Split night!!

[Emily920]

Hi All!

Looking for some advice from people that have preferably been through it them selves. My daughter is 9 months old and has recently been waking up in the night wide awake and wanting to play at 1:30am. This can go on for 2 hours before she starts to get tired again. We Co sleep with her at the moment. She has never been a good sleeper and about a month ago she would not settle in her cot no matter what we did. So we decided rather than stress her and ourselves out, we would just co sleep. Her routine used to be:
6pm - bath
6:30pm - bottle and bed
She would get up after her bottle and try climbing the bed frame or crawl around the whole bed beating in mind she was tired and rubbing her eyes through out the whole thing. I would let her do it until she fell asleep on her own which could take 45mins to an hour! She would then sleep and wake up every 2 hours until 12pm and then she would wake up at 1:30-2:00am for 2 hours wide awake. Once she falls back to sleep, she sleeps until 6:00am!
7:00am bottle
8:00am breakfast (cerelac or crossiant)
9:15-9:30am Nap (she’s always been a cat napper and will sleep 45 minutes!)
11:00am Bottle
12-12:30pm lunch( pea snacks, yoghurt jam sandwich)
1-1:30- Nap (again 45 minutes, if not shorter!)
3:00pm-Bottle
4:00pm -Another Catnap
5:30-6:00pm Dinner - Eats what we eat
We have started putting her bedtime back to 7:30 instead of 6:30 because she looks like she needs the 4pm nap. However, she does wake up in a really bad mood from the last nap. She is fine once she has properly woken up and is fun to be around until bedtime at 7:30pm! This all started on a bedtime at 6:30pm which is why we changed it so see if it would help, but it’s been a week now and no different!!

Please can someone help! I need her to consolidate her naps and be sleeping through, I don’t mind the wake up for the dummy but not 2 hours!! Thank you 😊

Look up 9 month sleep regression. It is a kicker. With my first I didn't know about it, so I spent hours pacing the floors with her and rocking her to sleep, doing the bomb disposal creep out the door. She is now 3.5 and as a result if she wakes in the night, she will only go back to sleep if I am with her.

Lesson learned with number 2. Regression hit right on cue. But I stuck it out with massively gritted teeth. Went back to how I had originally settled her in her cot, which was shhhhhhh shhh pat pat. Only picked her up if she was genuinely distressed and then only for a few minutes. It took about a week of doing this for hours, but eventually she started self settling again. And now, she is sleeping through at 14 months (her sister was over a year later to do this).

My son used to do this, not every night but maybe twice a week, nothing we tried managed to stop it but he did eventually grow out of it. The whole phase probably lasted around 4 months. Sorry not helpful but it may just be a phase. In hindsight I wonder if it was teeth or a growth spurt.

I have heard about 9 month sleep regression! The problem is, I don’t have the energy to spend hours in the night trying to settle her so I just ignore her and let her do what she wants until she gets tired again, then she just falls asleep! I’m back at work and have been for a couple of months and can’t physically focus if I’m exhausted! She does it every night, without fail! I haven’t played with her so it’s definitely not that she thinks it’s playtime, I’m hoping this is just a phase! It’s almost like she’s had enough sleep, and she has to wait to get tired again before she can fall back to sleep 🙈 It’s so frustrating because there isn’t a lot we can do, if we don’t know why she is waking up. Thank you for the advice though, it makes it seem a little bit normal knowing I’m not the only person that has been through it x

I hear you, mine wanted to have a 2hr party in the night when she started taking her first few steps. I had no option but to go in and keep her quiet, otherwise she would wake her sister and then all hell would break lose. It gets better, honest