Baby not sleeping

[Echo11]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and I'm not an avid user but I'm just so stressed and I don't know what to do.

My husband and I have an 8.5m lil girl. She just seems to hate sleep. She barely get 9 hours in total a day. She'll fall asleep around midnight, be up in 2-3 hours for play time, go down again for a few more hours till about 8-9am but it will still be broken. I've tried everything to cut out that play time but she's wide awake at that time.

In the morning, she'll be up for about an hour and then goes for 20min - 1 hour nap. She may have a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon but it's not always.

It's not like she's tired in the day either. She's so full of energy. She's just learned how to pull herself up and mastered crawling so incredibly active. She could chase the poor cat around the house all day. She loves bath time and gets so over excited so I'm hesitant to add it to a bed time as she's bouncing of the walls after.

Please, any help at all. I don't know what to do. Thank you

I thought I would add that she sleeps in a cot. I sleep in her room with her, the cot and bed are separated by a bedside table. She does know where I am and crawls over to that side when she wakes up.

Actually sleeping time for baby isn't constant.

This is me with my 16 week old.
People tell me to keep her up during the day but I'm not going to force it on her.
I'm just going to let her figure out her own pattern, she'll grow into a routine when she's ready.

I did a few things with my 16 week old to get her into a good day/night routine and it worked well.

Don't let her sleep in, wake her at 7am and get her up and dressed. Do exciting things during daylight hours so music or tv on, get out and about etc. At 17:00 we start to drim things down to turn the tv/radio down or off. We turn the 'big lights' off and use lamps. She has a bath, massage, onesie on, bottle, cuddles, bed. This is no later than 19:00. DD also gets excited in the bath but the massage helps her calm a bit.

Will she nap if you take her out in the car or buggy?

Your not alone , I have an 8.5 month old baby too and has 1 hours worth of naps during the day and we're up every hour with him at night , get fed up of my mother in law constantly telling me he should be sleeping through by now - I wish 😂. My little boy always go bed by 7:30 / 8pm though and sleeps solid til 11:30pm I think this is due to having a strict bedtime routine . We have no visitors after 5pm either as it winds him up and then it's story reading , dinner , bath and bed

When you say 'up for playtime', are you keeping her room dark, quiet and encouraging her to go back to sleep or are you actually playing with her? If the latter don't do that!

Does she sleep on you? Sleep well when in the pushchair? The energy in the day could be because she is overtired. Its a vicious cycle which results in less and less sleep. Dd1 wasn't a sleeper, it is hard.

I would focus on getting sleep during the day. If they sleep well during naps and aren't overtired, nighttime sleep is better. With my first, I'd drive around in the car 2+ hours a day some days if I needed to. Or I held her to sleep or pushed her around in the pushchair, anything to get her naps in. Because it made nighttime so much better for everyone.

Beyond that, would she co-sleep? You being in the room close by might actually be encouraging her to get up and try to get to you. But if you are together sleeping, she might find it easier to drift off to sleep and stay asleep. I'd also keep the playtimes pretty boring. If she's awake, fine. Let her zoom around her cot in the dark, but don't actually get her up to play. I have a friend who used to do this. She is still sometimes up with her 5 year old watching films together in the middle of the night! So I would be doing everything to discourage making nights about getting up and out of the bedroom and playing.