NOT SLEEPING 13 MONTHS IN

Hi Deja, Wow, I don't know how you have survived this far! My LG was a relatively easy baby except that she almost never slept for longer than 20 minutes during the day. She dropped her day nap at about 18 months! OUch! She is defnitely very awake during the day, but sleeps well during the night. What I am trying to say that I think there is always some genetic issue at hand when it comes to sleeping patterns (2 doctors told me this when I complained about her not sleeping well during the day). At some point you can do only so much, and NOTHING works. Sounds like you have almost tried everything!

I have to think in the same lines as Huggles suggested. It could be something in his diet or maybe some allergy?

My therapist told me that her one son was extremely high maintance and struggled to sleep and settle and cried very often. She said that after a year a doctor discovered that there was a nerve pinched in his back causing obviously serious discomfort. She said that everyone just thought she was a terrible mother and could not calm her own baby. I think she said that it was caused during the child birth process and was resolved by chiropractioner (I think?). After that her son turned into a friendly bubbly child! What I am trying to say is that there could definitely be some kind of medical problem that is hard to diagnose. Have you ever taken him to a good pead and discussed the difficulties?

Thinking of you and good luck with cutting out all the dairy! xx

aw he's gorgeous! Love the watering the garden one!

Good luck with the no dairy diet. Hope you see some improvement soon!
And if it does work then after a few weeks you could try introducing lactose free milk or a little bit of cheese again which is usually low lactose. It could be a lactose intolerance more than a cow's milk protein intolerance, but best to start buy cutting it all out completely to give his system a fresh start.

Logan also absolutely loves berries!

Logan is doing great thanks. He's on the verge of walking. He can walk about 4-5 steps to me but then loses his balance so I have to catch him. So I reckon he should be walking properly by xmas.
He also climbs on absoultely EVERYTHING. We have an L-shaped couch and a rocking chair next to the one end. He gets up on the couch on the far side (I have to help him up, it's a bit high), then charges across to the other end, over the arms and onto the rocking chair. I was trying to teach him to then climb off feet first, but one day he lost his balance and 'fell'. I always sit on the floor by the rocking chair when he's there just in case, so i caught him, but he did a kind of flip and decided this was the funniest thing. Ever since then he's now decided it's great fun to dive off the couch head first *dohh*

He says mama and dada/daddy a lot. My mom swears she understands him saying lots of other words too but i'm really not convinced. He had really bad gastro about a month ago and landed in hospital with dehydration. Whilst there he learnt one new word - poo!
Thankfully he seems to have forgotten that one again for the time being.

Logan refuses milk when he's awake. He absoultely will not drink it out of his straw cup or his sippy cup. He loves water so only wants that in those. If i put milk in, or even diluted juice he takes one sip and throws teh cup away. So the only time i can actually get milk into him is when he goes to sleep (has been like that for months). So if he doesn't drink whilst falling asleep, he misses out on that bottle of milk. Also means i can't get him off bottles because a straw cup and bed time don't exactly work well together LoL
I don't really mind though, because as he drops naps he'll also drop bottles and I don't mind him still needing a bottle at bed time for a good couple of months still. i'll worry about getting him off them completely after he's 2. For now he does really well with the straw cup when awake and won't drink a bottle when awake anyway. Funny child that refuses dummies point blank and won't drink bottles while awake, but I guess they all have their quirks. At least getting rid of dummies and awake bottles is one less thing I need to worry about!

He is absoultely the love of my life too. I get so excited at the end of my work day when I can rush out that door and go and fetch him. His creche is literally 5 min from my work so I zoom there as quickly as possible. I love love love seeing his little face light up when I walk in that room. I hate being away from him so spend every moment I can with him. He just brings such joy to our lives and is such a lovable and happy child.

Logan has been on formula since 8 days old so in that regard we do differ. He is also 13 months old though and right up until his first birthday he was waking every 4 hours at night crying. It was not easy to get him back to sleep. He almost seemed to be in pain or discomfort or something. He would virtually try to crawl over my shoulder (i used to pick him up when he woke - he sleeps in his own cot in his own room since 5 months old). It took me ages to resettle him. He would only resettle with milk, but some nights it took 2 hours to get him back to sleep (walking up and down the passage, rocking, singing, etc etc), only to have him wake 4 hours later again (ok, i know 4 hours is better than 2 but still, a 1 year old should not be waking that frequently at night, and definitely shouldn't be needing milk feeds like that).

Anyway, the day before and the day of his birthday he had such a bad cold that his nose was so completely and utterly blocked that he couldnt' drink his bottle at all.
He had no milk the day of his party and went to bed with no milk (this was a mission as he uses his bottle to fall asleep - i also rock him when he allows, but some nights he doesn't want to be rocked). Miraculously he slept through the night!
I started to wonder if maybe his milk was giving him cramps. The thought had occurred to me before becuase the way he tried to climb over my shoulder in the night gave me the impression he had cramps. So the next day he also barely drank anything due to his blocked nose. I managed to finally get some milk into him at 4pm and sure enough, 8pm exactly, barely half an hour after going to bed but exactly 4 hours after the formula he woke up crying and showing signs of cramps.
I then gave him rice milk in his bottle and once again he sttn!

So I then decided it was actually the milk that was cuasing all the problems. Through trial and error over the next 2 weeks I established that it was the lactose in the milk giving him cramps (he struggled with cramps as a newborn and was on colief drops for the first few months which helped a lot), so I then put him on Easygest (lactose free cow's milk made by parmalat) during the day and Similac Total Comfort (easy to digest formula specifically for babies that get cramps etc from lactose in milk) at night. He has been sooooo much better since i made that change.
Some nights he actually sttn, other nights he still wakes once or twice but i literally roll him onto his back if he's not already there, stick the bottle in (he refuses a dummy so his bottle kind of works as his dummy), he drinks 60ml, rolls over and goes back to sleep.
I have a suspicion that it's as he transitions from deep sleep to medium sleep to light sleep that he wakes and needs that little bit of help getting back to sleep, but i obviously can't confirm that. But he's definitely not in pain or discomfort anymore and the wake ups take 10 min max (as long as it takes him to drink 60ml).

So what i'm trying to say (in a VERY long-winded way), is maybe there is something in your diet that is affecting your son. Maybe the lactose in the milk you drink is giving him cramps at night. Or do you drink coffee during the day or near bed time? Maybe that gives him cramps and/or keeps him awake?
It's obviously much easier to change formulas than it is to adjust one's own diet, but maybe you need to try cutting out coffee for a week, and if that makes no difference then try cutting out milk (all dairy products) for a week and see if that helps. If it does help then you could try changing the milk you drink - rather drink easygest and then after a week or two if it's made a definite improvement then for 2 days eat a tiny bit of cheese and see if it makes any difference to his sleep.
After a few months of him being totally dairy free I have now managed to reintroduce both cheese and yoghurt and he is fine with them (he was dairy free for a few months for other health reasons, but still stayed on his normal formula (NAN) until i realised that was messing with his sleep).

On the other hand I know another lady who's son is 14 months and exclusively breastfed and he is currently waking every 30-45 min every night to feed. I have also suggested to her that it might be something in her diet causing this, but then again it could also just be who he is as a child.

So my suggestion would be to try cutting out milk, try cutting out coffee, you could even try cutting out wheat. See if any of that makes a difference (cut out different things at different times so you can see any impact it might have). If nothing seems to help then it might just be something you need to wait out.

Sterkte!