9month old still not sleeping through :(

[number1miss]

Has anyone's baby who has never been able to self sooth and needs to be patted,rocked or fed to sleep slept or is sleeping through the night?

i've have been told that coz i pat my DD to sleep she wont sleep through, please someone tell me thats not true and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

x

I think self soothing is something that can be taught-maybe you've already tried but if not, now would be a good time to try. I love this woman's book www.babysleepguide.co.uk/index.html so I'm going to recommend it.

I imagine babies will work it out eventually but if you do want to move on from patting her to sleep, this is one approach.

my 14mo DD sleeps 14 hours a night without any problems plus naps during the day

my DS was bf so was either bf to sleep or rocked to sleep when small. He's 2 now and its only very recently we put him in the cot aware but he's been sleeping through the night for at least a year (except for odd nights). Sometimes i used to hear him wake up in the night and make noise (not crying just mumbling or saying words) and he'd go back to sleep, so he could self soothe in the night even through he didn't at bed time

** Sorry spelling error should have said put in cot awake

It took my DC1 until 12 months old to sleep through. She then did it for 6 months, then we had other problems once she hit toddlerhood (everything is just a phase!).

My DC2 is 10mo and also waking multiple times in the night.

I'm sure that people will come on here and tell you much worse. And better. I know one friend who swears by the shush/pat method of getting her children to sleep.

I don't have a magic formula for it, soothing, or not. Bedtime remains a struggle for us at nearly 4yo (DC1). Every child is different.

Can you get a break with support from your partner or family?

both mine have self settled at bedtime, Ds1 didn't sleep through till he was 2 and Ds2 is 8 months and not sleeping through. i do think a lot of it is luck.

thank you everyone!

PoppyWearer i do have support my sister will sometimes take her at the wkends, its just that i start back to work next week and i just dont know how i will cope she wakes every 3hrs!!!

All babies are different - keep doing what's best for you and your baby, your DD will eventually settle and sleep through (unless you are really unlucky!). My DD didn't sleep through until she was 14 months and I didn't pat her to sleep.

I have two girl one is 11yrs and has never slept the whole night and the other is 9yrs and has sleep all night from about 9 months. I used the same method on both. Your little one will find their sleep pattern just be aware of your stress level over this as they pick that up.

DS is now 16 months and sleeps through 3 or 4 nights a week. 9 months is a very bad time for sleep as they go through a massive sleep regression. I survived, and still do on the bad nights by co-sleeping.

I don't think patting to sleep is bad, but you can try if you want gradually reducing the amount of patting, over a couple of weeks or so, until she falls asleep just with your hand on her, then just with you next to her, then with you further away, etc. But as I said it might not work at 9 months, DS had a terrible regression then and nothing worked until about 11 months.

I am not sure that the two things are connected.
What do you do when she wakes up? does she have anything to eat/drink?
How long is she awake for? is she wide awake? irritable?
How many naps does she have during the day?
My DS went to sleep initially by himself but at around this age - I had trouble getting enough food in him to keep him through the night - I gave him a dream feed until he was really old !! anything to get a full nights sleep - as I am a lone parnet, was working full time and my dad was dying in hospital at the time.

DD is 8mo now and we stopped ssh-patting at about 6mo as I heard it becomes too stimulating for them past this age. She goes down for naps well, with a smooth of her hair or forearm or my hand placed on her back with a gentle ssh. At night I feed to sleep (7:30) and dream feed at 10:30. She usually sleeps well and wakes at 5:30. Sometimes she'll wake up at night. She stopped fussing for a feed at night about a month ago so if she cries and I go into her room, she usually just needs a little hair smoothing or hand in her back for a few mins.

Is your dc eating 3 meals a day now? And snacks? I've started dropping bf as I'm back to work in 6 weeks and HV suggested introducing a midmorning snack when I dropped that bf last month. Just wondered if your dc was getting enough to eat during the day?

The other thing is it might just be habit. Are you still feeding at night? DD just stopped wanting a feed at night so I think I was just lucky but you might have to endure a bit of a battle. I always worried about how to stop feeding at night but one day I decided if she woke up before 3am it had only been 4 1/2 hours since her last feed and she prob wasnt that hungry so i tried just resettling DD and she didn't make a fuss at all. We've not had to go back to it at all. She dies wake at 5:30am so I could feed back to sleep then but I'm a morning person and don't mind getting up, plus I feel that feeding her and putting her back into bed straight away is like telling her she feeds during the night again!

Ds is 21m and still does not really self settle at bedtime He does however mostly sleep through. He first slept through at 9m but didn't do it regularly till 13 or14m. She will get there dint worry

Yes, I can guarantee you your baby will not need to be settled to sleep by you when she's 18, whatever you do now!

Our culture tells us to expect really unnatural things from our babies, who naturally don't learn to sleep through the night for years! The key is to relax - being worried and stressed about it, and comparing your baby to others, makes it far, far worse and tiring. Finding ways to get the sleep you need while your baby is in the early years is the answer, not trying to get your baby to do things he's not biologically programmed to do - working against nature, rather than with it, is always the hardest route to take.

My four children were always settled to sleep and, in fact, shared our bed for many years. My oldest three (5, 7 and 9) now get themselves to sleep no problem and stay asleep unless they have a bad dream. My 3.5yo needs to be cuddled to sleep because she forgets she's going to sleep and starts playing , but she only wakes once and comes in our bed and goes straight back to sleep, whether we've realised she's there or not.

Trust in her innate ability to grow up into an adult - you don't need to train babies to become adults, they just learn it from watching you and being a part of your life.

My 2p.... do what ever it takes and don't beat yourself up about it.

She will self settle eventually but actually IMHO more babies at 9 months DON'T than do, and broken nights are usual for many many parents. Certainly was for us (the youngest slept best - from 12 months she shared with her siblings and I'm sure that helped).

Yup - endless hours of tapping and rocking, waking constantly and I eventually ended up in A&E wth torn rib muscles from lugging DS around. But after I accidentally started controlled crying when I had to leave DS briefly in cot crying at about 7.5 / 8 months, he now sleeps mostly 7-7 and it is bliss! Took a couple of weeks, but only once did he last an hour. Mostly it took 10-15 mins and he was fast asleep. CC isnt for everyone but it saved my sanity!

2.3 y.o. DS has never 'self-settled' and has generally been a not-very-good sleeper. At about 18 months he had about 6 weeks of sleeping through once a night (the rest waking once at my bedtime - we co-sleep & I'd disturb him when I went to bed). We've had more wakings since then, but the last couple of months he's been waking 0/1 times per night. We co-sleep though, so waking isn't as big a deal as if I had to get out of bed.

You are in the middle of a HUGE developmental leap / sleep regression though, so poor sleeping is really common irrespective of self-settling at this stage. You can read about it here.

IMO, waking after every sleep cycle (ie every 1.5 hours) is most likely to do with sleep associations when going to bed (unless it's a temporary developmental issue). Less frequent waking than that is usually less easy to pinpoint the cause of.