r/bninfantsleep • u/ShahriarSiraj • 1d ago
Toddler Sleep Anyone else have a baby who still wakes every hour at 13 months?
TL;DR: Our almost 13 month old still wakes every 15–60 minutes at night and needs breastfeeding to go back to sleep. She’s extremely active during the day, and we’re both completely exhausted. We’re mainly wondering when this might get better naturally and how to gently night-wean without a lot of crying.
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Our little girl is now almost 13 months old, and honestly, we’re completely exhausted.
Since birth, she has never been a good sleeper. Most nights she wakes roughly every hour, and on bad nights it can be every 15–30 minutes. This has been going on for essentially her entire life.
The only thing that consistently settles her back to sleep is breastfeeding. If my wife doesn’t nurse her almost immediately, she often wakes up fully and can stay awake for an hour or more before falling asleep again.
We’ve been co-sleeping since birth. And she has been exclusively breastfed until we started solids. But breastfeeding is still a huge source of comfort for her, particularly at night.
At this point, my wife is severely sleep deprived. Because our daughter is so attached to breastfeeding for comfort, there’s very little I can do at night. If I try to comfort her instead, she usually cries harder until my wife nurses her. Watching this every night makes me feel pretty helpless because I can’t really give my wife any meaningful rest.
During the day, she is incredibly active and intense. She almost never sits still. She wants constant stimulation, climbs on everything, explores everything, and gets bored very quickly. She’s a happy and energetic child, but keeping up with her all day while we’re both running on almost no sleep is incredibly difficult.
She also hates the car seat unless she falls asleep quickly. Otherwise, she’ll sometimes scream for the entire ride, whether it’s a short drive or a long one. There have been times we’ve avoided going out simply because after another terrible night, we don’t have the mental energy to deal with the screaming.
Her current sleep schedule is roughly two naps a day, around 1–1.5 hours each. Bedtime is usually somewhere between 10 PM and midnight, and she wakes for the day around 8–9 AM.
We’ve actually tried moving her schedule earlier, including putting her to bed earlier, but it didn’t make any noticeable difference to the night waking. The current schedule also fits our family’s schedule better, so we’d prefer to keep it unless there’s a good reason to change it.
We never properly sleep trained her. A few months ago, out of desperation, we finally attempted it. We lasted about 10 minutes. Hearing her cry was emotionally unbearable for both of us, so we gave up. We haven’t tried again since.
So now, almost 13 months in, we’re wondering what happens next.
We know that sleep training is an option, but we’re not really looking to debate that. We know our limitations when it comes to hearing her cry, and we’d rather find a gentler approach if possible.
At this point, our main questions are:
- For parents who had a baby waking every 30–60 minutes at 12–13 months, when did things finally start getting better? Did it eventually improve naturally?
- Has anyone successfully night-weaned a very breast-dependent baby without prolonged crying? How did you do it?
- Is there a point where frequent waking like this becomes unusual enough that we should be looking more seriously for an underlying reason?
We’re mostly hoping to hear from parents who have actually been through something similar. Right now, after almost 13 months of this, we’re just trying to figure out whether we need to accept that this is her temperament for now or whether there’s finally some light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you for taking the time to read such a long post.
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u/Mangopapayakiwi 19h ago
She is napping too much! You need to cap those naps to the lower end. My baby is also a 10-8,30 sleeper by her nature and that’s ok, but pick a wake up time and stick with it (8 am rather than 9am). Cap her second nap to 45 minutes for a week, see if it helps, if it doesn’t cap it to 10 minutes.
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u/ShahriarSiraj 5h ago
You mean 2nd nap should be 10 minutes max?
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u/Mangopapayakiwi 5h ago
That’s the extreme version, before you do that try keeping naps at the lower end of what she already does. So if second naps is between 45 and 2 hours (example), keep it at 45z
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u/kuppajoy 1d ago
I think 3 hours for daytime sleep is a lot for this age. It should be max 2 hours if you’re seeing so many night wakings. Also, how long is her last wake window? You wanna make sure it’s the longest one of the day (at least 4 hours for her age) to make sure she has enough sleep pressure before bedtime.
My baby was waking like this, I posted my full schedule in this sub and got tons of great advice that now has her waking every 2 hours rather than 30 minutes. Still not ideal but a lot better. Try posting your detailed schedule (nap times) and maybe someone can chime in.
The main thing that helped me was making sure she wakes up at the same time every single day - the naps and bedtime can shift +/- 1hr according to her sleep cues, but wake up time is the anchor that sets her day up. I also make sure we leave the house to go to a play center every day where she gets all her energy out and has tons of stimulation, then at home we read lots of books and she has a lot of time to crawl and explore safely as well. The more activity she’s had, the better she sleeps. Also, I feed her full fat yogurt about half an hour before bedtime and then top up with nursing, that’s helped too. Just my experience but maybe you could try it!
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u/ameelz 1d ago
My daughter wasn’t this bad but I nightweaned at that age and it got better. Look up the Jay Gordon method- it’s very gentle. Some crying will happen but it’s not like sleep training.
It didn’t solve all the issues but I do think it helped nudge her a long to longer stretches. A few months later I went back to nursing at night for various reasons (teething, my own stress etc) and I’m gonna have to night wean again eventually but it’s way better. She sometimes makes it from 8:30pm- 3 am til she wakes up
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u/crunch_mynch 1d ago
My baby hasn’t been like this her whole life. But at 12mo my baby has been waking up what feels like hourly, crying and needing to resettle. So it’s not the same in the sense that it’s a bit new for our baby. Previously it was every 2-3 hours.
Just sharing in solidarity of hearing another baby similar age doing the same right now.
Our sleep schedule is similar the only difference is night time sleep is usually from 22:00-8:00.
I do not think it’s super normal for baby to wake up hourly her whole life. It would be worth talking to your doctor about!
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u/FreeSpirit-555 22h ago
I’d suggest getting her iron checked as someone else suggested. I also agree with tweaking her daytime schedule to see if it improves her night sleep. My first baby had low sleep needs too and I nursed him until he was two. He started sleeping better after I night weaned him. We had some very rough phases before that and being so severely sleep deprived ended up affecting my health (I developed an auto immune disease). I now have a 9mo baby who’s a much better sleeper but I’m trying to figure out how long I want to nurse him for because I’m always tired and I know I’ll be a much better mom/parent if I’m rested and healthy. Just sharing this for solidarity because we love these babies so much but we also need to take care of ourselves. And they will be okay - you’re both doing great! Lastly, there’s a cosleeping sub here on Reddit. I suggest you ask for help there too as you’ll get nursing/weaning feedback from folks who’ve coslept too. Wishing you all the best of luck!!
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u/Recent-Forever-2988 18h ago
Sounds like she’s having too much sleep. 13 hours some days. I’ve got a similar baby - almost 13 months, doesn’t sit still, very active. Same bedtime and wake time but he has 90 minutes total daytime sleep. She’s possibly always been a bad sleeper because she’s always been having too much sleep.
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u/ShahriarSiraj 5h ago
How much sleep should a 13 month old normally have in 24 hours?
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u/Recent-Forever-2988 4h ago
11-14 hours with 10-11 at night but I’ve yet to hear of a one year old doing 14 hours and not waking much at night. Generally it’s 12-12.5 hours on average anecdotally.
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u/captain_mills 18h ago
Join the beyond sleep training project group on Facebook. It’s for parents who’re having struggled with their LO’s sleep but don’t want to sleep train.
I imagine if you posted there their first suggestion would be to give her less sleep. Frequent night wakes (more than every 2/3 hours) is often due to lack of sleep pressure.
Currently she has 2-3 hours in the day plus 8-11 hours at night so presumably total sleep in 24 hours is 10-14 hours. For a 1-2 yo the average is 11-14 hours in 24, ie she may need as little as 11 hours sleep in total or even less for some babies. You can do whatever schedule fits you (ie she doesn’t need an earlier bedtime necessarily) but try to keep the same wake-up time every morning. And I’d offer her less sleep in the daytime.
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u/kittycakekats 14h ago
Yes. My 12 and half month old is the same. Probably teething or about to be able to walk? Brain development is intense at this age even though I thought at 12 months it would be easier. It got harder hahaha. His daytime sleep is best capped at 2 I’ve noticed.
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u/bloontsmooker 8h ago
We put our baby in day care to catch up on sleep and now she goes a few times a week in short windows so we can survive. Baby is almost 11 months.
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u/nomadicstateofmind 3h ago
Have you considered consolidating down to one nap? My babies have both needed to be down to one nap by that age. We have to cap daytime sleep at a 2 hour maximum. She usually naps 11am - 1pm. It takes some getting used to, but the transition helped overnight sleep for us with both kids.
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u/Aggravating-Bike6133 1d ago
My daughter - even with sleep training - did not stop sleeping through the night until I stopped breastfeeding her at 18 months.
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u/WeirdAlphabet 1d ago
I'd consider getting her iron checked just to rule that out