Night Waking in a 12 Month Old

Updated on July 22, 2013
J.K. asks from Los Angeles, CA
5 answers

Hi Moms and Dads,

My daughter who was always an excellent sleeper has been having a difficult time settling down at night. She has always slept in her crib, and never needed to be sleep trained. However, beginning around 10 months, she began to wake up once or twice during the night. Now, at 12 months, she wakes up multiple times throughout the night. Sometimes she is able to calm herself back to sleep, but generally, she needs my husband or me to intervene. And most of the time, regular intervention (holding, rocking, caressing) doesn't help and we need to either sleep in her room with her in the crib (we have a full size bed and her crib in her room) or sleep with her in the full size bed. At times, she stirs for up to two hours before she falls asleep even when one of us is in bed with her. Also, she starts to cry the moment we show signs of putting her in her crib.

The weird thing is, she still naps really well. In fact, while she doesn't take as many naps as she used to, each nap has gotten longer. She takes 1-2 naps now and each nap lasts up to 3 hours. Her bed time is 7:30 p.m. and we don't let her take naps close to her bedtime.

I've been reading that when kids go through a new milestone, they have sleep disturbances. Currently, she's beginning to exhibit separation anxiety and is learning to walk. I don't really want to do cry out method while she's going through separation anxiety. Any practical advice? TIA.

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D.K.

answers from Pittsburgh on

Since she is taking two naps during the day (my son did too), I would move her bedtime to much later. My son went to bed when we did when he was an infant. We basically put him in his crib when we went to bed and he went to sleep. We did not do cry it out or any sort of sleep training either. He absolutely had periods where he woke occasionally at night. We generally just went in and checked on him and back to bed for all. We did not try to control when he slept - if he fell asleep before bedtime, it was just not in the crib.

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W.W.

answers from Los Angeles on

Hello mom,
My daughter went thru a number of stages like this, she is now almost 5...at about 14months she went thru what you are describing for 1st time after being an excellent sleeper since birth. After we rule out other reasons like fighting off a cold, night terrors, etc we had to, unfortunately, apply tough love and let her cry it out a few times... Try to keep her in her own crib, she will get spoiled by being with you guys and cutting down on length of her naps helped too. Then only go back jnto her room max of 3 times each episode & make intervals longer & longer with each ' soothing ' visit.. And crying is gonna happen though its almost harder on us then them! My daughter got over them within days using this technique....good luck and be strong as she is testing you!
W.

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P.K.

answers from New York on

So she is taki g two three hour naps! She is sleeping too much during day.
Shorten those naps. See if that makes a difference.

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M.!.

answers from Phoenix on

The book "What to Expect the Toddler Years" has chapters on night waking at 12, 24 & 36 months. It's normal and is often related to teething. IF she is teething you can give her Ibuprophen for children (Advil & Mortin are the same) as directed before bed.
This will pass, but know it will happen again and again through the early years.

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G.B.

answers from Oklahoma City on

A normal schedule for a 12 month old could be one where they only take one nap in the afternoon. But I only have 13+ years in child care.

At 10-101/2 months of age the baby room workers start working on getting the babies down to one nap. When they move to the toddler room at 12 months/1 year and the state does not allow that classroom to have various sleeping kids in the classroom when they are supposed to be doing classwork. They have a schedule and they keep to it. If they aren't on schedule and the state comes in to inspect the teachers can get into trouble and the center can get an infraction.

So we worked really hard to get the kids on that schedule. If your child is sleeping so much during the day and going to bed a couple of hours before other kids her age then you're going to have a child that simply does not need to sleep during the night.

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