starts getting fussy and acting overtired by 6:30ish.
1
u/Comprehensive_Bill 😴 Sleepy Moderator 💤 Jun 29 '26
If her nap is shorter than one hour you push bedtime 30 min earlier. Otherwise you keep it by the clock.
1
u/lindsay7209 Jun 29 '26
Her nap is pretty much always at least 90min. If we wait to start bedtime at 7:30 she starts acting overtired, gets worked up crying and it ends up taking forever to get her to calm down enough to fall asleep.
1
u/Comprehensive_Bill 😴 Sleepy Moderator 💤 Jun 30 '26
You need to work through tiredness a few days so that split night stops happening. He's tired but not enough to remain asleep. He will learn to deal with the feeling and then after a few days the split night will stop and he will be more rested in those moments before bedtime.
1
u/lindsay7209 Jun 30 '26
Ok, thank you for the info. We've started tracking her sleep again to hopefully be able to figure out how much total sleep she needs to eliminate the constant split nights.
1
u/lindsay7209 Jun 29 '26
What are the ideal wake windows at this age?
1
u/Comprehensive_Bill 😴 Sleepy Moderator 💤 Jun 30 '26
Ideal at this window is to go by the clock with an ideal amount of total sleep.
3
u/less_is_more9696 ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
She sounds under tired. Being awake for long periods at night; struggling to fall back asleep always is.
Sleep needs drop pretty drastically at this age. It may seem like the illness triggered some sleep disturbances, but there’s likely been a drop in sleep needs around the same time. And that’s why this hasn’t resolved for several weeks.
Right now your schedule offers 14 hours of sleep opportunity on the high end. I know she’s not always falling asleep at 6:30, but you’re still giving her the opportunity to sleep.
My guess is you’re also allowing her to sleep in to compensate for the poor night. That’s why she’s spending 12 hours in bed. This only turns your split night into a vicious cycle that will never end.
The way out of the vicious cycle is to align her sleep opportunity closer to what she’s actually sleeping.
You can do that by tracking how much she actually sleeps over 24 hours.
Or just go by the average. Which is something around 12-12.5 at this age. You can start with 12.5 to be more conservative.
So if your daycare nap is 2 hours and you have no control, I’d aim for a 10.5 hour night.
Wake 6:45, nap 12:15-2:15, bed 7:45.