Our baby won’t sleep

[BootsIO3]

We have a 9 month old baby boy & he just won’t sleep. Every night he wakes every 1-2 hours and when we put him to sleep he just screams (we have about 2 hours of it, then he finally nods off)

Since he was born he wouldn’t be put down during the day. Hated his Moses basket, bassinet on the pram & next to me crib.

After a few months we co-slept. We also went travelling for 3 months from 5-8 months so co-slept in our motorhome then to. He would wake up, but abit of food & he’d sleep again. Admittedly we had no routine while travelling.

Were just 2 months from maternity ending & been trying to get him in a 8:30-9:30 bedtime

We bought a bugaboo travel cot, hates it.
We’ve now bought a Cot-bed with Snuz Pro mattress, still the same screaming match, then the monitor goes off and he’s crawling around

Any tips as it’s wearing me thin!

can’t find correct category for this so posting for traffic

The straight answer is you either sleep train properly or get used to it and accept it.

We’ve been at it for 1 month now, don’t seem to be getting any closer to sleeping through

My youngest has never been a great sleeper at all. I did find when got the next to me forever it helped. Now night time wakings aren’t as frequent and usually she will settle pretty much right away when she sits up and sees she’s basically beside me.

She was and still is a Velcro child, I had to have her in a sling/carrier for first 2 years. She wouldn’t settle anywhere but on me.

Are you following any kind of method or is he just screaming for 2 hours?
what have you already tried.

None of my three slept. One of mine used to be up anywhere between 25-30 times a night. It passes though, your wee one won't still be like that at 14 😄 My worst sleeper as a baby/toddler is now the best.

Ignore all the sleep training brigade. Leaving a child to cry is cruel and uneccessary, all it's teaching them is that noone comes when they need someone.

He needs to be in his own room in a cot, with blackout blinds.

You would get a lot of help from the Ferber sleep training book.

Babies this age thrive on consistency and routine. Are you in a regular daily routine where he has predictable naps in his cot or pram etc?

Whats your approach at bedtime? Eg warm bath, stories/songs, milk? It needs to be a calm wind down towards sleep. How are you handling the crying? Does he have a comfort item (cuddly toy, dummy? Is he falling asleep with you there patting or rocking or feeding? Children wake every 1-2 hours when they haven't learned to link sleep cycles and transition from one to the next without fully waking. They need to feel comfortable and relaxed in their cot as a familiar place they associate with sleep, and not reliant on a parent soothing them off to sleep physically, or else their brain & body expect the same process every time they transition to a new sleep cycle.

Also an 8.30-9.30 bedtime is probably quite late. Overtired babies & toddlers go quite hyper and are much harder to settle down to sleep. Try getting him down much earlier - max 4 hours after he wakes from his lunch/early afternoon nap.

Just co-sleep. He wants your warmth and smell. Meanwhile, warm the Crib next to your bed with a hot water bottle - in the hope (!) you'll be able to seamlessly transfer. ENSURE YOU REMOVE HOT WATER BOTTLE BEFORE PLACING INFANT IN CRIB. best wishes and enjoy your baby.

How is he when awake? How’s his feeding / pooping etc? I say this as my eldest was like this and she had an undiagnosed dairy allergy.

P.s babies do seem to fall asleep at first hint of car travel. If you usually shop normally by car, could you change schedule to coincide when you want him to bed down? This won't last forever! When he gets more mobile it will be easier to tire him out from play. Don't get exasperated by peoples opinions re "in my day, just left them outside in their Silver-cross Pram under a tree / let them cry it out / my Baby was an Angel and slept 12 hours a day until he graduated from St Andrews and did his Masters at Cambridge" etc. Ask for help - people are always enthusiastic when critter is on way and offer support - take them up on it! Whether it be shopping, housework, bashing other half over the head with Bottle Steriliser etc.

I’m sorry, it’s really very hard. He’s still very young too. Could you and partner take turns with the wake ups? That way you get a longer stretch at least? We waited until 18 months to sleep train and start a ‘routine’ and it worked really well at that age, even though I was against it at first. We also only got 2 hours sleep at a time until that age, but I totally cracked and decided something had to be done. I wanted to wait until 2 but couldn’t wait any longer. I also co-slept and it didn’t make an ounce of a difference. People always love to recommend that but it doesn’t work for all babies. Sorry. Hang in there. It might feel like it at the moment but it won’t be forever.

Same. Nightmare. OP seems similar.

My baby with sensory issues and a double tongue tie was like this, reflux and proprioception contributed. To solve it, we coslept. He'd latch on every hour or so and just keep sleeping. I'd wake lightly to latch on and go back to sleep myself, as breastfeeding promotes those sleepy hormones that help. They get painkillers, immune support and brain boosters in breastmilk, all babies are primed to wake for these reasons, as well as coregulating their heart rate and breathing. As they go to nursery they can also wake more frequently as the cortisol and separation can stimulate attachment-seeking behaviours, and all the germ exposure which would typically lead to nursing. Teething and developmental spurts are also common triggers.

My child with sensory issues grew out of it the same week they were dry at night, as all those other stages were complete, and has consistently slept through the night as a deep, well-rested sleeper ever since.

Some of the responses to threads like this drive me mad.

You don’t have to just ‘put up with it’ because other people did . Yes, babies that sleep poorly is a common experience and if you’re a parent who is okay with just waiting it out that’s great, but if you’re really struggling it’s okay to try and do something about it too!

That said ‘the Ferber book’ is the opposite extreme and I’m surprised it still gets suggested. There is a whole lot of options to try in-between the ‘it’s normal just don’t sleep for 3-5 years; I went through that hell you should too’ camp and ‘just leave them to cry’.

Maybe find a book on gentle sleep training from the local library/Amazon? They all contain quite similar suggestions some of which have already been mentioned here. The core tends to be:

• Develop a daytime nap and evening before bed routine that suits you and baby. Consistency is really helpful.
• Have positive sleep associations like white noise, blackout blinds etc.
• Burp really really thoroughly after feeding and if that doesn’t work explore possibilities of reflux or allergies as have been mentioned.
• Gradually move towards encouraging baby to fall asleep on their own in the cot so they learn to self-settle between sleep cycles.

Best of luck OP!

I would take baby to bed when you do to bed. That way at least you are getting a couple of hours sleep maybe more at the start of them sleeping

I also made sure nap time in their cot during the day wasn’t in the late afternoons. Got earlier and earlier to make sure dd and ds were tired when we went to bed.
Both would be on a soft playmat with a blanket on top on the floor during the evenings. Or I held them and they dozed off.

I never let them cry without me getting them at any time I think it was a test to see if I was slways there for them

Dd slept through from midnight to 6am at 9 weeks and ds was 10 weeks.
I then worked on gradually moving their bed time earlier by 5 or 10 mins every few days.

We used the Huckleberry app to catch the right wake windows (although we did this from a younger age but it got us into a good routine). By 9 months we were on a morning and afternoon nap but needing a 4 hour window between afternoon nap ending and bedtime. What is his current wake time and nap schedule? Is he napping in his cot yet or contact napping?

As someone else said we know friends whose son was exactly the same and he had undiagnosed milk allergy, once they sorted that his sleep improved a lot. The waking to feed a lot could be actually because the feeding soothes his throat but taking the milk makes him worse each time, the Dr can prescribe dairy free formula if needed. Every child seems to be different thought but worth exploring.

@ZippyKoala 's post is a very fair one. My DD was exactly like this as a baby and is now 20! So we did the whole thing at the time of Ferber and Gina Ford vs. the beginnings of attachment parenting. I tried them all, including a sleep clinic. With huge hindsight, I think I erred too much on the attachment side and holding to sleep etc. due to my own anxiety and tiredness. If I did it again, I would take much more of the middle ground instead of the extremes of either approach.

But we did get through! That's the bit I wanted to pass on, you will all get through.

He must be sleeping at different points during the day - keep him awake & get him into a daytime routine & he will get into a night routine.

We never managed to sleep train. She regressed badly before first birthday, thought we'd never survived then suddenly she slept through. We changed nothing, she just suddenly did it herself. It was very gratifying to realise it was an age thing for her. We'd really tried a lot since 6 months. Give it time.

My DS has slept through 7-7 pretty reliably since about 6 months old, minus waking to feed. I’m sure a lot of it is down to temperament but some things that have helped us;

Routine - I do try and follow rough wake windows, he has napped in his cot since this age and still loves his nap now. At 9 months he would usually have an hour in the morning a few hours after waking then 90 mins - 2 hours in the afternoon just after lunch.

Earlier bedtime - yes the trade off is he wakes earlier but if you’re heading back to work presumably you can’t sleep to 9 anyway? So probably better to move bedtime earlier. I prefer to have my evening free and wake up at a ‘normal’ time

Self settling - this is more difficult but I would rock DS until he was almost asleep then put him down. After a while I realised I could stop rocking and he would eventually fall asleep in his cot. We always make the room dark, white noise, he has a dummy and teddy, same routine for nap. He goes into his sleeping bag for naps.

What do you do when he’s awake? DS was an early walker and crawler which I also think helped as he tires himself out a lot by bedtime. Will you put him in nursery? Nursery has also helped DS a lot with naps as they are very consistent on sleep and he’s learnt to sleep with a degree of noise around him.

follow sound asleep guru on Instagram, highly suggest using her services too. We did. She seems to have very good reviews

Please don’t listen to any bog standard programme like huckleberry. They work for high sleep needs children which my little boy (18 months) by 9 months I’m assuming he’s on 2 naps? At that age my little one needed at always 4.5 hours pre bed but everyone’s sleep needs are very different and you need to work out the 24 hour sleep needs to make sure you’re night trying to give too much sleep. This was where I went wrong initially before getting help.

Both my kids have been awful sleepers, very distressed and frequent wakes. Both have tongue ties and milk allergies. They hated being laid on their backs and were very gassy. I'd rule out these issues before sleep training.

I’d definitely make sure he hasn’t got any allergies
Ive two children. 1st has always been a bad sleeper. Constant waking. Had undiagnosed milk soya and egg allergies, is also asd. Still doesn’t sleep and is now junior age. We have tried everything. Youngest very early diagnosis of milk allergy. Has always slept really well. I didn’t do anything different.