To expect my 9 month old to sleep!?!

[xxx28xxx]

Just that really, my pfb 9 month old has always been a crap sleeper but finally started sleeping through at 5 months.

It was bliss, the bags faded and I finally started to function normally again. Fast forward 3 months and separation anxiety seems to have kicked and now pfb won't setttle in cot, naps twice a day for 30mins and spends most of the night in our bed- flailing limbs around and me Lying there panicking the duvet or pillow might go over his head

I'm just so so so tired all the time which makes me a snappy and miserable cow. Due back to work in 6 weeks and f knows how I will cope.

Is this normal, do I just ride it out? All my other friends' babies sleep which makes me feel an even crapper mum ??

Yup normal and awful. It will get better. When, no one can say unfortunately. Set up safe cosleeping - pillow far from his head, duvet low down, sleep curled around him, arm above his head. Do you have a partner?

Ha. My 17 month old still doesn't sleep through. Let me know if you find the magic solution!

Oh and don't believe a word about other babies sleeping! Lies, all lies!

Yes.

It is normal - not for everyone but for a big enough minority. I've had 2 crap sleepers and one good one (the middle one).

Just when I thought we were almost through it with the nearly 4 year old my 9 year old pfb has stopped sleeping, and shrieks in the night, waking the light sleeping smallest... Off to aquire an intravenous caffeine source and see if there's any patronising advice that doesn't work left to read on the subject of children's sleep...

Yes I have a dh, who is just as moody as me lol. Doesn't help when my own mother tells me that all 4 of us slept through from 6 weeks. Yes that's right, all 4 children

She probably gave you bottles topped up with whisky xxx28xxx or was one of those who thought it was worth the risk of putting you in your own room at 7am, closing the door, turning the TV up and not checking on you til 7am...

No advice but hugs. We are experiencing similar. She started sleeping through at about 4 months. At about 6 months she started to be unsettled at night. At nearly 8 months she is wanting two night feeds and wants to sleep on us. It is like having a newborn again. We are both back at work and it is bloody hard.

Putting you in your room at 7pm

The thing is (and I was the same so this isn't a criticism!) you actually DON'T expect him to sleep. Because if you did, he would. You have him in your bed in the expectation of being woken. But he has slept through before so there is nothing stopping him doing it again except bad sleep habits.

My DS was waking every 45 mins at 9 months, I was working full-time (I'm the main wage earner) and making myself physically and mentally ill. Eventually plucked up the courage to do sleep training. It took ONE whole night ...

OP you could be me, same stories from my mum about all four of us!!
My ds is also 9 months, he sleeps but is up for the day at 3am, my dd slept through from 12 weeks, honestly she did, 7-7, so this is a shock and proves that it doesn't matter how you parent it has nothing to do with how they sleep.
No advice, just sympathetic hugs

Two terrible sleepers and a good one here too, also the middle child, funny that? There is no magic solution; I have found sleep training difficult and it didn't make much difference. You can't force them to sleep and you can't make them stay asleep. Coffee is my friend

Mist that's nice for you, but also monumentally patronising - I tried sleep training with my first born in the full expectation it would work but all I ended up with was a purple sweaty baby in such a state that she couldn't calm down and sleep - and that was controlled crying going in every 1 minute, then every 2 but with a limit of 15 - I gave up around midnight, after 4 hours...

Euro chick that's exactly what it's like, reverting back to the newborn stage!!

And yes mistigri I suspect it is bad habits now. We had a month of constant illness followed by teething and now he's incredibly clingy to me and for ease we took him into our bed as we were just too tired to try any sleep training.

I had thought about sleep training but if we leave him for 2 mins he cries to the point he's hysterical which is horrible for him and us. I just don't know whether to ride it out a bit longer or sleep train

I'm so worried about going back to work now as I can tell I'm going to get really run down as I always seem to when overtired and stressed

Have absolutely no advice but just to say my baby is exactly the same and it is soul destroying! I now drink a lot of coffee...

As a seasoned mum of two children who sleep well I'll give you my best piece of advice about babies and sleep. Are you sitting comfortably?

Put your DC in its cot at bedtime fed, washed, warm and dry - and close the door. If s/he wakes wait at least five mins before going in and if you do go in don't turn the lights on, just reassure your DC that you are there, pat him/her, shhhh quietly and then leave the room again.

It will probably take a few nights of this to make him/her realise that you're not going to take him/her into your bed or indulge in other night-time shenanigans. It is essential that you hold firm as all this night-time bed swapping is doing none of you any good - as you can see. All that's happened is that your DC is a horrible sleeper and both you and your DH are strung out from lack of sleep yourselves. Sleep training works! All our parents did it and very few of them had the kind of problem sleepers that are a regular occurrence nowadays. I cannot think of anything worse than a flailing DC in our bed all night.

I have a friend who's seven-year-old STILL comes crawling into his parents' bed in the middle of the night, because neither of them has ever said 'No, this has to stop'. So if you don't want this to be the pattern of your nights forever more, draw a line now. The first night is the worst and by night three you should, hopefully, be seeing some improvement.

Get the biggest bed you can fit in your room!

Some babies just won't sleep without mum. It was the only way we got any sleep.

Oh OP I feel your pain. My 7.5 month old is similar. He's had a cold on and off for the last month, and I've pretty much given up putting him back in his cot after the third or fourth wake up each night. So he always ends up in with us. I've just sort of embraced it - we've bought a flip up bed guard, and DP has a pillow and spare duvet stashed under the sofa for when he can't stand the middle of the night flailing and chuntering/ me yelping because I've had my hair pulled or boob nibbled. That said, the fact he now does spend part of the night in his own room and goes three hours without waking (sometimes) is nothing short of a miracle, as until 5 months he woke pretty much every forty minutes. The longest he's done since he was born is one blessed night where he slept for six hours. And I didn't because I couldn't understand why he wasn't waking up...

I just keep mainlining coffee and assuming it will get better. Not prepared to sleep train (yet) so just have to wear with it. What we did find helped to get the slightly longer stretches was DP going in to settle him instead of me- he stopped bothering waking every forty minutes in a night or two. But at the three hour point he seems to actually still get hungry, despite the fact he 'shouldn't' by this stage, and I'm not prepared not to feed him if he really wants it, especially while he's poorly. Can definitely see the resolve failing when I go back to work though...

There are sleep training methods that doesn't involve a lot of crying. Also I am assuming that he is your only so no other children will get disturbed in the process. We did very gentle sleep training (all this, 'in 3 nights you will see improvement, is usually nonsense)- we found that the smallest change took 10 days to take hold.
So we did:

1. Step 1, falling asleep on his own. Placed in a cot next to us after the last feed. Cuddled. My hand patting him. Then I stopped patting and just left my hand there. If he cried, tuck in again, 'night night', more patting and leave my hand there. Endlessly. Then over nearly 2 weeks, I reduced the number of pats (I actually really counted the pats- we began with nearly 200, eventually down to less than 10), then hand on a back for a few seconds, and then I would sit on the ipad far away, and wait till he fell asleep. If he cried, tuck in, repeat. Honestly, it took a month from the start till he could reliably and happily fall asleep with minimal patting. But we kept it calm, low key etc. But you have to persevere, there will be good nights, bad nights, better nights. Keep at it. We kept a sleep diary.
2. Step 2. Falling asleep without me in the room. So same as above, but after pats, I would go out for a bit, come back in. This worked quickly- I noticed in a week that I could sit there for 5 minutes, and leave, and then he would fall asleep by himself, but for this to work, Step 1 had to be implemented fully.
3. Step 3. Staying asleep. When he woke up, I would tuck him in, same phrase 'night night, big boys sleep at night'. Pat, and keep hand on back. Rinse and repeat. I would also tell him before he went to sleep that if he woke up, he should 'go back to sleep'. And at night would repeat that phrase. Who knows if it made any difference at 8/9 months but we kept repeating it.

The staying asleep got better with time but we found that once he fell asleep on his own, he was able to stay asleep better.

If he uses any sleep aids- mine had a dummy we found that getting rid of them (again gently) also helped.

You can sleep train, but it depends on the temperament of your child but it also needs real perseverance. Now 3, DS sleeps 13 hours a night in his own room, but each step (and he had a regression at 18 months, and we got rid of the dummy at age 2 etc) has taken real patience.

With the greatest of respect, I know how upsetting it is to have a purple screaming baby after 4 hours. But that doesn't mean sleep training per se wont work. It means that form of sleep training may not work for that child. For something to work, you really have to keep at it. And it really involves parental discipline- so we had no late nights during that period, even on weekends, kept to the same routine, sacrificed our lives a bit as well, and then it got better.

YABU - there's a secret school of anti sleep some babies go to, both my DDs went.

DD1 finally started sleeping through consistently at 2.2

DD2 is 1 in a couple of days and is still a terrible sleeper. At least I know it will end at some point

I hope your DD starts sleeping soon op, you have my sympathies , sleep deprivation is fucking torture grim.

DD is 18mo and still a regular waker :( She only woke twice last night, so that's not bad!

Have to say this thread is making me feel a bit better. I'm sorry to hear of all your rubbish sleepers as it it torture but at the same time it's reassuring to hear we are not the only ones going through this.

I have no one in rl to talk to about this as everyone maintains that their baby sleeps and that no sleep training was every required.

Another question, how did you go on to contemplate baby no 2 after a baby sleeper? My dh is adamant we are only have 1 now and whilst I agree for now, deep down I would like 1 more...

Poor poor you and been there op.

The only thing that worked with my 4 was cc/sleep training and yes it involved being 100% committed and being sorry to say it hard to the crying but it worked like a dream like magic

Dc1.. 2 nights, dc2 3 nights, dc3 I night and dc4 3 nughts.

Then pure bliss. A happy chuckle baby cuddled down to sleep all night and a much happier and safer mummy in the day.

I bumped my car with dc1 through tiredness and we nearly lost dd3 when a driver fell asleep at the wheel of his coach. Tiredness is a killer so for that simple reason adults need sleep to fiction safely.

Best if luck op and the above posters have described the steps to take. Go for it.

Oh yes and bollocks to all your friends telling you their babies slept through at 6 weeks blah blah. Even if that's the case they could lie to make you feel better. And I bet your dm just ignored you all.

DD is 16 months and still doesn't sleep through the night so I would say it's completely normal! She didn't nap longer than 30 mins at a time during the day until she was 8 months. She now has an hour to an hour and a half after lunch but it took a long hard slog to get there.

At 9 months, it is common to regress because there's so much going on in their minds with their development and new skills. It was a low point with both DCs, although Ds1 was made worse by undiagnosed allergies causing him to feed to soothe his digestive system. Ds2 was just a nutter who needed 2 hours of leaping in the jumperoo to tire him enough to even contemplate putting in the cot. Ds1 sussed out sleep at about a year, and Ds2 at 18m when I got tough on night feeds.

Every parent and baby is unique. Each baby wakes for different reasons. Different methods of sleep training work for different people. Waking at 9m is still quite common though.