Is your toddler having trouble sleeping because of gut pain?

It's normal for toddlers to have highly variable stool consistency, including green stools and mucous in the stool. Solid food creates a wide range of stool consistencies and texture. But if your toddler has blood in her stool, or you're worried about her health, it's important to have her checked over by her GP.

Does your toddler wake in the night with a loud cry or scream, as if in pain? Or does she wake up excessively during the night, or wake up and take a long time to go back to sleep? Does she refuse to go down for a nap during the day, even though you can see she is tired?

You might be wondering if this behaviour in your toddler is caused by gut pain or discomfort, or a gut dysbiosis.

However, it’s unlikely that a toddler showing these signs is experiencing gut pain. A small child's gut microbiome is highly variable, both from child to child and within the one child over time, and despite what you hear, the spectrum of microbiome composition in itself doesn't cause pain or discomfort (as long as your little one doesn't have a true gastroenteritis).

These behaviours are certainly a sign that something is going on, though, and we definitely want you to get enough sleep! His sleep pattern is very fragmented, and as a result, his sleep isn't properly aligned with your sleep needs. It can be reassuring to know that your toddler will be taking the amount of sleep that he needs overall, regardless, because we can trust his sleep regulators, his body clock and sleep pressure, to do their job.

But your toddler will have trouble settling into deep or quiet sleep when the sleep pressure is no longer very high. She may still slip in and out of light sleep, but there is not enough sleep pressure for her to go back into a block of deep sleep. Typically, each time a toddler surfaces into waking, she either starts to dial up, or may come looking for you in the night.

We need to work together on getting your toddler's body clock in sync with your own just as quickly as possible. This might mean changing some things about the way you do both daytime and night-time sleep with your little one.